BTT (#7) ~ dog days

"Since my dog is turning 10 today ... what animal-related books have you read?  Which do you love?  Do you have a favorite literary dog?  (Snoopy, anyone?)"

First, my favorite litarary dog.  Yes, of course, it's Snoopy.  How did you guess?

You've gotta love a wordsmith who can write in difficult places, like while balancing a typewriter on top of his doghouse. Ah, yes, Snoopy's my hero. And such imagination!






He's a World War I flying ace.




He's Joe Cool, a musician.









And he dances joyfully!

He's a scoutmaster

... and a reader.








Schulz summed up Snoopy's character in a 1997 interview: "He has to retreat into his fanciful world in order to survive. Otherwise, he leads kind of a dull, miserable life. I don't envy dogs the lives they have to live."

Snoopy understands what it's like to be a freelance writer. If you want to read the full text of his novel, click here.  To read more of his exploits, click here.

Now back to the first question.  I once participated in a reading challenge (the Four-Legged Friends challenge) that required us to " Read books that have an animal as the main character or an animal who plays an important enough role that you remember it afterwards."  We were also to write about our pets in our introductory post.  I, being an over-achiever, wrote about one pet in each of my five posts:

1. Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog ~ by Ted Kerasote ~ dedicated the memory of Pippa
2. The Fur Person ~ by May Sarton ~ dedicated to the memory of Jack
3. Cat's Eyewitness ~ by Rita Mae Brown and her cat Sneaky Pie Brown ~ dedicated to Kiki
4. Goldie (The Puppy Place Series #1) ~ by Ellen Miles ~ dedicated to the memory of Herman
5. Sign-up post for the Four-Legged Friends challenge ~ dedicated to the memory of Duchess

The most recent book I've read that involved a memorable dog was Pocketful of Names by Joe Coomer.  The dog arrives on the tide coming in to an island off the coast of Maine.

However, the very best book I've ever read about an animal was The Art of Racing in the Rain, a 2008 novel by Garth Stein.  Enzo, the dog on the cover, is a great dog, who happens to be an excellent philosopher.  I rate the book 10 out of 10.

ADDITIONS:  Hmm, as I keep thinking (will I be doing this all day?), I remember Aesop's Fables with wise and foolish animals, Animal Farm and the animal takeover, Black Beauty that I loved as a child, and of course all those friends of Mother Goose, like the three bears, the three pigs, and the three blind mice. And Kiki and I both read Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron.