A P.D. James Adventure and Your Favorite Dog Story?

I've finally decided that my next read will be P.D. James's Death in Holy Orders. I have never read it and deliberately avoided the BBC production, so I'm ripe, I'd say.

I desperately need ESCAPE (!) from the massive state college budget cuts at my college and the resulting faculty rage there, the fact of WAR and more war abroad, nuclear disaster, and thorny extended family issues.

GOOD NEWS! We have finally had word that we may be up for a two-year-old Golden Retriever from Sophie's breeder, sometime later this spring! Oh, Ken and I would be deliriously happy to welcome a young dog to our house. I'm already planning obedience training activities! I need a very well-trained dog if he or she is going to be my bushwhacking buddy in the wilderness. Bushwhacking dogs need to be spunky, smart, obedient, and not too crazy! Looking forward! Sasha is the name if it's a girl, Josh if a boy, subject to change, of course, though I'm really fixed on Sasha for a girl's name.

Speaking of dogs and how important they are to our lives, what are or were your favorite dog stories and novels?


Mine was The Dog in My Life by Kurt Unkelbach, a book for pre-teens, about a New England girl who decides she's going to make her beloved yellow Labrador Retriever an American champion. When I was twelve to thirteen, I read this book probably a dozen times. Of course, Cary succeeds, and has many adventures along the way.

This book became my bible and inspired me to enter the dog show ring with my own yellow Labrador, who was the son of English champions, when I was only thirteen years old. I showed him until I was 16, when he was 6 years old. We won loads of ribbons and trophies, and I learned a tremendous amount about what it means to have a goal, to strive and fail and to overcome obstacles, and achieve satisfaction from a job well done. My Lab, Rupert Ritz Cracker, however, was more interested in food and unspayed females than the show ring.