Madeleine’s Reviews > The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love > Status Update

Someday I will likely have another dog, but it will not be Shelby. In reading these essays I realize they are all about loyalty and love. How lucky we are to have a dog in our lives. How treasured our time with them is. I have come to realize there is not necessarily one best dog in the world, but, if we're fortunate, many best dogs, who each enrich our lives in different ways.

I grow to want to be near his smell. His fur. To want
to feel his tooth or nail on me.
I grow to be proud of those scars on my arms.
I grow to need him beside me on the couch as I write my books. That it's because of him, as he literally lies on my lap, a few levels down from my gaze, that I learn to think about how to present things in my stories from different angles.

Who would provide him with the joy of finding all the things I lose, had we not found him? Who else would let him spend hours gazing into her jaded eyes, forcing her to engage, to put the computer away, to dance and spin away from the brink of another dark place and back out into the sun again?

There are many things I wish Id done differently in this life, and a few things I deeply regret, but when I dip my cup into the darkest dregs of my soul's deep well of remorse, I come up with Eddie.

‘Other dogs have come into my life, but she is still my best friend. she will always be.’

‘dogs might be difficult or demanding or infuriating or exasperating, but that doesn’t mean they’re not cherished. when they leave us, the antics that used to make us tear our hair out are the same ones we miss the most.’

‘as alvin’s eyes closed, he burrowed tight against me in utter trust. he was more affectionate in the last moments of his life than he’d been in tbe previous twelve years of it. and somehow, that was enough.’

‘a dog person’s someone who first and always loves dogs. a dog person treasures connection and brings humans together. a dog person is open to the possibilities that come from loving an animal that needs you and loves you back. and now, after a lifetime of not being one, i was a dog person. it looked like the dog in the red shoes would make our lives better.’

‘He states at me with such adoration that sometimes i look away, because the love he has for me is so palpably genuine and unwavering. he trusts me unconditionally. … he zooms past her and jumps into my arms, licking me enthusiastically. each time it happens, which is every single time i come home, i think, “maybe i am not a dog person, but i am this dog’s person.”

‘I hadn’t realized how fully you could know a particular dog - how i would be able to decode the rise of his ears, the tilt of his head, the tone of a bark. i hadn’t know how wholeheartedly you could love a dog - or that watching my husband love the dog in this same all-consuming way could expand my love for both of them.’