What Wendell Wants

August 1, 2004
Nearly every dog owner will be able to relate to some part of Lee's comic exploration of her obsession with Wendell, her wheaten terrier. Don't pick this up expecting to gain insight into a canine companion's psychology, however; this book deals strictly with the issues that plague the human half of the dog/person equation, and explains how readers can tell if they're a dog-obsessed owner. One simple way is to answer the questions posed by this book's chapter titles, queries such as "do you talk about your dog nonstop?"; "do you suspect your dog is a genius?"; "have you updated your will with provisions for your dog?" Lee admits to all these symptoms, as well as others like ordering a birthday cake for her dog, signing him up for swimming lessons and taking innumerable pictures of him. "For the first time in my life I had put together a photo album," she writes. "It contained Wendell's ... first snow, his first bath, his first bone, his first rawhide, his first Halloween." Throughout the book, Lee intersperses mini-profiles of the "10 Breeds of Obsessed Dog Owner," such as the competitive owner, who "thinks that his dog is better than your dog," and the tofu owner, who "practices yoga, eats vegetarian, and hates people who smoke." While such types may not present a pretty picture of the human side of things, Lee ends on a positive note with a description of the Ultimate Owner: "These owners love their dogs, but they also seem to understand that they are in fact, dogs. And the dogs themselves seem to understand this fact, and seem happy that things have worked out this way."

August 2, 2004
Nearly every dog owner will be able to relate to some part of Lee's comic exploration of her obsession with Wendell, her wheaten terrier. Don't pick this up expecting to gain insight into a canine companion's psychology, however; this book deals strictly with the issues that plague the human half of the dog/person equation, and explains how readers can tell if they're a dog-obsessed owner. One simple way is to answer the questions posed by this book's chapter titles, queries such as "do you talk about your dog nonstop?"; "do you suspect your dog is a genius?"; "have you updated your will with provisions for your dog?" Lee admits to all these symptoms, as well as others like ordering a birthday cake for her dog, signing him up for swimming lessons and taking innumerable pictures of him. "For the first time in my life I had put together a photo album," she writes. "It contained Wendell's ... first snow, his first bath, his first bone, his first rawhide, his first Halloween." Throughout the book, Lee intersperses mini-profiles of the "10 Breeds of Obsessed Dog Owner," such as the competitive owner, who "thinks that his dog is better than your dog," and the tofu owner, who "practices yoga, eats vegetarian, and hates people who smoke." While such types may not present a pretty picture of the human side of things, Lee ends on a positive note with a description of the Ultimate Owner: "These owners love their dogs, but they also seem to understand that they are in fact, dogs. And the dogs themselves seem to understand this fact, and seem happy that things have worked out this way."

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.