MASSAGING YOUR FURRY FRIENDS

Like all massage therapists, Megan Ayrault has clients who experience stress, stiffness, soreness, and injury. Massage helps them deal with the pain and regain some agility. But Ayrault's clients are hairy and have four legs. Ayrault is a licensed massage practitioner for animals and people, and she is the author and publisher of The Horse Lover's Guide to Massage (978-0-9822556-1-2) and The Dog Lover's Guide to Massage (978-0-9822556-0-5). FTW spoke with Ayrault about animal massage and her new books.

The books teach pet owners about the basics of massaging their animals. Ayrault outlines the benefits of massage, which include boosting the immune system, lowering blood pressure, improving athletic agility and coordination, and improving the quality of sleep. Also important, massage can deepen an owner's bond with their animal.

Ayrault teaches readers that it is important to "listen" to one's dog or horse during the massage in order to gauge their reaction. Panting, holding the breath, and moving away are signs of discomfort in dogs. Sleepy eyes, licking and chewing, and yawning are all positive signs.

Asked to describe a technique that beginners can use on their pets, Ayrault said, "Probably the simplest to describe would look basically like petting but with two important additions. One is that as you pet your animal, make the strokes longer than you might usually do. For example, make one continuous stroke all the way from the head, along the back, and down a hind leg to the paw or hoof, then repeat on the other side. Not that all massage strokes are this long of course, but this is one techniques that increases body awareness and creates a relaxation effect for the nervous system. The other addition.is to focus on your own breathing, which will help connect and relax both you and your animal."

This technique is described in both the Dog and Horse books. The next dog massage technique is "Loosening the legs," in which the leg muscles are gently squeezed and twisted. Other moves focus on the hips, neck, shoulders, back, paws, and bony areas like the jaw. Massage techniques for horses focus on the crest and underside of the neck, the ribs, glutes, back, legs, and withers. When massaging a horse, it is often advisable to restrain the animal or use a handler, since tension can cause the horse to bite or kick.

The books include many color photographs that illustrate the techniques described. Ayrault has also made a YouTube video that demonstrates "rib work" on a horse. She plans to post many more videos soon.

Ayrault believes that the surge in alternative and holistic health is increasing interest in animal massage.

"I think when people have an experience with alternative or complementary forms of health care, they tend to learn more about their own body and about the healing process from that experience, than typically happens with Western approaches," she told FTW. "Often the result is that they realize taking a pill or having surgery isn't necessarily the healthiest first choice, and that there are many other options available to explore. Once people realize even this much, I think they are very quick to want the same options for more holistic approaches for their animals as well."

Ayrault insists that massage is about more than just relieving sore muscles. She says that every massage session with an animal is meaningful, but some are more dramatic than others.

"An older mare named Abby was pretty much lame on three legs (if not four) and arthritic throughout her body," she told FTW. "About the second or third session, when I was able to help Abby with a very nice release in her neck, she gave a very positive relaxation response that was immediately noticeable in her body language. But it was really when the session was over that the biggest reward came. As usual, after the massage, Abby's owner let her out into the paddock, but this time Abby got down and rolled, then got back up and literally frolicked around her paddock. It was such a sweet moment, seeing this mare that had been almost unable to walk before the massage, just having a great time being in her body again. It brought her owner just about to tears, as she told me she hadn't seen Abby do that for quite a long time."

Educating clients about the benefits of animal massage has always been important to Ayrault.

"I wanted to be able to share what I've learned faster than one conversation at a time, and thought of writing the books," she said. "Combined with all the multimedia advantages of a Web site, together I know they're a really valuable resource for all animal owners, and of course, in turn, for the animals they love."

She planned to self publish the books almost from the beginning of the project, when she met Cici Miller, an editor and consultant. Her books are currently selling well in specialty stores and on her Web site and Amazon.com, but would be a welcome addition to the Pet sections in libraries and bricks and mortar stores. Ayrault hopes that animal-related nonprofit organizations will carry her books, and she will offer them a donation for each book they sell.

Ayrault plans to co-author a book about cat massage. "Virtually any species can benefit from massage and/or some other form of bodywork," she said. "There's even more and more of such work being done in zoos for example, with great benefits. I'd love to create more eBooks in the future for other species, but probably not printed books simply due to cost."

Ayrault's Web site, www.allaboutanimalmassage.com offers more information, updates, and free eBook downloads.

by Whitney Hallberg, Managing Editor

BOOK REVIEW

Dread: How Fear and Fantasy
Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu
by Philip Alcabes
(PublicAffairs, 978-1-58648-618-1)

The bubonic plague was an archetypical societal experience in Europe. It killed about 200 million people in the fourteenth century. In repeated waves that appeared and disappeared over a four hundred-year period, the so-called pestilence imprinted a fear of strangers, a conviction that the sufferer deserved his or her fate, the idea that the plague was heavenly vengeance, and the suspicion that those of a different religion, particularly Jews, were to blame. "[T]he plague was a cataclysm on which people piled meanings: treachery, foreignness, sanctity and faithlessness, dying for ones religion, obeying (or rebelling against) authority, and, of course, the fecklessness of nature. It acquired more layers of metaphor over time" Since then, Western cultures have reacted to outbreaks of deadly diseases with those concepts in mind.

For example, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, earlier prejudices have tainted our treatment of the victims of AIDS, SARS, avian flu, and drug-resistant tuberculosis. Fears of sin, homosexual and non-monogamous sex, and IV drugs have perverted the publics perception of the risks and the victims of HIV and AIDS, and delayed proper funding and research into the virus and effective treatment. In 2005, the mass media hyped the potential spread of flu H5N1, or avian flu, a disease that has killed millions of birds but only 248 humans. The great fear was that the flu would mutate to pass more easily from bird to human and between humans. Internationally, governments stockpiled Tamiflu and individuals demanded prescriptions to combat that possibility, which did not come to pass.

Alcabes is an associate professor at the City University of New Yorks Hunter College campus and has been published extensively in medical journals on public health issues and the social aspects of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. In his absorbing book, Alcabes identifies other health problems, like obesity and autism, that arent germ-based, yet are defined as epidemics. They vie for the attention and funding due a new bubonic plague. But fear is not science, and despite hyperbolic language attached to "good" behavior, life is not without risk. (April)

Reviewed by Deirdre Sinnott

Read more reviews at www.forewordmagazine.com.

AUTHOR PAGES: CHRISTINE HASSLER

The Author Pages feature nearly 100 interviews with authors whose work has been reviewed in ForeWord magazine. Christine Hassler, author of 20 Something Manifesto: Quarter-Lifers Speak Out about Who They Are, What They Want, and How to Get It (New World Library, 978-1-57731-595-7), writes:

"I hadn't thought of writing as a vocation for me until after I went through my own quarter life crisis, created a discussion group, and began doing research about twenty-something life. I realized then that while the confusion during my twenties was very real, and that colleagues, friends, and strangers felt the same, there was a void in terms of books that would help instruct and guide.
Columnists talked about the hurdles, but other than commiserating or condemning there were no action plans or tips. I decided to create the book that I wish I could have had when I was struggling with my identity and career choices."

Visit ForeWord’s Author Pages to read more about the authors reviewed in the pages of ForeWord.

This week at Publishing Insider, Joanna Campbell Slan talks to booksellers across the country about cozy mysteries.

At Editor’s Notes, Editor-in-Chief Heather Shaw presents the speech given at BookExpo America, announcing the ForeWord's Independent Publisher of the Year.

At Shelf Space, Carlie Webber pens a column titled "They're evil! They're brilliant! They're reviewers!"

At Publishing Matters, Eugene Schwartz Eugene Schwartz discusses lessons learned from librarians at an AAP panel.

Visit www.forewordmagazine.com for publishing news, book reviews, and the ForeWord Book Club.

FOREWORD BOOK CLUB:
POEMS THAT TELL STORIES

This week the ForeWord Book Club features features poems that tell stories. Of course, fans of Robert Service might say that the only good poems are those that tell stories - they might also say that the only good poet is a dead one. Sigh. Yes, it is sometimes hard to believe that storytelling was poetry's original intent. In Gabrielle Calvocoressi's poem, "Fence," the story is one you've no doubt heard. You may even have seen the movie. And that common knowledge contributes to the cinematic sensation of wide angle shifting to close-up and back again, an effect that brings the reader closer and closer and closer to the crime.

Read the whole story this week only at the ForeWord's Book Club.

FOREWORD FOOTNOTES

Architecture. DESIGNING THE MAINE LANDSCAPE by Theresa Mattor and Luce Teegarden (Down East Books, 10 x10, 240 color and b/w photographs, 216 pages, hardcover, $50.00, 978-0-89272-729-2): registered landscape architect and museum publications editor present historic landscapes; among them are Camden's Village Green, Blaine Memorial Park in Augusta, Megunticook Golf Club "nestled against the shore of Penobscot Bay," Nathaniel Hawthorne's Bowdoin College chartered in 1794, and rural Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, consecrated in 1852, with its mortuary art such as "The Weeping Lady."

Art. ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: A REEVALUATION by Irving Sandler (Hand Press Editions and School of Visual Arts in association with Hudson Hills Press, 8 x 11, color photographs, 240 pages, hardcover, $45.00, 978-1-55595-311-9): art historian and author of The Triumph of American Painting presents "fresh conclusions" and stresses the impact of WWII and its aftermath; topics include direct responses to the global crisis of the time, the particularly American character of Abstract Expressionism, and expressionist Willem de Kooning's Marilyn Monroe (1954) with its "vehement slashes of pigment."

Biography & Autobiography. FRANZ JÄGERSTÄTTER: LETTERS AND WRITINGS FROM PRISON edited by Erna Putz, Robert A. Krieg, translator (Orbis Books, b/w photographs, 252 pages, softcover, $25.00, 978-1-57075-826-3): Austrian farmer and Roman Catholic (1907-1943), who became a "martyr of conscience" for refusing to serve in the German army during war time and paid the price by guillotine--in 2007 was beatified by the Catholic Church; content includes military training letters and prison correspondence: "I definitely prefer to relinquish my rights under the Third Reich and thus make sure of deserving the rights granted under the kingdom of God."

Body, Mind & Spirit. SHAMANISM FOR BEGINNERS: WALKING WITH THE WORLD'S HEALERS OF EARTH AND SKY by James Endredy (Llewellyn Publications, 288 pages, softcover, $14.95, 978-0-7387-1562-9): workshop leader and author of Ecoshamanism as well as Beyond 2012 discusses practices and beliefs of "tribes around the world" and reveals the shamanic experience complemented by vignettes; mentions include Shamanic initiation, sacred dance, and Luna, a Huichol Indian who, after eating many peyote cactus buttons, reached for the two sacred eagle feathers that rose from the "Fire" and accepted her calling to become a "singing shaman (marakame)."

Business & Economics. BUILDING BUSINESS VALUE: HOW TO COMMAND A PREMIUM PRICE FOR YOUR MIDSIZED COMPANY by Martin O'Neill (Third Bridge Press, tables, graphs, 160 pages, hardcover, $22.95, 978-0-9820569-0-5): leadership consultant and member of the Advisory Board for the University of Baltimore County Tech Center presents value-building strategies for entrepreneurs who plan to sell their companies; topics include incremental growth, increasing operational effectiveness, and the day of the sale: "Your wealth is determined by the company you sell."

History. BOSTON THEN AND NOW by Patrick L. Kennedy (Thunder Bay Press, 11 x 10, 140 color and b/w photographs, 144 pages, hardcover, $18.95, 978-1-59223-963-4): contributor to the Boston Globe and Historic Journal of Massachusetts presents photographic comparisons; subjects include Romanesque-styled Trinity Church (c. 1877), neoclassic-styled Museum of Fine Arts (c. 1909), and Italian Renaissance-styled Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (c. 1902) bequeathed by the woman who stipulated that the position of her 2,500 collected items such as Titian's Rape of Europa and Rembrandt's Self-Portrait should never be changed after her death (1924).

History. CAPTAINS CONTENTIOUS: THE DYSFUNCTIONAL SONS OF THE BRINE by Louis Arthur Norton (University of South Carolina Press, 13 b/w illustrations, 192 pages, hardcover, $29.95, 978-1-57003-807-5): maritime historian and a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut investigates behavioral traits that hindered and enhanced the heroics of five seamen of the Continental Navy; captains include John Manley, Joshua Barney, and John Paul Jones who used "bravado and desperation" to defeat the 50-gun Serapis of the Royal Navy by commanding his "sharp-shooting marines" aboard the 40-gun Richard to fire from the topmasts during close combat.

History. THE EGYPT CODE by Robert Bauval (The Disinformation Company, 51 color photographs, 352 pages, hardcover, $27.95, 978-1-934708-00-2): Egyptian-born construction engineer and author of Message of the Sphinx as well as The Orion Mystery presents a cosmic theory of ancient Egypt; among the references are the jubilees of Akhenaten, quest for eternity, axis of Karnak, dating of the Sphinx, Isis-Sirius cow, and pyramid-stars correlation theory in which the three great pyramids align with the constellation stars of Orion's belt.

Literary Collections. JIM HARRISON: A COMPREHENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1964-2008 by Gregg Orr and Beef Torrey (University of Nebraska Press, 64 b/w illustrations, 7 x 10, 376 pages, hardcover, $65.00, 978-0-8032-1614-3): former co-editor of the Rothschild bibliographic catalog of William Somerset Maugham and psychologist associate at Beatrice State Developmental Center in Nebraska presents a guide to "one of the great and iconic writers in contemporary American literature"; sections include poetry, fiction, and nonfiction such as "Sporting Life Recaptured," which appeared in Sports Illustrated in 1974.

Literary Criticism. THE HERO AND THE GODDESS: THE ODYSSEY AS PATHWAY TO PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION by Jean Houston (Quest Books, 425 pages, softcover, $16.95, 978-0-8356-0878-7): former advisor to UNICEF as well as to President and Mrs. Clinton and author of A Passion for the Possible presents a "provocative exploration of antiquity's greatest epic" as a guide that can bring "resurrection and healing" to oneself; among the chapters are "The Lotus Eaters," "The Cave of the Cyclops," and "The Island of Circe," where Odysseus is ready for a series of initiations by the feminine principle.

Political Science. AT REAGAN'S SIDE: INSIDERS' RECOLLECTIONS FROM SACRAMENTO TO THE WHITE HOUSE by Stephen F. Knott and Jeffrey L. Childester (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, b/w photographs 280 pages, hardcover, $44.95, 978-0-7425-6625-5): associate professor of national security studies at the United States Naval War College and staff director of the National Discussion and Debate Series at the University of Virginia compile excerpts from top Reagan officials; among the aids are James Baker, Edwin Meese, and Casper Weinberger who said, "he [Reagan] could charm anybody, but for people who really hated him it took ten minutes."

Reference. THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CAMPS AND GHETTOS, 1933-1945, VOLUME 1: EARLY CAMPS, YOUTH CAMPS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND SUBCAMPS UNDER THE SS-BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION MAIN OFFICE (WVHA) edited by Geoffrey P. Megargee (Indiana University Press, 8 ½ x 11, 23 maps, 192 b/w photographs, 1728 pages, hardcover, $295.00, 978-0-253-35328-3): applied research scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and author of Inside Hitler's High Command presents the "enormity of the detention system"--part 1 of 7 volumes planned; among the camps mentioned are Blechhammer, Neckarzimmern, and Raguhn where women such as 18-year-old Gertrud Adler worked on aircraft parts.

Religion. JUST AS YOU ARE: OPENING YOUR LIFE TO THE INFINITE LOVE OF GOD by Paul Coutinho (Loyola Press, 192 pages, softcover, $18.95, 978-0-8294-2721-9): historical theologist and author of How Big Is your God helps people "move forward in the confidence that God already loves us" by combining Eastern sensibilities with Ignatian principles; topics include sin, love, and prayer, which is the language of divine romance where the loving relationship is "communicated, deepens, and grows."

Religion. YOUR BEST YOU: DISCOVERING AND DEVELOPING THE STRENGTHS GOD GAVE YOU by Bonnie Grove (Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, charts, 192 pages, softcover, $14.99, 978-0-8341-2439-4): former program developer and interactive workshop leader offers a "strength-based" approach to change complemented by Christian values and hope; among the chapters are "Identifying What Matters Most," "Kindness on the Journey," and "Giving Your Strengths Back to God" by surrendering to Him: "the more of yourself you give to Him, the more of himself He gives you in return."

Self-Help. TRAUMA STEWARDSHIP: AN EVERYDAY GUIDE TO CARING FOR SELF WHILE CARING FOR OTHERS by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, b/w illustrations, 264 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-1-57675-944-8): educator and trauma social worker takes a "deep and sympathetic" look at the "many ways the stress of dealing with trauma manifests itself"; among the topics are diminished creativity, chronic exhaustion, and feelings of helplessness such as environmental scientist Kirsten Stade's feelings that her animal rescue work "is an insignificant drop in the massive bucket of impending crisis."

by Alex Moore, Book Review Editor

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