Lost and found

ANN ARBOR – There are dog people: people who like dogs, and then there are Dog People: people who dogs seek out, particularly dogs who are lost or in trouble.
Author Ken Foster is a Dog Person. Though it wasn't always this way, as Foster explains in his new book "The Dogs Who Found Me: What I've Learned From Pets Who Were Left Behind."
While Foster grew up with a dog as a family pet, he never really "got" the connection people have with animals until he met a mix-breed puppy named Brando. The two started a life together that eventually included a Rottweiler named Zephyr, a pit bull named Sula and a host of dogs just passing through until Foster could see that they found forever homes.
the dogs who found me by ken fosterIt's not that Foster set out to be a dog-rescuer. He just somehow managed to find homeless dogs everywhere he went. The reason, he says, is that he could see them while so many humans choose not to, much like the more fortunate among us ignore homeless people.
Thankfully for the dogs that crossed Foster's path – a pit bull puppy with a mangled eye, a small collie huddled under a park bench, a mutt lost in a city park, a pit bull abandoned at a gas station – Foster not only chose to see them, he chose to help them.
"One of the reasons we rescue things is to feel a sense of control that we may not really have in our own lives," Foster writes. "If we can save something, maybe we can do anything."
Foster has put a lot of time and energy into dogs. And dogs, Foster found, give so much back in terms of love and teaching. Foster has learned a lot from his dogs, especially in times of crisis. Foster moved to New York City shortly before Sept. 11 and then to New Orleans shortly before Hurricane Katrina.
"The Dogs Who Found Me" is part memoir and part lost dog advice book. It's a tribute for the reluctant rescuer in us all, if only more of us would choose to see.