“I met a dog I could trust with my life,” author Deni Elliott says about her motivation to write Catching Sight: How a Guide Dog Helped Me See Myself. “Once I got past how amazing that was, I wanted to know how a dog gets to be that way.”

Catching Sight presents a three-pronged narrative that describes the extraordinary training and inter-species communication that goes into transforming a puppy into a competent, confident guide dog.

While researching Guiding Eyes Alberta’s early-puppyhood experience—and indeed, the pre-puppy experience at Guiding Eyes, which conducts deep research into genetics and past results—Deni explored every aspect of what makes it possible for a human with a disability to have a collaborative relationship with a dog who helps to mitigate that disability.

Anyone who wonders how guide dogs work, how they know what to do, and what makes them extraordinary will get answers in Catching Sight. They’ll also learn about how and why a person might hide their disability and Deni’s struggle come to terms with being publicly, obviously identifiable as a blind person.

But Catching Sight is about more than the guide dog-human partnership. It is relevant to anyone who wants to raise their puppy to become what Deni describes as “a true collaborative companion.”

Combining serious, fascinating information about Guiding Eyes Alberta’s education with humorous stories, it’s also a great read. I should know; I have read it at least a dozen times in various drafts over the past couple of years—and I will happily read it again, once I have the ‘real’ book in my hands.

Pre-order your copy at Bookshop.org, where you can support your local independent bookstore from the comfort of your living room—and get the book delivered still hot off the digital press. It will be in bookstores on June 16.