Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me From Myself

At twenty-two, Julie Barton collapsed on her kitchen floor in Manhattan. She was one year out of college and severely depressed. Summoned by Julie's incoherent phone call, her mother raced from Ohio to New York and took her home.

Haunted by troubling childhood memories, Julie continued to sink into suicidal depression. Psychiatrists, therapists, and family tried to intervene, but nothing reached her until the day she decided to do one hopeful thing: adopt a Golden Retriever puppy she named Bunker. Dog Medicine captures the anguish of depression, the slow path to recovery, the beauty of forgiveness, and the astonishing ways animals can help heal even the most broken hearts and minds.

Julie Barton is a Pushcart Prize nominated writer who has been published in Brain Child Magazine, The South Carolina Review, Louisiana Literature, Two Hawks Quarterly, Westview, The Huffington Post, and more. Her memoir, Dog Medicine, How My Dog Saved Me From Myself was initially published by Think Piece Publishing (Nov 2105), then published by Penguin Books, released July 19, 2016.
Julie has a B.A. in English Literature from Kenyon College, an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a M.A. in Women's Studies from Southern Connecticut State University.
She lives in Northern California with her husband, two children, and small menagerie of pets. Mostly she just tries to be kind to people and animals, avoid judgement, appreciate nature, and write every chance she gets.