The Best Dog in the World

When the acceptance letter came from Stanford, I knew it was a chance that wouldn’t come again. I got on a plane and found a different future, one I could never have imagined during an unhappy childhood spent mostly alone. When I was growing up, my parents had pulled disappearing acts, my brother was out on his own.

By the time he was a teenager, and I had long ago realized that the member of my family I was closest to was my dog. In California, I moved into a huge old house where there was a lemon tree and a beehive in the garden. I found a brilliant mentor who championed my writing and friends who had futures, who were attending law school and were in PhD programs, many of them writers, a wonderful quirky bunch. And yet when it came down to it, I still felt alone. I had no one I was close to, no one who waited for me and was always there for me. What I needed was a dog.

We both were certain we were living in the wrong house.

My first childhood dog was a surprise. When I was about six years old, my father came home unannounced with a show dog who had recently been retired from the ring, a well-trained, brilliant standard schnauzer called Whiskers, though his official name was Von Esterhazy’s Military Music. From the start, Whiskers seemed shocked to live in our madhouse, where there were no mealtimes or rules and whether you were a dog or a human, you were pretty much on your own. My father soon left us, and poor dignified Whiskers was left to share in the chaos of our lives.

My mother was a freewheeling rebel who was far from being a caretaker. We locked long-suffering well-behaved Whiskers in the basement when we went to visit relatives for long weekends, setting out food and newspapers. It seemed that Whiskers was the only one living in our house who had any common sense. He ran away several times, and I couldn’t blame him. He leapt over our six-foot metal fence and headed for the Southern State Parkway, but he always came home. I loved him madly and he cooly returned my feelings.

What mattered most was that he was the only one there when I came home from school and he was there when I went to bed. I don’t think my mother or brother would have noticed if I had leapt the metal fence and run off, but I believe that Whiskers would have followed me. We both were certain we were living in the wrong house.

Whiskers was followed by Bambi, another standard schnauzer who was never trained at all and was a lifelong biter. My mother let her run amok, and Bambi bit nearly everyone who walked into the house. She seemed to especially despise men, which fit with the sentiments of our house as my mother’s lousy boyfriends passed through. Bambi was followed by Bruno, the same breed, but even more untrained and wild. Never housebroken, he seemed to prefer peeing on the rug to the grass, and he was a serious biter as well. He had to be locked up when people came to the house, and in the end it was easier just to never have any visitors. Frankly, my friends’ parents wouldn’t let them visit me anyway. These were the days when living in sin was unusual, and divorced women were rare, especially ones as rebellious as my mother.

Finally, there was Jason, supposedly my high school graduation present, though he never looked at it that way. He was a small judgmental poodle who showed his teeth and growled when he wasn’t pleased, sat on a kitchen chair to have his dinner, and liked to go out to have Carvel ice cream. My mother was amused by his bad behavior, and he quickly became her dog. But Jason had a sensitive side and was always with me when I cried. I think he considered me a fool to be so emotional and so sad. I could tell from the way he stared at me that he thought I should grow up and realize life was tough. Even a mini poodle knew that.

My dogs were my company, the ones I could depend on, the ones I mattered to and who mattered most to me. It made perfect sense that after two years of living in California, feeling rootless and alone and fearful of what the future would bring, I began to scan Palo Alto pet ads. One day I found what I was looking for: an ad for German shepherd puppies in Sunnyvale. I drove out that same day to a farm up in the hills. The puppies were three or four months old and had been raised by a serious man who bred dogs for police use. I was introduced to the parents, who went through their paces in obedience training. I was too dumbfounded to be frightened of the giant police dogs.

We were together in this life, him and me.

Then the puppies were brought out and I knew immediately which was mine. He was a long-haired German shepherd who knew commands for sit, down, stay, come, and probably lots more that I’d never bothered to ask about. He’d been named Houdini and that clearly was a sign. He was magic and I knew it. The dog breeder said that if I didn’t ask for his papers and promised not to breed him, I could have the puppy for seventy-five dollars. There was one more demand. I had to promise not to take him out of California. I looked at Houdini and I knew. He was already mine, and more importantly I was his. Fine, I told the breeder, crossing my fingers behind my back. I’d never leave the Bay Area.

I was twenty-one and careless, a depressed girl whom no one had ever cared about and who didn’t value herself. I was at school, had two jobs, and was writing my first novel, so Houdini trained himself. Frankly, after Bruno and Bambi and Jason, I wouldn’t have known how to go about it. I hadn’t bothered to ask my five housemates if they minded a dog; I simply brought him home as my father had long ago brought home Whiskers. Houdini had one accident, in my housemate John’s messy bedroom, and after he got yelled at by a perturbed PhD student, he never again made that mistake. Houdini was left in the garden when I went to school and to work, so that he wouldn’t bother my roommates. I was sometimes gone all day, and he never once dug up the artichoke plants or the roses, he simply waited for me to come home. We were together in this life, him and me.

When I moved back to New York, Houdini came with me. For us, home was each other. When I took an apartment in Chelsea in Manhattan, he still walked off a leash. I took him everywhere and no one asked questions. He went on the crosstown bus, to restaurants, to what was then the Elgin Theater, to the supermarket. People presumed he was a guide dog because of his breed and how incredibly well-behaved he was.

I’d always had panic attacks growing up, but with Houdini I felt safe enough to drive back and forth from my PhD program out on Long Island to Manhattan. I took him with me to my agent Elaine Markson’s tiny office on Greenwich Avenue, and when I lived in a run-down beach community I simply let him out the door to run around the neighborhood. When I wanted him to come back, all I had to do was whistle. He had a brief affair with a standard poodle, and when I caught them together, he couldn’t have looked guiltier. He never cheated on me again.

Every year I grew more convinced that Houdini was magic. He went to my study with me every day and slept under the desk while I wrote my book. He never asked for anything, and he gave me everything. One day, walking down the street in Chelsea, I heard someone say, “That girl looks just like her dog,” and when I peered into a store window, I realized she was right. We were versions of one another, and I felt hugely complimented; I didn’t think much of myself, but I knew Houdini was beautiful.

When I met the man I would marry, Houdini didn’t like him and gave him the cold shoulder. I should have paid attention. He was a good judge of character, and he was right, although Houdini did love the Maine coon cat that moved in with us when my soon-to-be husband did. When we had children, Houdini became their guardian, and I trusted him completely to watch over them. I didn’t give him the attention I should have in his later years; I was busy with my family, trapped in a marriage that was falling apart, a situation that wouldn’t have surprised Houdini, who still had nothing to do with my then-husband, although he slept with the cat every night.

If you’re very lucky you may be honored to know a once-in-a-lifetime dog.

I still don’t think I was worthy of him. And I wish I had one more day with him. We could go the beach, where he would pay no attention to the other dogs and stay by my side. We could stroll along the streets of San Francisco or New York or drive upstate, because when we were together, I wouldn’t panic. I would simply enjoy every minute. In time, Houdini could barely walk, and as he grew older he stayed on his bed nearly all day. I brought him booties so he wouldn’t slip because his hips and legs were so weak. When he could no longer raise himself up to stand, I knew it was time.

He lived until he was fifteen, wild about the cat he slept with every night, and watched over my children, protecting us all, but mostly he was in love with me. The beautiful cat curled up and died the day after Houdini was put down, too brokenhearted to go on. I understood completely when I found her in my office, under my chair. The three of us had spent every day there as I wrote, and now it would never be the same. My heart is still broken after all these years. It always will be.

I’ve had several dogs since, a kindhearted Labrador named Cody, and three Polish Lowland sheepdogs, including my current beloved Shelby, whom I think of as my soul sister. But Houdini was different. If you’re very lucky you may be honored to know a once-in-a-lifetime dog. Your familiar, your significant other, your plus-one and the love of your life, the one who knows how you feel before you do, the one who howls when you cry, who feels your pain and your joy. I was lucky, and I know it. I didn’t train him, he trained me. He was the heart I was missing. He was brave when I lacked courage.

For that and for a thousand other things, I will always be grateful. I used to say my first husband was a German shepherd, now I say my one true love was a German shepherd. There’s not a day that I don’t miss him and wish we could run away together, back to California, back to the day when I drove up into the golden hills once upon a time when our lives were out in front of us, waiting to be lived.

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Excerpted from The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love edited by Alice Hoffman. Introduction, afterword and compilation copyright © 2026 by Property Of, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.