Rescue Dogs

by Fred Zirm

Finalist in The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

Fred Zirm has known and adopted many Rescue Dogs throughout his life. These canine companions taught him both serious and humorous lessons about life, love, friendship, aging, death, and resilience. Between the laughter and the tears, these delightful and heartwarming poems featuring Carabelle, Dory, Larry, Woofer, Trey, and Snuffles, will have you ponder: Who rescued whom?

Enjoy a Video of Fred reading from the book:

Early Praise for Rescue Dogs:

I scratch her head and then
offer her the tethered freedom of the leash.
She is once again delighted
the world is just beyond our door—
and she can lead me through it.

And the world we enter with Fred Zirm’s dog is a lovely place indeed, full of beauty, wry humor, and unexpected discoveries, a place where dogs rescue humans, humans rescue dogs, and the reader goes away with a deeper appreciation of the ancient and mysterious bond between animal and man. This lovely book made me realize that I absolutely have to get a dog, because you can’t really take a walk without having a dog there to show you what you’re missing. As Zirm points out:

all dogs are guide dogs,
alerting us to what we
might miss, all the unseen
mysteries of place and time
in a twig or leaf or clump
of grass that tell us where
we are and who’s been here before.

Take a walk with Fred Zirm and his dogs. You’ll be reminded of why you came to poetry in the first place.

—George Bilgere, author of Cheap Motel Rooms of My Youth (Rattle Chapbook Prizewinner)

Hark (and bark) to the heroes that pounce and doze throughout Fred Zirm’s moving new collection, Rescue Dogs: here’s Dory the Deaf, Trey the Tri-pawed, Carabelle, Larry, Snuff, Woof, and the younger one. All dogs are guide dogs, Zirm writes, and these fetching meditations show the deep affection and abiding insights that come from living tenderly with animals as an animal. Wry and warm, Zirm’s poems remain eager to see what comes next while illuminating the hard lessons and gentle paradoxes of life among loss and time.

—Zach Savich, author of Daybed

In Rescue Dogs, Fred Zirm takes us on our mortal journey with dogs as both our guides and our companions. Observing the human world through their eyes—and their world through our own—his poems become the leash we follow to a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive. With its wit, intelligence, and profound emotion, Rescue Dogs deserves a place on every dog owner’s—and poetry lover’s—bedside table.

—Sue Ellen Thompson, author of Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems
and Winner of the Maryland Author Award

About the Author

After earning a B.A. and M.A. in English from Michigan State and an M.F.A. from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, Fred Zirm spent nearly 40 years teaching English and drama at an independent boys’ school in Maryland. Since his retirement, he has continued to direct plays at community theaters but has also focused on writing poetry and has become deeply involved with the Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institution. His work has been published in over a dozen small literary magazines and anthologies, including The Café Review, Still Crazy, cahoodadoodaling (Pushcart Prize nominee), Greek Fire, Poeming Pigeons, and Objects in the Rearview Mirror. His first poetry chapbook, Object Lessons (Main Street Rag), was published in January 2021.

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