Monica Holloway. Running Time. In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi. Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent. What Becomes of the Brokenhearted by E.
Lynn Harris. User Reviews Rate this title. Review this title. Available On. Audio Books. Monica Holloway. Product Details. Resources and Downloads. More books from this author: Monica Holloway. You may also like: Thriller and Mystery Staff Picks. Thank you for signing up, fellow book lover! See More Categories. Your First Name. Zip Code. In this exceptionally touching memoir, critically acclaimed author Monica Holloway shares the extraordinary, deeply moving story of Cowboy, the golden retriever puppy who changed her son's life.
It's the first in a string of impulsive In this exceptionally touching memoir, critically acclaimed author Monica Holloway shares the extraordinary, deeply moving story of Cowboy, the golden retriever puppy who changed her son's life. Get A Copy. Hardcover , pages. Published October 6th by Gallery Books first published September 14th More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews.
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. Sort order. Oct 23, Carla Ford rated it it was amazing. The cover calls this a love story, and this book is two hundred and seventy six pages of the purest love imaginable.
Monica Holloway must have a heart the size of Texas. I teared up reading the prologue, and knew then that this book was going to be a very emotional read. I started the book on Thursday, and read every spare minute I could find, finishing it on Friday. During that time I wept gently, laughed so hard I woke my husband up at night, and finally sobbed so hard I could hardly see the p The cover calls this a love story, and this book is two hundred and seventy six pages of the purest love imaginable.
During that time I wept gently, laughed so hard I woke my husband up at night, and finally sobbed so hard I could hardly see the pages.
The touching story of Wills, a beautiful little boy with autism, his mother Monica, who loves Wills intensely, and will do anything it takes to help him function in the world, and Cowboy, the golden retriever who must have been put on this earth just for Wills. Oh yes, there is also Wills' father Michael, who should be voted husband and father of the century, and a whole support cast of fish, amphibians and animals.
Monica instinctively knew that animals would help her son to bridge the gap between his world of autism and the world outside. She started by bringing home fish, and eventually got Wills a puppy that he named Cowboy. This wonderful golden retriever became a buffer for Wills, helping him learn to communicate with his classmates, and even strangers. She brought him out of his shell, and taught him how to let himself go and enjoy life. Five stars is the maximum I can give, but I really give it infinite stars.
It was absolutely the most touching book I can remember reading in a very long time. Monica Holloway is my hero. Oh yeah, and now I really want a golden retriever! Feb 27, Zinta rated it it was amazing. To set the parameters of my review: I know next to nothing about autism.
My knowledge of this disorder is limited to the anecdotal, the various news items and studies that pass across our daily consciousness, this and that about autism being over diagnosed, that it may be caused by something in our food, or by various childhood vaccinations, and other such. I have a couple o To set the parameters of my review: I know next to nothing about autism. I wondered if autism might be something like ADHD, another diagnosis that seems difficult to make.
I eventually agreed with the balderdash opinion. He does not, never did, have ADHD. Nor did he have any other number of diagnoses that various doctors with an alphabet soup of credentials behind their names make. He was a teenager growing up without a father in a single-parent home, and so he acted out his anger and confusion and fear of abandonment. He grew up, gained maturity and understanding, and stopped acting out. End of story. So is this epidemic of autism anything like that?
His thick black eyelashes frame enormous, cornflower blue eyes and he has freckles that march across the top of his tiny turned-up nose. When he lets loose with a belly laugh, his dimples deepen and he throws his head back while twisting the front of his shirt.
He prefers wearing stripes—T-shirts, and turtlenecks mostly. There have to be stripes. My son is a big man now, with great heart and great shoulders, carrying his own world upon them, but how well I remember that sweet little face then, those moments of shining brightness, the up-turned nose and freckles, the childish chortle that would remind me, in my adult world, how to laugh.
So Monica Holloway quickly became my friend. My distant alter ego, struggling with parenting and its myriad challenges. What mattered to me as a reader was that I recognized a mother who loves her child with every fiber of her being, and would do anything but anything for him, even the toughest task of all—step back and let him occasionally take a fall on his own.
Who am I to know? There is no manual, only heart required, lots of it and always open. Holloway has that. And in her self-effacing style of telling the story of Wills and his golden retriever pup, Cowboy, she was touchingly willing to put her own shortcomings out there for public scrutiny. After all, sometimes life hurts so much all you can do is laugh and get on with it. When Wills has a particularly bad day—sobbing when his classroom of peers are too loud, too fast, too bustling with a confusion of activity, for instance—Holloway makes a detour to the pet store.
She brings home guinea pigs, hamsters, fish, rabbits, hermit crabs, turtles, in short, a menagerie of critters to soothe and amuse her son. And it works. Any pet owner will tell you, and the medical profession, too, that our pets can relax rattled nerves, lower blood pressure, and alleviate a sense of isolation.
It is not unusual to hear about animals opening up humans to functionality when other humans fail to do so. Buying the boy a puppy seems a natural progression on the animal chain of pets. I have not raised her son; she has not raised mine. I trust that instinct even over medical professionals.
I have had reason to do so. Perhaps she does, too. Wills, after all, is highly functioning, and really quite bright. So there is Cowboy, the other great personality in this story, the furry charmer.
Cowboy is actually a girl dog, and she arrives with a medical issue of her own—canine lupus. Another thing I did not know: dogs, too, can get lupus. Cowboy did live about two and a half years, and charmed years they were. The Holloway family falls in love with her and she with them, but no one more so than Wills. Not all parents have such means, but lucky are those who have them to use.
We all do whatever we can for our children, and then some. Nothing can carry us through like the unconditional love of a good mother. Love carries us through even when we have to deal with a very painful loss: Cowboy eventually succumbs to his lupus.
Still a young dog, she dies, and having gone through that, too—the loss of a much loved pet that stayed true when not all humans would or do—I understand the grief the entire Holloway family feels. Yet the wonders Cowboy was able to accomplish for Wills live on.
He is much more social, much more comfortable in his daily routine, because of those two plus years with Cowboy as constant companion. This is a tender love story—between mother and son, between boy and dog. It tugs at the heart in all the right ways and by all the right strings, with laughter and tears, surprise and delight, frustration and grief. Whatever the particulars of how any one family chooses to deal with their problems, one thing rings true. Everyone needs a safe place in life in order to thrive.
A place where we know ourselves loved for who we are, and are always encouraged to be more. View all 3 comments. Mar 18, Nancy Brady rated it really liked it. With compassion born of a mother's love for her son, this is a memoir of a remarkable little boy, Wills, and his puppy, Cowboy, who helped him through his struggles with his autism. Upon Wills's diagnosis, Monica's home became a menagerie.
Each pet helped, but it was when the family added Cowboy, a golden retriever puppy, to the family did Wills have some breakthroughs in his schooling. Because of this dog, Wills was able to overcome so much including developing friendships. Feb 02, Eileen Reeger rated it it was amazing Shelves: animals , medical-human , non-fiction , tear-jerker , children , new-perspective.
This was a book that I won't ever forget. I had a friend who always claimed her 3 yo son is autistic. She lied about so many things and stole from me and is a very troubled woman so I just assumed SHE was why he had pro This was a book that I won't ever forget. She lied about so many things and stole from me and is a very troubled woman so I just assumed SHE was why he had problems.
I'm very sorry I didn't take the time to learn more about autism when we were still friends. I found this author's style of writing to be honest, hilarious and gut-wrenching and very very unmistakably human. I understood perfectly her need to protect her child from the cruelties of life, while empathizing with being an imperfect woman with neurotic tendencies of her own.
I was comforted by the pain I saw her go thru when forcing herself to "do the right thing" for her boy while at the same timemaking the same mistakes many of us do in "relapsing" into being overprotective of our kids. And then there is the wonderful, brimming with love, Cowboy. What a blessing a dog can be, and only someone who knows how much love a dog can bestow upon us undeserving pitiful creatures can understand the depth of emotion they truly have.
You can start out with the idea that an animal is just something to own or to make you feel better or to serve a particular purpose in your life. Then one day you realize that that animal loves you so unconditionally and before you know it, your pet owns YOU and you can't explain that kind of love to someone who hasn't allowed it to happen. Anyone, esp.
Animals ARE emotional beings and teachers of the sort of lessons that cannot be emulated by a human being. Wills, an undeniably brave and sensitive child, had for his first confidante, and truly his first teacher in deep communication, a perfect companion and mentor in Cowboy.
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