‘Rescue Ink’ focuses on abused animals

“Rescue Ink” by Rescue Ink with Denise Flaim, 2009, Viking, $25.95/$32.50 Canada, 244 pages: Remember the day you found your best friend?
Or was it the other way around? Did she find you?
Maybe she was a “Pet of the Week” picture staring at you from a newspaper or TV screen. Perhaps you spied him in a shelter kennel and he threw himself at the gate to reach you. Or maybe someone handed you a furry bundle and that was it: you weren’t looking for a pet, but you weren’t looking to go head-over-heels, either.
Loving your best friend as you do, you wonder how anyone can hurt a trusting animal. Ten New York tough-guys (and their “den mother”) wonder the same thing. In the new book “Rescue Ink” by Rescue Ink with Denise Flaim, you’ll read about them and their dogged work saving abused animals.
When confronted by a 6-foot-2 tattooed biker-type guy with a gruff voice and biceps the size of a small child, you almost expect to get mashed. At the very least, you hope for a chance to skitter away with your life intact.
But if you’re an abused animal and the big guy is from Rescue Ink, you have nothing to fear.
If a dog, cat, rabbit or horse is in trouble, it doesn’t matter if the animal is in a suburb near Manhattan, a small apartment in Queens or a brownstone in Brooklyn, the guys from Rescue Ink don’t back down from anything.
Rescue Ink prides itself on an “in your face” way of saving animals: confronting uncaring owners is commonplace, and cross-armed stare-downs work wonders.
If the situation is more delicate, members are pros at negotiation and can be extremely generous with supplies and information.
Although Rottweilers and pit bulls are favorites with these burly guys, there are cat “experts” on the team, as well as a member who lives with a big pack of tiny dogs.
There are stories with happy endings in “Rescue Ink,” including that of Rebel, originally called Ribbon because his ears had been torn as such.
Spike, once all snarly teeth, is on his way to becoming a trustworthy pet.
One “nervous-looking lab” was relinquished after an anti-puppy-mill rally.
Formerly abused pets found new leashes on life because of Rescue Ink.
If you’re a pet lover (and really – would you be reading this review if you weren’t?), when you’re done reading this book, you’ll thank god there are people like the guys in “Rescue Ink.”
Although most of the stories here are cringe-worthy (but with happy endings), I really liked the messages that the rescuers and co-author Flaim offered: take responsibility for your animals; give them training, proper care and protection; love them like they deserve to be loved; and spay and neuter.
Readers wanting more information will find tips at the end of this book and hints of a Web site that, while not included, is easy to find.
Dog and cat lovers in particular will eat this book up, but any fan of the four-legged will want it, too. “Rescue Ink” is a book to fetch.

‘GRAVE’ REVIEW
“Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius” by Colin Dickey, 2009, Unbridled Books, $25.95/$30.95 Canada, 272 pages: What, exactly, were you thinking?
Obviously, not the right thing, that’s for sure. And now it’s time to face the music, time to eyeball the problem and go cheek-by-jowl with everybody to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You’re bone-tired at this point, but your chin is up. By the sweat of your brow and without too much lip, you’ll sink your teeth into a solution and make things better.
You just weren’t using your head, that’s all.
So why not let somebody else use it? Pick up “Cranioklepty” by Colin Dickey and read ahead.
While people throughout the centuries have collected some odd things, a fad that started in the late 1700s made some Europeans lose their heads – literally. Phrenology, or the study of intelligence through the terrainium of the cranium, was considered a “science,” and phrenologists were generally quite eager to get their hands on the heads of brilliant men of the time.
Never mind that these (mostly) guys – Haydn, Mozart, Goya and Beethoven, to name a few – were dead. Desperate phrenologists were only happy to pay through the nose for the noses (and then some) of the famous, and gravediggers were happy to take the cash and steal the noggins right from the crypt.
Grave robbing, of course, was nothing new. Wanting someone’s body in a “scientific” way had been going on for ages. But this skull-stealing was head and shoulders worse, mostly because the grinning skulls, once collected, were oftentimes displayed in beautiful glass cases for all to see.
Although phrenology eventually did become somewhat of a real science when brain studying got involved, and although some still saw phrenology for what it was (a scam), many prominent people went head-over-heels for personal “skull readings.” Author Walt Whitman was said to have carried his reading with him for years. George Eliot, the Bronte sisters and Charles Dickens added phrenology to their stories. Even Mark Twain was said to have dabbled but was skeptical.
After awhile, though, when multiple skulls were claimed to belong to singular bodies and collectors were going head-to-head over authenticity, it was obvious that the whole thing had come to a head. Eventually, the craze flattened, cooler heads prevailed and the skullduggery faded away.
Although there are way too many names to keep track of (which can make it hard to follow), “Cranioklepty” is, overall, a deliciously gruesome, quirkily odd look at history and science from – thankfully – time past.
Colin Dickey does a great job setting the stage with a sense of time and the social mores that would allow someone to justify removing the head from a days-old corpse for the sake of owning a piece of the person it once belonged to. Dickey’s writing gives this book a Jack-the-Ripper feel and lends just a touch of the macabre. 
If you’re looking for something Victorian-dark and gently shivery, don’t beat your head against the wall. Look for “Cranioklepty” instead.
For fans of the odd and strange, or for little-known history lovers, this is a book to head for.

TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book.