Mr. and Mrs. Dog: our travels, trials, adventures, and epiphanies

The New York Times-bestselling author Donald McCaighas established an expansive literary career, founded equally on books about working sheepdogs andthe Civil War novels Jacob's Ladder and Rhett Butler'sPeople, the official sequel to Gone with the Wind.In his new book, Mr. and Mrs. Dog, McCaig draws on twenty-five yearsof experience raising sheepdogs to vividly describe his-and his dogs June andLuke's-unlikely progress toward and participation in the World Sheepdog Trials inWales.

McCaig engagingly chronicles the often grueling experience-throughrain, snow, ice storms, and brain-numbing heat-of preparing and trialing Mrs. Dog, June,"a foxy lady in a slinky black-and-white peignoir," and Mr. Dog, Luke, "aplain worker-no flash to him." Along the way, he relays sage advice from his decadesspent talking with America's most renowned dog experts, from police-dog trainers topositive-training gurus.

As readers of McCaig's novels will expect,Mr. and Mrs. Dog delivers far more than straightforward dog-training tips.

Revealing an abiding love and respect for his dogs, McCaig unveils the life experiences that set himon the long road to the Welsh trial fields.

Starting with memories of his first dog, Rascal, andtheir Montana roadtrip in a '48 Dodge, McCaig leads us into his thirties, when he abandons hisNew York advertising career to move to a run-down Appalachian sheep farm in the least populouscounty in Virginia.

This 1960s agrarian adventure ultimately brings McCaig, Luke, and June to theOlympics of sheepdog trials.

In his narration of one man's love for his dogs, McCaig offers apowerful portrayal of the connection between humans and their animal companions.