Working Dog Heroes

A great Aussie yarn packed with inspiring stories of shelter dogs that have been given new life and purpose – and turned around the lives of others. Steve Austin isn’t your average dog trainer. In this feelgood, yarn-laden memoir he shares amazing stories from a career of rescuing and training shelter dogs to become a crack force of K9s, culminating in his work for the ‘Young Diggers’ program, which pairs specially trained dogs with returned Diggers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and more, with astonishing results. A down-to-earth Aussie larrikin of a bloke with a gift for telling a great yarn, Steve Austin trains extraordinary, elite dogs for vital missions internationally in the fields of drug enforcement, environmental protection and much much more. From drug detection to penguins, cane toads and even truffles, and from the icy conditions of Macquarie Island to the LAPD, if you need something detected, Steve’s got a dog for that. And a yarn to tell!

Author Biography

When Steve Austin was just 13 he trained his dog Sooty to entertain crowds outside the pub. That’s when he first realised he had an affinity with dogs – and a unique talent for training them. Today his elite dogs work for Australian environmental and defence forces, the Young Diggers, the World Wildlife Fund and the Cheetah Conservation Fund, the LAPD and many more. He lives in north-west Sydney – when he isn’t travelling the world training dogs.