Devoted

by Dean Koontz

We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. —Maurice Maeterlinck

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. —Mark Twain

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.

—Josh Billings

One of the most embarrassing things about people was how unobservant they were.

The only monsters were people.

But for the longest while, he could not stop, because Dorothy had gone where he couldn’t follow. He was not merely alone now. He was reduced to half of who he had been.

Mother Nature wasn’t really motherly. Mom said nature was more like a bipolar aunt who treated you kindly most of the time but, now and then, could be a real witch, conjuring killer storms and vicious animals, like big toothy mountain lions that, if given a menu, would always order tender children.

Love was the best thing when you had it, and the most terrible thing when it was taken from you.

In this beautiful but hard world, fate spared no species.

Two species on this planet had been bonded for many thousands of years. Maybe more than a hundred thousand. Dogs and people.

Dogs had been at the side of human beings for millennia before horses or cats.