“He'd missed dogs. Dogs added something that even people didn't, and one of the dogs was sitting by his feet, here in the darkness and the gentle rain. It wasn't bothered much about the rain or what might be out there on the unseen sea, but Mau was a warm body moving about in a sleeping world and might at any moment do something that called for runnung around and barking. Occasionally it looked up at him adoringly and made a slobbery gulping noise which possibly meant "Anything you say, boss!”

“We might miss the sign or we may be unable to read the expression, but it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that a dog feels something but does not show it. What a dog feels, a dog shows, and, conversely, what a dog shows, a dog actually does feel.”

“For Golden it was hard not to think that there might be something wrong about a household in which the dog was wearing underwear and the children weren't.”

“We were, to quote the proverb, "The one dog who barks at nothing answered by a thousand dogs barking at something...”

“I thought for a moment about the dog. Miffy. I guess no matter how much Rube and I complained about him, we knew we'd sort of miss him if something happened to him. It's funny how there are things in this world that do nothing but annoy you, but you know you'd miss them when they're gone. Miffy, the Pomeranian wonderdog, was one such thing.”

“Suddenly, from the depths of that chair emerged the biggest, meanest-looking dog Jesse had ever seen. One side of his face had suffered some disfiguring injury.The jaw hung slack and the eye on that side was missing.Jesse froze in her tracks, terrified that she might be mauled by this monstrosity of a pet. She glancedaround, looking for a stick or a rock or anything to defend herself. There was nothing close but she was afraid to move. Surely if the animal were dangerous, Floyd and Alice Fay would have said something. Jesse waited tensely for a moment before realizing the dog wasn’t so much growling or barking as he was howling; loudly, purposefully howling.“She don’t bite,” a voice called out. “She’s my hillbilly alarm system, letting me know that they’s strangers about.”