Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 12 · column 1 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
By George Rowano
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Can an animal change a person’s life? Businessman Bill Pursche of Orlean thinks so, and he’s written a book about what he learned about life when he got a dog.
Called “Lessons lb Live By: The Canine Commandments,” the book carries a sweetener for those who love animals: One hundred percent of the proceeds from its sales will be given to humane organizations to care for dogs and other animals.
So busy
Pursche said he had always been a person who had done well in business.
“I have a business gene,” he stated. “And I ended up with a career that I didn’t know existed.”
Pursche had been working in the world of international high finance, putting in 80- to 100-hour weeks, doing mergers and acquisitions, or advising companies on what they needed to do to stay in business.
“T had been working in D.C. for a number of years, and I was working very long hours,” Pursche said. “I was always traveling, always on a plane, going somewhere.”
One Sunday, when he had a couple of hours before catching another flight, he decided to attend a border collie dog trial.
“I saw this older woman handling this dog, and I complimented her, and she said, in sort of a crotchety way, ‘Do you have a dog?’ I didn’t. “You should really have a dog.’
“And it hit me. I had worked veiy hard to get where I was, and I didn’t have time to have a dog.”
That thought played on Pursche, especially when he saw two other dogs at a border collie trial.
“I met these really cool dogs,” he explained. “They were like Labradors in a border collie
93.8%