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For Bea: The Story of the Beagle Who Changed My Life
By Kristin Von Kreisler
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam
2003, 193 pages
ISBN: 1585422223
Every so often a book is published that is an excellent read and also has the potential to do a lot of good. Such is the case with For Bea: The Story of the Beagle Who Changed My Life. Written by Kristin Von Kreisler, For Bea is the heart-warming story of how the author and her husband came across a terrified, malnourished, female beagle hiding in a gully near their Mill Valley, California home. Once they brought the frightened beagle to their home they discovered a tattoo in Bea s ear, which led them to find out that she was a survivor from an animal research laboratory.
Von Kreisler and her husband adopted the beagle, whom they named after a friend Sister Beatrice. With the adoption began the process of healing Bea both physically and emotionally. Although it took a while, and there were set backs, Bea became a loving, confident dog.
For Bea is an entertaining and informative book that describes the inspirational rescue of a wonderful dog in particular, and how even dogs who require extra care, patience and love give infinitely more than they receive.
But mostly, Bea had taught us about love. Sometimes I thought of her as a fur-wrapped, special-delivery package, sent from the cosmos solely to wake John and me up to love s extraordinary power which, we now knew, could come most magnificently even from a small dog. Bea had given us so much more than we ever gave her, and she had loved us with such intensity and fervor. (page 156)
While the author s experiences and relationship with her dog are the focus of the book, Von Kreisler effectively conveys to the reader the needless cruelty of animal research. She does so first in describing the hurdles Bea had to overcome as a result of being used for research. Von Kreisler continues in the book s last chapter Postscript: A Final Lesson from Bea , where she explains the number of innocent animals tortured in the name of research, how animal research has hindered medical advancement and lists some of the humane alternatives available.
For Bea is one of those books that must be read and not just by animal people.
