Harry Truman famously said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." Even though Truman was making a point about that city, as any dog owner will tell you, he was also making a point, perhaps the essential point, about dogs.
That's most of what you need to know about a beautiful memoir called Dog Years that will be in stores on March 13. It's written by poet Mark Doty, who decided to adopt a second dog into his family, a golden retriever named Beau, to be a companion for his terminally-ill partner.
There's no shortage on store shelves of good-dog books, bad-dog books, and everything in-between. But rarely has the man-dog relationship been as carefully, lovingly rendered, without even a hint of the cutes, by a man who knows his way around dogs, and his way around words.
written on Monday Mar 5, 2007
man,
dog,
book.
