Shaun Usher - Letters of Note: Dogs

Letters of Note was born in 2009 with the launch of lettersofnote.com, a website celebrating old-fashioned correspondence that has since been visited over 100 million times. The first Letters of Note volume was published in October 2013, followed later that year by the first Letters Live, an event at which world-class performers delivered remarkable letters to a live audience.

Since then, these two siblings have grown side by side, with Letters of Note becoming an international phenomenon, and Letters Live shows being staged at iconic venues around the world, from Londons Royal Albert Hall to the theatre at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles.

You can find out more at lettersofnote.com and letterslive.com. And now you can also listen to the audio editions of the new series of Letters of Note, read by an extraordinary cast drawn from the wealth of talent that regularly takes part in the acclaimed Letters Live shows.

SHAUN USHER is a writer and sole custodian of the popular blogs lettersofnote.com and listsofnote.com. He is the author of the bestselling Letters of Note, More Letters of Note, Lists of Note, and Speeches of Note. Along with Simon Garfields To the Letter, Letters of Note inspired Letters Live, a series of live performances celebrating the enduring power of literary correspondence, with great performers reading remarkable letters to a live audience. He lives in Manchester, U.K., with his wife Karina and their two sons.

Copyright 2021 by Shaun Usher

McClelland & Stewart and colophon are registered trademarks of
Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisheror, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agencyis an infringement of the copyright law.

Published in Great Britain by Canongate Books Ltd.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN: 9780771049750 | ebook ISBN: 9780771049767

For permission credits please see

Series design: Kelly Hill and Andrew Roberts

Cover image: (dog) Mac-leod / Shutterstock Images

Adapted for ebook by Estelle Malmed

McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

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For all the good dogs, but especially...

Red, Claouey, Maydi, Lola, Liam, Luna, Buddy,

Holly and Darth

CONTENTS

A letter is a time bomb, a message in a bottle, a spell, a cry for help, a story, an expression of concern, a ladle of love, a way to connect through words. This simple and brilliantly democratic art form remains a potent means of communication and, regardless of whatever technological revolution we are in the middle of, the letter lives and, like literature, it always will.

INTRODUCTION

The dog was the first animal to be domesticated by humans. In fact, we buddied up with the grey wolf such a long time ago that experts cant be sure exactly how many tens of millennia our friendship has endured. What is certain, however, is that our bond with mans best friend is stronger than ever. Estimates vary wildly, but it is generally believed that there are currently in the region of half a billion dogs keeping humans company around the globe. And thanks to our refusal to stop meddling with nature, they now come in all manner of shapes and sizes: according to the Fdration Cynologique Internationale (World Canine Organisation), those half billion dogs can be divided into approximately 360 officially recognised breeds, ranging from your garden variety, no-nonsense players like poodles and Labradors, through to the lesser-known (at least to me, an ignorant Englishman) models such as the Norwegian Lundehund and the Hungarian Mudi. And we dont just keep canines around for companionship. On a daily basis, dogs are saving the lives of countless humans as they guide the blind, find bombs, search for missing people and detect disease. It is difficult to imagine life without them.

I write this on a Chewsday (forgive me) in November 2020, an undeniably terrible year now entering its 6932nd day. For hours, a gale has been thrashing the window behind my head and rattling the roof tiles above, the permanent low hum of radiators being warmed serving to remind me that the cruelty of winter is just weeks away. The political landscape is simply too grim to contemplate. Civil unrest seems omnipresent. In the UK we are in month nine of a life-changing pandemic that has already resulted in millions of deaths worldwide, devastation to the economy and the enforced isolation of huge swathes of the population. To put it bluntly, things are not looking or feeling great. And yet, to my right, curled up beside me, is Red, our permanently dishevelled dog. A ball of fluff whose very presence calms my nerves. A cherished member of our family who is blissfully unaware of any problems beyond our four walls, whose beautiful nature brings the very best out of our children and has taught them about life and love in ways we couldnt. It is no surprise to me that many of my fondest childhood memories star at least one of my familys dogs, and I will forever be grateful to my parents for bringing them into our home.

Despite all of the above, as far as I could tell and trust me, I have looked everywhere, even beneath all the chairs there did not already exist a book filled only with letters related to our trustiest companion. Certainly not in the English language. Which brings us to the book in your hands, Letters of Note: Dogs, a pocketable volume of correspondence in which various people write about, to or even through our canine friends. It will make you laugh, cry and ponder our ever-evolving relationship with this magnificent creature, and maybe, should you not already be owned by a dog, convince you to make the leap.

Fetch a drink, sit and let me lead you through this epistolary canine treasury.

Shaun Usher

2020