Notes from a Dog Rescue in Progress

A panicked puppy in a Los Angeles shelter is deemed too terrified for adoption and scheduled to be killed. When a rescue volunteer frees her at the last minute, the little girl is 15 pounds underweight and covered with open sores, swollen ticks and thousands of fleas. Her ears are stuffed with blood and wax, her paws filled with concrete. The victim of severe neglect and confinement, her muscles are atrophied - even her tongue lolls in her mouth. It hurts her to walk more than a few feet, and she limps. She has chewed and licked through the skin on her limbs. Physical ailments can heal, but the greatest challenge will be to overcome what life has taught her about humans: that they are to be feared. Named Roo, the puppy is randomly assigned to a volunteer foster parent with neither special skills nor experience with fearful dogs who writes that he is, “just as scared as she is.” Notes from a Dog Rescue in Progress is the emotional and inspiring true story of Roo’s journey and the powerful bond formed as she and her foster parent develop the trust and understanding to address her fears and problems one at a time in an attempt to redeem an unredeemable dog.

Brian Beker wrote and directed Lines of Fire, the award-winning behind-the-lines documentary about revolution and heroin trafficking in Burma. It is in the permanent film collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Brian has published in The New York Times and elsewhere, conducted clandestine war zone investigation for Greenpeace, and recently directed the aviation documentary AERO. He owned and operated an open-cockpit biplane ride company based at Santa Monica Airport that made a lot of people happy. These days he is focused on making Roo happy while working on The Dog in the Clouds, a memoir about his white Labrador Orville, who appeared in the midnight storm clouds over Kathmandu two years before he was born on the Colorado prairie.