Good Dog Stay Book Review

GOOD DOG STAY BOOK SYNOPSIS

Good Dog Stay reads as a valuable lesson that an old dog can teach people new tricks! The Pulitzer Prize winning author Anna Quindlen writes with wit and genuine love about her dog and his life.

QUEENIE B SAYS

This is a short, sweet, intuitive story about the life of Quindlen's beloved Labrador Retriever, Beau. She reflects on what a dog can teach a person about our own lives. It's a positive and realistic take on how short life is for our pets, yet how they bring such richness and understanding to our most inner selves.

Quindlen writes that there is not much mystery in the life of a dog, "...His pleasures are predictable, a pond, a squirrel, a bone, a nap in the sun. Sounds so boring and yet it is one of the things that makes dogs so important to people. In a world that seem so uncertain, in lives that seem sometimes to ricochet from challenge to upheavals and back again, a dog can be counted on in a way that’s true of little else" (66).

This is truly a short story, a quick read, great for an in-between book of heavier subject matter. I believe as a book club pick it would promote discussion of our own experiences with our own animals, which isn't a bad idea totally. We need those simple things in life!

GOOD DOG DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How do dogs affect our lives positively?
2. Should we, as humans, take the simplicity of a dog’s desires and adapt that outlook more to our own lives?
3. Share a thought about your own experience with a dog.