“The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person,
only shorter and more compressed,” writes Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen about her beloved black
Labrador retriever, Beau. With her trademark wisdom and
humor, Quindlen reflects on how her life has unfolded in
tandem with Beau’s, and on the lessons she’s learned by
watching him: to roll with the punches, to take things as
they come, to measure herself not in terms of the past or
the future but of the present, to raise her nose in the air
from time to time and, at least metaphorically, holler, “I
smell bacon!”
Of the dog that once possessed a
catcher’s mitt of a mouth, Quindlen reminisces, “there came
a time when a scrap thrown in his direction usually bounced
unseen off his head. Yet put a pork roast in the oven, and
the guy still breathed as audibly as an obscene caller. The
eyes and ears may have gone, but the nose was eternal. And
the tail. The tail still wagged, albeit at half-staff. When
it stops, I thought more than once, then we’ll
know.”
Heartening and bittersweet, Good Dog.
Stay. honors the life of a cherished and loyal friend
and offers us a valuable lesson on our four-legged family
members: Sometimes an old dog can teach us new tricks.
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