Off the Leash; Dog Medicine

By chance I picked up two different dog memoirs this month - it's rather fun, how different they are.

Off the Leash: A year at the dog park.

Matthew Gilbert (2014, Thomas Dunne Books)

Dog Medicine: How my dog saved me from myself. A memoir.

Julie Barton (2015, Penguin)

    Matthew Gilbert's Off the Leash is an anthropology of his local dog park, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Amory Park is an idyllic place, where dogs can roam and romp off-leash till one p.m. every day. Of course, there are a few mosquitoes in paradise, like the dog owners who won't clean up after their dogs, or acknowledge that they have an unusually aggressive one. If either of those characters sticks around for any length of time, the human pack will exert pressure till they either shape up or move on. 

    Gilbert was not used to being a pack animal. He's the tv critic for the Boston Globe, i.e. a professional couch potato; before he got married, he had not been a dog person at all. Partly under the influence of his dog park friends, he picks up the baby-talk ventriloquism that he had formerly scorned. 

    "It was crazy, of course, and shameless. The tangle of self and dog was intimate, psychodynamic, and pleasingly neurotic. Some people developed actual voices for their dogs, just as they'd translate their dogs' actions and facial movements into human traits." Oblique, side-by-side conversations make strangers friends.

    Gilbert tunes into his Labrador's friendliness and endless appetite for play, and it does him good. "Toby had made me a more contented, freer person, someone who lives and loves despite the outcome, someone who risks play and who no longer needs to forge excuses." Gilbert knows he is likely to outlive Toby, but the joy and love make it all worthwhile.

     Julie Barton was younger, and in far worse straits, when she acquired her Golden Retriever, Bunker. She'd moved to New York after college, following a boyfriend, and it was proving to have been a bad idea. Suffering a full-on nervous breakdown, she called her mother, who drove straight from Ohio to take her home. 

    A couple of therapists and some Prozac later, she became determined to get a puppy. A good idea, and the first productive idea she'd had in months, but it came with a wave of doubt and anxiety. How to choose? "He walked over toward me, then paused, still watching me, before coming closer and sitting down at my feet. He looked up into my eyes, his own mud-brown eyes nestled under expressive little eyebrow nubs, his tiny chin hairs glowing in the light, his orange-red paws caked with mud. In that moment, of course, I knew."

    Having a fellow-creature who needs her and cheerfully loves Barton opens up possibilities. Bunker goes with her when she starts a new life in Seattle. I don't want to say as much as I usually do about what happens from there on; Barton is a gifted story-teller, and it's her story to tell. Bunker remains a real sweetheart, and their mutual devotion remains Barton's lifeline to trust, health, and joy.

Barton's Dog Medicine is the deeper, better book, but if you're not in the mood for an emotionally intense experience, pick up Off the Leash instead.

Any Good Books

September 2016 email edition