Dog Lovers Guru

Laurie

I love dogs! I also love horses! If I had a lizard or a bird, I would love them too! I fell in love with animals at seven years old when I brought home a puppy from the house next door and begged my parents to let me keep her. “Bandit” joined “Purina,” my horse, and some other horses that my family raised in Port Arthur, TX, where I grew up.

I always knew in my heart that animals could communicate. After all, the first book that I fell in love with was Charlotte’s Web. The fact that animals didn’t “talk” back didn’t keep me from talking to them. I talked to Bandit all the time. At 12 years old, I sat in a stall and fed Purina ice cream on the night before horse shows, talked to her about my day, and where we were going the next day and what we were going to do. I don’t know if I heard them talk back, but I felt their love. I understood their personalities. And it never occurred to me that they didn’t understand what I was saying – because they did.

As I got older, I was busy with school and starting a career and I didn’t think so much about talking to animals. I went to law school and practiced law internationally for almost twenty years. Nothing in my education or work experience suggested that animals had a higher consciousness or could talk. I just didn’t think about it one way or the other for about two decades. Until I met Gunny, a beautiful, smart, sassy chocolate Labrador retriever. Nothing in my life was ever the same again.

In 2008, at Gunny’s encouragement, I decided to follow my heart and leave the practice of law to take care of Gunny (who was ailing) and pursue a new passion: water therapy for dogs. I built Gunny’s Rainbow, LLC, which was a healing center and warm water therapy pool for dogs located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. For a decade, at Gunny’s Rainbow, I helped hundreds of elderly and handicapped dogs rediscover their joy, and I supported their human companions who worked so hard to improve their dogs’ quality of life.

I also wrote a book with Gunny, The Endless Path, to tell the story of our incredible journey together, and how he awakened my true passion – to give animals a voice. Once you understand their extraordinary intelligence and wisdom, you are forever changed. As Gunny says, “we are all connected to the same energy. Life is life. Souls are souls.”

Now, 25 years after meeting Gunny and rehabbing hundreds of dogs, I’ve started a new venture called Dog Lovers Guru. This site aspires to be a place for dog lovers to find high-quality, helpful, and compassionate information about navigating life with their dogs – from puppyhood thru the geriatric years, and all that happens in-between. It is Gunny’s and my goal to fill the gap that exists between vets and experts telling us what they think we should do, and what goes on in the hearts and minds of people and their dogs when we try to implement it. There is no one solution that works for every dog and every person. We want to help you figure out what is best for your dog, based on what he or she is telling you.

I am working on my next book. It’s all about dogs, of course!

Ganimedes

Ganimedes “Gunny” Duperier was born on July 5, 1997 in Maryland. He was confident, handsome, and had a great sense of humor. He expressed pure joy by dancing around the room with a shoe in his mouth, and excelled at softly howling to Flamenco music (in the right key). He loved rolling in grass, staring at the stars at night, and feeling the sea spray on his face at the beach. And he really really really loved bread.

He lived and traveled all over the world with Laurie, from Hong Kong to Switzerland to Spain to the United States. He shared his incredible spirit with hundreds of people and made his mark on their heart. He was the overseer of Gunny’s Rainbow, their water therapy pool, and coached Laurie on how to listen to what each dog needed.

As he grew older, his consciousness evolved such that he began to really think about his life, his purpose in this world, and how to share his dog perspective with others. Gunny jumped at the chance to co-author The Endless Path with Laurie, and spent over a hundred hours dictating his thoughts and feelings to Alexandra, his animal communicator, in response to questions that Laurie posed to him. The writing process allowed him to explore his own consciousness and purpose, and profoundly changed him. He went far beyond the simple questions that were posed to him, and made the decision to bare his soul in hopes that it would benefit people and animals alike.

In time, and as he grew more frail, he and Laurie came to inhabit their own private world. They had the privilege of loving each other completely and unconditionally every day for almost 15 years.

He died on April 9, 2012, but sends messages to Laurie from his new home, and still looks after her from afar. He also reminds her of the dog’s perspective in so many situations, and guides her with the dogs she has adopted and helped.

His fondest hope is that you read The Endless Path and look at the non-human animal world through new eyes. He also hopes that you will talk to you dog, constantly, and learn to interpret and hear what they are telling you.

Gunny and Laurie agree that the unconditional love shared between dogs and people is one of the greatest gifts in life, and makes us better people and dogs.