"So, you want to share your home with a companion animal? Millions of people make pets out of a wide variety of animals, from dogs and cats to hamsters, gerbils, rats, mice, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates, and this decision is one that demands careful attention, for we truly are the individuals' oxygen. Unfortunately, the lives of innumerable pets are intentionally and unintentionally highly compromised--indeed many are simply horrific--because people haven't done their homework about what it means to live with another being or because they are ignorant of just whom the animal is. There are many ethical questions that need careful attention and these quandaries, some obvious and others less so, don't fit into a nice and clean 'right' and 'wrong' mold. Run, Spot, Run will force potential and experienced pet-keepers to think about what they're getting into, and likely mean that many readers will be moved out of their comfort zone. For equitable human-pet relationships to occur, and for animals to be able to express their full behavior repertoire, things are going to have to change. Jessica Pierce confronts many difficult and challenging issues head-on, and I hope her latest book becomes essential reading for those people who make the choice to bring a nonhuman into their lives. Currently, it's all too easy to become a pet-keeper, and this results in many unhappy humans and nonhumans."