Funny and heartbreaking | What the Dog Did: Tales from a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner

What the Dog Did, Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner | What the Dog Did: Tales from a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner | Emily Yoffe

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	• What the Dog Did: Tales from a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner Emily Yoffe Bloomsbury USA, 2006 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 57 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Yoffe's book

I LOVED the book and it was a quick, satisfying read. I've been reading Emily Yoffe's columns for some time now and when I read that she wrote a book about dogs, I was determined to get it. If you love dogs, you'll love this book. You may learn to love dogs even if you're not interested in them.

Funny and heartbreaking

Very enjoyable read! Some of it is falling-on-the-floor funny. Some of it is heartbreaking. The proud owner of a Beagle (called mixed because there are no papers for her) I can SO relate to the trials of attempting to train them - although, thank God, housebreaking was never an issue for my "nose with legs."

Ms. Yoffe provides lots of stories about other dogs too as, when she was writing articles for Slate. com, she was deluged with correspondence from other dog owners with similar stories.

The writing is excellent and the book well structured. My only small complaint is (and this is probably a complaint of Ms. Yoffe as well!) that she ended up getting Sasha due to the unrelenting pressure from her young daughter. That daughter never seems to have a role in Sasha's life once the dog moves into the house. I do think that "Husband", as Ms. Yoffe refers to her spouse, must be an absolute saint!

The heartbreaking part comes from some of the stories Ms. Yoffe shares from the experiences of others. Yes - the parts about the dogs can be just awful but what bothered me most was the kind of lack of outrage that Ms. Yoffe expressed in these stories. She continued to make very funny remarks about these. Well done but I couldn't get past my own urge to want to track down some of the malefactors and treat them the way they'd treated these dogs.

I do share one of the traits Ms. Yoffe has discovered in herself - if a dog is mentioned in any conversation including me, I find myself totally incapable of every leaving that subject! I, too, tend to remember people by the dogs they own rather than the names of the people.

Really good read.

DL

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What the Dog Did, Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner

I was only a few pages into reading this book, when I began to laugh and say aloud, "Oh, No !! He ate WHAT ?!" I loved how the author kept clippings of such stories from newspapers. Now I go around my house making sure everything is off the floor and not near reach of my new pet basset hound, Buddy. We adopted him from a basset hound rescue group. They have a website to apply to adopt one or just foster them til they find a suitable home. Everyone needs a basset hound. They are characters and have emotions just as humans..jealousy, pouting, sad-eyed pleading. They want and need love and a companion.
Back to the book: If you are a dog owner or thinking of being one, you need this book for sure.
Thanks Emily Yoffe for sharing these with us through your wonderful book. Hope you will keep writing more in the future.

Pat Haarhaus.... Conroe, Tx

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Come to the dog side!

Like Emily Yoffe, I'm a longtime cat person who finally went over to the dog side. I read "What the Dog Did" when we were first thinking seriously about getting a dog and found it funny, touching, and informative. It did, however, convince me not to get a beagle. I don't want to offend any beagle lovers, but some of Sasha's beagle behaviors sounded like things I just couldn't live with.

Still, now that I'm a dog owner myself (we wound up with a sweet, elderly golden retriever who gets along beautifully with our cats) I totally get Ms. Yoffe's newfound dog love. This is a fun book both for dog lovers and people teetering on the dog/cat fence.

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Full of laugh-out-loud dog tales

Yoffe's hilarious depiction of her conversion from a cat lover to the reluctant owner of a rescue beagle is full of laugh-out-loud dog tales. The author also provides interesting tidbits about dog breeds, rescue shelters, and the unique bond dogs share with their owners.

A playful look at all things dog.

Emily Yoffe never thought she'd find herself extracting her bra strap from a dog's rear end; in fact, she never thought she'd have a dog at all. This cat devotee was in for some unexpected surprises when she took in a neurotic rescued beagle named Sasha to satisfy her daughter's desire for a dog.

What the Dog Did chronicles Yoffe's journey from cat person to dog lover. The transformation begins with consternation and culminates with real affection: she becomes a foster mother to a series of homeless beagles; she studies (without success) to be a pet psychic; she visits the Department of Homeland Security to watch sausage- and incendiary device-sniffing canines in action. Everyone who has ever owned a dog, has a story to tell and Emily unwittingly becomes the repository for modern-day dog lore. Filled with adventures of heroic dogs, lovable and lazy dogs, malodorous dogs, phlegmatic and incontinent dogs, What the Dog Did delivers some of the most outlandish and certainly the funniest dog stories on record. But at its heart, What the Dog Did tells the story of how Yoffe's family turned Sasha, the skittish stray, into a wonderful pet-and how Sasha transformed Yoffe into a dog-lover for life. Winner of the 2005 General Interest Dog Book of the Year from the Dog Writers' Association of America

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