Dogs know trick to life in "Good Dog. Stay"


Canines live in the present; it doesn't take much to make their days.
JERI KRENTZ - Reading Life Editor

GOOD DOG. STAY.

By Anna Quindlen. Random House. 96 pages. $14.95.

Of all the dogs that have lived with my family, our latest is the smartest. He has an extensive vocabulary: Say the word "squirrel," and he'll dash to the back door. He can also read cursive: If I write "wag" on a piece of paper and hold it in front of him, he thumps his fluffy tail.

A mix of golden retriever and some other large furry breed, he spent much of his puppyhood as a stray until a passer-by found him, nursed him to health and offered him for adoption. We met him at a pet store in Rock Hill. My sons named him Barça, after the Barcelona men's soccer team.

I say all this as a disclaimer. I think most dogs are great -- and as a reader, I'm a sucker for books about animals. I lapped up "Marley and Me," John Grogan's 2005 memoir about his 97-pound Labrador retriever who had so much personality, he was expelled from obedience school. I cried at the end of Sy Montgomery's "The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood," a sweet and funny story about a gifted pig. "Charlotte's Web" has never left my list of favorite novels.

Thanks to "Marley and Me" -- in its first year, the book spent 52 straight weeks on the New York Times best-seller list -- pet nonfiction seems to be hot. As Janet Maslin said in a New York Times review: "It boils down to this: Hey, you love your dog, why not write a book about it?"

So when I heard that Anna Quindlen was joining the pack with stories about her black Labrador, Beau, I looked forward to my copy of "Good Dog. Stay." A slim book with lots of black and white photographs of dogs, it has already hit best-seller lists.

You'll find humor inside, but there are only a few of those requisite stories about shedding, chewing and bodily functions. We hear that Beau was skunked, that he once rolled on a dead porcupine, that he often escaped from home. Mostly, though, this is an ode to the relationship between eager humans and their doting pets and the good life they can help each other find.

"Starting out, I thought that life was terribly complex, and in some ways it is," Quindlen writes. "But contentment can be pretty simple. And that's what I learned from watching Beau over his lifetime: to roll with the punches (if not in carrion), to take things as they come, to measure myself not in terms of the past or the future but of the present, to raise my nose in the air from time to time and, at least metaphorically, holler, `I smell bacon!' "

One recent review trashed "Good Dog. Stay," labeling it a "hastily dashed-off, downright craven attempt to cash in on her beloved black Lab." I saw it as a grateful love story -- a fine lesson about loyalty and friendship, bonding and separation, growing up and growing old.

Anyone who has glanced into a pet's "liquid eyes" will be satisfied.

- Earthanimal.com

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