Drinking with Miss Dutchie

Biting the heads off the author's wife's tulips and defecating on him and on his manuscript--the Breslin Labrador pup was such a hellion that he tried to give her back. Then, of course, Miss Dutchie stole the Breslins' hearts and minds. She "taught me more about life than any teacher I ever had," Breslin writes, "and she never said a word." Breslin is just the man to find those words. Grover Gardner narrates with the consummate skill of an AudioFile Golden Voice. The music of his baritone is enhanced by a little water in the mouth, as if Gardner, like the ancient orator Cicero, held a pebble under his tongue. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

December 20, 2010
Exploring the bond between humans and dogs, Breslin, a former book editor and publisher, focuses on his own pet Labrador retriever, Miss Dutchie. At first, Breslin saw her as a squealing "feral puppy," but that quickly changed: "It took me 36 hours to fall in love with her." Tracing the days of Dutchie from puppyhood to death, Breslin probes his personal demons, interweaving his struggles with alcoholism, his "Jimmy Porter moods" and his defiance of AA precepts: "My own disgust with me was a huge problem." He introduces the reader to his wife, Lynn, and his parents, friends, and neighbors in Coxsackie, N.Y., as he documents the dog's attitude and activities, noting her impact on his life: "Of course, there was no writing.... Dutchess had developed an antipathy to computers." As the relationship developed, Miss Dutchie prompted him to alter his self-destructive habits: "My Labrador retriever was passing judgment on me and rejecting me." While he packs the pages with perhaps too many literary references from Cheever, O'Hara, and Kerouac, Breslin writes intensely and emotionally about psychic pain, grief, and the loss of friends and dogs.