BOOKS: Good Dog. Stay.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:

Good Dog. Stay.
by Anna Quindlen
Random House (1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019), 2007. 82
pages, hardcover, illustrated. $14.85.

Probably every reader who has ever had and lost a beloved dog
will love Good Dog. Stay. The book is an expansion of one of Anna
Quindlen’s most popular Newsweek columns, memorializing her Labrador
retriever Beau, who grew up with her children and lived to the age
of 15.
Most readers will be people who have loved dogs, and by way
of intensifying reader identification with Quindlen’s thoughts, the
book designers have extensively illustrated the book with photographs
of dogs of many different breeds. Whatever kind of dog a reader has
had is likely to be represented.

Hardly anyone will learn anything new about dogs from Good
Dog. Stay. The closest Quindlen comes to making an original
observation is half a page about how dogs clean up at least as many
messes as they make. No other animal or appliance as efficiently
clears a floor of anything edible, or defines “edible” as broadly.
But Quindlen does not pursue this thought. This is a warm,
fuzzy book, not a treatise on household ecology and waste
management.