I am so excited to share that today I am adopting a dog! We’re bringing her home this morning, and I spent all of last night preparing the house and making sure we had all of the required supplies. I never had pets growing up (unless you count the fish in the fish tank; we did name one of them Luther), so this is going to be a new and exciting experience. Thankfully, I have a partner who grew up with dogs and has a lot of experience with them, so I won’t be going at it alone.

All my excitement over this new member of the family had me thinking back on the various pets in books I’ve read over the years. I’m not a huge animal person, and I’ve never been a big fan of things like animal fantasy or sad dog stories. But there have been a few literary pets that made an impact on me, and I thought it would be fun to revisit them here. Be warned, I can’t promise that they don’t die by the end. Sorry.

 

Laika by Nick Abadzis

This graphic novel about the first animal to orbit the Earth – sent by the Russians on a one-way mission in 1957 – is powerful, but it’s certainly a downer. It’s also the story of the scientists who worked with Laika, set against the complicated backdrop of the Cold War and the space race. I appreciated that Abadzis avoided making this a cute and overly sentimental story: he doesn’t anthropomorphize Laika, and readers will likely know what her fate is going in. The unnecessary tragedy of the whole event is made clear in the details of the story and the way the characters interact with Laika and remember their work afterward, particularly in this final quote from a Russian scientist in the program, which I’ve thought about a lot in the nine years since reading the book: “Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.” You can read my review here.

 

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness may have created the best talking dog ever in Manchee, protagonist Todd’s dog from this masterpiece of a book. He doesn’t truly talk in the way we think of it; rather, Todd is able to hear his thoughts (and vice versa), since they live on a world where all men’s (including animals) thoughts are broadcast – whether they like it or not. It’s a brilliant setup for a story, and Todd and Manchee’s relationship is one of the highlights. Who among us has not wished we could truly know what our dog is thinking? Manchee injects some much-needed humor into this pretty dark story, but he’s also a fully realized character in his own right that readers will fall in love with. You can read my review here.

 

Sabriel by Garth Nix

I suppose I just have a thing for talking pets, because Mogget, from Garth Nix’s classic Sabriel, is one of my favorites. Uniquely, Mogget is a cat, an animal I tend to have more antipathy than affection for. Perhaps it’s because Mogget is not really a cat: he’s the bound form a powerful magical being called a Shiner. My memories of Mogget are that he is sarcastic, bossy, and sometimes unintentionally funny (and very, very dangerous when released from his cat form). He also loves fish. If you haven’t read this wonderfully inventive series about a girl necromancer yet, I highly recommend you fix that soon.

 

Robot Dreams by Sara Varon

In this unique, dialogue-free treatise on friendship, a dog is the pet owner after he buys a robot and puts him together. They visit the library together, visit the beach, go for a swim…which is a mistake for the robot, because he starts to rust. Soon, he can’t move, and the dog leaves him on the beach. The dog comes back to try and rescue the robot later, but the beach is closed. Time passes and the dog makes other friends while the robot lays on the beach, dreaming about being rescued, going on adventures, and generally living (as much as a robot can live) again. Eventually, the summer rolls around again and the beach re-opens, but things don’t happen as you think they would. Both cute and thoughtful, this book is a winner deserving of repeated reads.