Loves of My Life: A Guest Post by Alice Hoffman

This collection of essays from dog-loving writers is an ode to the loyal and lovable canine companions who guide us through life’s ups and downs. Read on for an exclusive essay from Alice Hoffman on The Best Dog in the World.

When my editors asked if I might be interested in creating a book of personal essays about dogs, I said yes immediately. The major loves of my life have all been dogs: Houdini, the German Shepherd from a police training kennel in California, Cody, a joyful Labrador Retriever, and my Polish sheepdogs, Angel, Skylar, and Shelby.

I instantly went to friends whose writing I admired and who I knew loved dogs: Jodi Picoult, always surrounded in her home by the dogs she adored. Ann Leary, knowledgeable enough to be a dog trainer herself.  Laura Zigman, whose wonderful Sheltie, Lady, was slowing down at the age of sixteen. Amy Tan, whose dogs I had gone out to lunch with in San Francisco. Isabel Allende, whom I had visited at her house in Northern California. Tova Mirvis, who called me for advice about her first puppy. Chris Bohjalian, whose dog’s hiking excursions I follow online. Adrianna Trigiani, whose guidance I always value. Elizabeth Strout, whose characters teach us to be human and show us that dogs can make us feel like living in our darkest hours. Nick Trout, an esteemed veterinarian who has spent a lifetime caring for dogs. And Emily Henry, who knows more about love stories than most people ever will. We were lucky enough to be joined by several writers I had always admired but didn’t know personally: Roxanne Gay, Bonnie Garmus, and Paul Yoon, all of whom wrote essays that brought me to tears and filled me with hope.

When I started working on this book, my sheepdog Shelby and I lived in a two-room cottage. We slept together every night and spent every day together, tied to one another even more than usual, for in that year she began to limp, then had surgery for a torn ACL with months of recovery. My tolerant neighbors told me that whenever I went out she howled like a baby, and that made sense. She was my baby, and she was beside me while I wrote the introduction to this book and read these wonderful essays. Some of them made me cry, others cheered me up enormously, but all of them allowed me insight not only into the dogs we meet in these pages, but into the lives of the wonderful writers who said yes right away, as I did, happy to write about their love for their dogs.

By the time the book was complete, I had lost my Shelby to kidney disease. The essays in this book saw me through that time of heartache and helped me remember the joy of spending years with the dogs we will never forget. Dogs are there for us when we’re alone, they don’t judge us or lie to us or betray us. They make us human, and they remind us that love and loss are always tied together, and that love is always worth it, especially when the one you love is waiting to greet you at the door.