Dog Tales: Classic Stories About Smart Dogs

by Myron Beck, Robert Benchley, John Held Jr.

Nine great writers--including James Thurber, O. Henry, Dorothy Parker, and Ring Lardner--unleash their imaginations in this wonderful collection of stories about man's best friend.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Dogs, Animals

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1990

Reviews

[Stephen Wallace]

I just didn't care for the stories in the book that much, with the exception of the portion from Lassie Go Home.

I also didn't care for the photographs. They are meant to be classic looking but they just look over-staged and somehow I don't care for the backgrounds which look artificially embellished to me.

My perspective of course can be different from someone else's. Someone else may get the humor better than me which often cover the general topics of things like the destruction a dog can bring. At least one story seemed to make fun of killing a dog which I found in no way entertaining. It is also possible as I have read over 600 books so far on dogs, that I have become jaded in some ways.

Here are the stories in the book. As I said Lassie go Home is a classic and every dog book lover should just read the book, not get this book for the portion of the story provided.

Your boy and His Dog by Robert Benchley
MacDunald by John Held, Jr
Memoirs of a Yellow Dog by O Henry
Lassie Come Home by Eric Knight
Dogs by ring Lardner
Being a Public Character by Don Marquis
Toward the Dog Days by Dorothy Parker
Louis by Saki
The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber

There was one story I liked a little better once I recognized the author. I collect quotes I deem 'favorites' and in my collecting have picked up some by Dorothy Parker. That made me slow down a little more with her story. While I am always looking for passages I like that I can mine out of even a boring story or book, I only found two in her story I wanted to copy out to share in this review.

'We would go out for a little walk, he and I, and my feet would never be on the ground during the entire excursion. Indoors, he developed the habit of sofa-eating: he became, indeed, a Veritable addict. Give that dog an ordinary sofa, such as your furniture dealer would be glad to le you have for a nominal sum, and he could make a whole meal off it. If you ran out of sofas he would be philosophical about the matter — he was always delightfully good-humored — and make a light snack of a chintz-covered arm-chair. Once, I recall, he went a-gypsying and used a set of Dickens, the one with the Cruikshank illustrations, for a picnic lunch.'

'Possibly she insists upon being called a Scottish terrier because, at the moment, Scottish terriers are high in fashion — it is queer, isn’t it that there should be fashions in dogs? Scotties are a sane style; they are, so to say, serviceable and they give good wear. They have all the compactness of a small dog and all the valor of a big one. And they are so exceedingly sturdy that it is proverbial that the only thing fatal to them is being run over by an automobile — in which case the car itself knows that it has been in a fight.'

I liked the quotes so will post in Goodreads for the book as well so people can read them without having to read the book.

[Kirsten]

A short little book with some very darling pictures of different dogs. The stories are written by people like O. Henry, Ring Lardner, Dorothy Parker, and so on. Most of them are funny and just wonderful. Adorable!

[Ellen]

A feast for literary dog lovers, not all the entrees are equally delicious. But a few are exceptional. I would have included at least part of Virginia Woolf’s biography of Flush (who was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel) but perhaps it is still under copyright so maybe not available.
Interesting dog photos litter the text but with little relevance to the written material.
Overall I found this little book pleasant if a bit incoherent.

[Karen]

This was another I had on a shelf for many years before reading it. The photographs were stunning, the stories, from a wide variety of authors, less so, although I did enjoy the twist at the end of the Saki tale "Louis."

[Emily S.]

I’m going to be honest. I only read this book for Mountain Time because Mr. Keller said we had to pick one off the shelf and read it during reading days and this one was the shortest one. I will admit, I am not a dog person. They don’t really interest me all that much, but I picked this book anyways.
This book is set up so every chapter is about a different dog. The chapter is usually told by the dog, but some of them were told by the owners. I think this book kind of gave me a new perspective of what it would be like to be a dog. I think this book kind of tries to explain why dogs do things, or what they’re thinking. But the truth is, I’m pretty sure we’ll never know any of those things.
I think this book is perfect for people who love dogs or who want to learn more about them. Sometimes this book could be very hard to understand because of the language that was used in some of the chapters. I think in some of the chapters they were in different time periods and in places with different accents which is probably why I found it so hard to read.
As I kept reading this book I kept getting more interested in each dogs story, because none of them were ever the same or written in the same way. Some of the stories were more interesting then others. One of the stories I found to be really interesting was one about a woman who cheats on her husband and then leaves him in the end, but the dog is the only one who knows about the affair. I guess it kind of made me think about how people think they’re safe to do whatever they want when they think no one is watching, but the truth is, someone usually is. Whether its a dog or another person.
This book definitely gave me a different perspective about what its like to watch life from the outside.

[Harriet H.]

This book contains nine short stories written by well-known writers of the early twentieth century. Most of them are written from the point of view of the dog. Sprinkled among the pages are 20 full-page beautiful dog portraits in various settings by Myron Beck. The language of the stories is delightfully old fashioned. A dictionary may be necessary to understand it. The mood of the stories ranges from funny to outrageous to poignant.

[Kathy Kernan]

A very good book to read when you are in the mood for short stories about our best friend.

[WSL Library]

x2

[Sydney]

kind of boring. Not the best book but definently not the worst that i've ever read.