Like many writers, Alice Hoffman leads a solitary life. Yet she’s rarely felt lonely. That’s because, throughout her career, she’s almost always had a dog by her side.
“You’re completely alone, but you’re not alone,” she said of writing in the presence of a dog.
The first canine love of her life was Houdini, a German shepherd that inspired several German shepherds in Hoffman’s fiction. Houdini was so poised that he walked off the leash around New York City, including on the bus, in restaurants and at the theater.
“It’s harder to write a dog character than a human character,” Hoffman said. “They’re kind of a mystery.”
When Hoffman was asked to edit “The Best Dog in the World,” a collection of essays from prominent writers about their dogs, she didn’t hesitate. The writers she approached — among them Bonnie Garmus, Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Strout and Emily Henry — were equally eager.
While Hoffman was working on the collection, her beloved dog Shelby, a Polish Lowland sheepdog, died of old age. She joined a grief group, and then, in a rash but predictable move, she got a puppy, a rambunctious Tibetan terrier named Violet.
Unlike her previous dogs, who were deeply loyal and partial to her, Violet loves absolutely everyone. Recently, at the park, she leaped into a stranger’s arms.
“She’s so focused on people, and she’s so full of joy,” Hoffman said.
Below, five other authors explain why dogs are a writer’s best friend.
Perla and Fabio (Isabel Allende)
Pick up a book by Isabel Allende and you’ll likely encounter a dog.
Her debut, “The House of the Spirits,” features a mythical Great Dane called Barrabás. While writing her grisly crime novel “Ripper,” Allende realized she had to choose between killing off the hero or his dog, Attila. (Spoiler: The dog lived.) She’s even written three illustrated children’s books about one of her own dogs.
“There are dogs in all my novels,” she said. “Dogs and more dogs, always dogs!”
Allende lives in Northern California with Perla, a 10-year-old mutt, and Fabio, a nine-month-old mix with a fair bit of poodle. Perla follows Allende everywhere, and Fabio follows Perla — “so I am never alone,” Allende said.
“I write at home with them in the room. If I get up to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom, they follow. Often, I find myself asking them something about the writing. I am not talking to myself, they listen and understand,” she said. “We communicate telepathically.”
Allende partly inherited her love of dogs from her mother, who believed children needed to have contact with animals to thrive.
“Dogs taught me from early on to see the world through the heart, emotions, relationships, intuition, instinct,” Allende said. “I am a much better person when there is a dog around.”
Max (Roxane Gay)
Roxane Gay was giving the keynote address during an event at the Los Angeles L.G.B.T. Center when an unruly audience member interrupted with loud, insistent whining.
It was her dog, Max, who was in the audience with Gay’s wife, Debbie Millman, and was distraught not to be by Gay’s side. Finally, Millman brought Max up to the stage, where he settled in next to Gay, quietly content.
Gay is not a dog person. She had always disliked dogs until she got Max, a Maltipoo who is 5 and a half. Now she’s obsessed with him, and the obsession is mutual.
Gay says even Max’s annoying traits, like his need to constantly have his head rubbed, are pretty charming. So is his love of fashion: Max has an extensive wardrobe of sweaters and shirts, and when he wears them on outings around New York City, “He sharpens up his posture and prances around,” Gay said.
When Gay is writing, Max curls up on the desk next to her laptop.
“He’s become, in some ways, part of my writing life,” Gay said. “Whenever I’m ready to go do some work in my office I say, ‘Let’s go to work,’ and he automatically knows where to go.”
Eddie (Ann Leary)
The novelist Ann Leary has always loved dogs, to the point of near mania. “I’m a dog freak,” she said.
The exception was Eddie.
Of all the dogs Leary has had over the years, Eddie — an anxious, unruly “hyperactive nut job” — is the only one she struggled to love.
“I didn’t like him at all,” Leary said. “He was so problematic.”
Eddie was around a year old when Leary took him in, and so wild and skittish that she thought he might be part coyote. When she had his DNA tested, the results came back 50 percent Australian cattle dog, with some husky, pit bull and Chihuahua. No coyote.
Eddie is now almost 11. He’s still afraid of people, children, bikes, sirens and other dogs. He is also unnervingly observant. He memorized the jingles in commercials that feature animals and runs into the room when he hears the songs, then attacks the television when the animals appear. He can tell when Leary is looking for her keys or her phone, and will lope around the house to find them.
Their relationship changed during a game of fetch, when Leary realized Eddie was more interested in her than the ball. She learned to channel his intense focus and trained him to do elaborate tricks, like spinning, jumping and weaving around her legs like they’re dancing.
Now he’s almost always at her side. He lies in bed next to her when she’s writing. When he thinks she’s done enough work, he closes her laptop with his paw.
“I used to get annoyed, and now I realize that it’s good for me,” she said of Eddie’s interruptions. “It’s almost like he’s a service dog I didn’t ask for.”
Over time, Leary realized that she and Eddie share some essential traits. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t like him at first,” she said. “I was like, Why is he so difficult and afraid and anxious and obsessive? All the things I struggle with.”
Bobo (Amy Tan)
Bobo, Amy Tan’s 13-year-old, four-pound Yorkshire terrier, sneezes when he wants attention — which is always.
“This is the most self-centered dog I’ve ever had,” Tan said. “He’s very narcissistic. It’s all about him.”
A dog obsessive who is partial to Yorkies, Tan has written and spoken over the years about her dog companions, who have joined her on book tours and at readings. (One of her Yorkies once popped out of a bag onstage when Tan was giving a TED Talk on creativity, right after she said that the creative muse can take surprising forms)
Bobo isn’t much of a muse, but he has forcefully inserted himself into Tan’s writing life: He likes to stay nearby when Tan is working in the dining room or on her bed.
“He’s always next to me,” she said.
Bobo also has strong opinions about books, and performs a party trick that involves a display of his literary taste. Tan will ask Bobo to pick a book, and gives him a choice between her novel, “The Joy Luck Club” and a nonfiction book, “The Genius of Dogs.” Without fail, Bobo chooses the latter, sniffing it and tapping it with his paw.
Oscar (Paul Yoon)
Twelve years ago, the novelist Paul Yoon and his wife, the writer Laura van den Berg, adopted a scrawny, anxious, 3-month-old lab mix they named Oscar. Yoon had never had a dog before, and wasn’t sure he wanted one.
“I had built a life that was like a neat box, and part of that was because I felt safe in that box, and life felt manageable,” Yoon said. “Something happens where the box completely busts open and you don’t have control of that, and Oscar, for me, was that. He was the thing that entered my life that completely shattered all the things that I lived by or abided by. He broke all the patterns.”
Now Yoon can’t imagine a life without Oscar, who rests his head in Yoon’s lap when Yoon is writing on the couch with his laptop. He sleeps pressed against Yoon or sprawled on top of him like a 70-pound weighted blanket. When Yoon sits at the kitchen table, Oscar puts a paw on his thigh.
“Because we’re constantly connected to each other I felt that, quite literally, my life had gotten bigger,” Yoon said. “I started to think about the world differently because of that, and that enabled me to start thinking about how to write fiction differently.”
Oscar directly shaped Yoon’s forthcoming novel, “Etna,” which unfolds from the perspective of a former military dog who survives combat and tries to find his way home.
“That was a huge leap for me,” he said, “to enter the mind of a dog.”
Alexandra Alter writes about books, publishing and the literary world for The Times.
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