Book Review: “What the Dog Did”

A few weeks ago, I awoke at around 1:00 a.m. to the odd sensation of the bed shaking, and the equally odd sound of ineffectively-stifled chortling emanating from the general direction of where MLB normally reclines. In my dazed state, I thought she was perhaps experiencing convulsions, and, in a sense, she was…convulsions of laughter, brought on by an inability to put down Emily Yoffe‘s book entitled What the Dog Did: Tales from a formerly reluctant dog owner.

As annoyed as I was at losing sleep over such a frivolous cause (really, the least she could have done is have a mild convulsion to make it all worthwhile), I was also intrigued by the prospect of a book that could evoke that reaction.

Well, as they say, turn about is fair play. So while MLB was studying for an exam last weekend, I was reading the book and interrupting her studies with my own laughter.

This book is for dog lovers, or people who think they might want to be dog lovers. For the latter, reading it will convince you…one way or the other. For the former, you’ll want to finish it quickly so you can find another dog lover to whom to pass it along.

Yoffe, who is a journalist and regular contributor to Slate and NPR’s Day to Day, has a writing style that mixes Anne Lamott with Dave Barry, and she chronicles in hysterically funny fashion her pilgrimage from cat owner to hopeless dog lover. How hopeless? She takes in foster dogs, most of whom are beagles! (If you’re a dog lover yourself, you’ve just learned much about the depth of the madness into which Ms. Yoffe has descended.)

Did I mention she’s very funny? Here’s the conclusion she draws after a discussion about the developing use of the exquisitely tuned canine sense of smell to detect cancerous tumors in humans: “We probably aren’t far from the day when medically trained dogs form a group practice, then refuse to accept their owners’ insurance.”

If you have a dog with behavioral problems, this book will encourage you…not by giving you any hope that things will improve (they won’t) but by assuring you that, indeed, you are not alone. Not by a long shot. (Beagle owners know this already.) If, on the other hand, you are in that so-ridiculously-small-as-to-suggest-you’re-lying minority with well-behaved, well-adjusted, Lassie-good-dog dogs, you’ll come away with an even more annoying sense of superiority having read about the myriad basket cases…and the dogs they own.

After reading this book, MLB and I have decided that we fall into that latter category; Abbye is heart-achingly perfect, compared to the dogs in Ms. Yoffe’s life. But, she still manages to make every last one of them appear to be exactly what we’ve always known them to be: man’s best friend.

Seriously, if you like dogs, read this book. Just try to do it in another room if your spouse is sleeping.