Who wrote this story about a marvellous Alsation dog?

March 3, 2013 4:13 AM

If anyone recognises this story, please can you tell me the author? I think the story is about five years old. An ordinary man with low self-esteem is dumped by his beautiful intelligent accomplished girlfriend. She gives him a dog as a pity present, with a snide subtext that the dog is better than he is. Gradually through caring for the dog, a magnificent Alsation, and taking pride in it, the man recovers his self-esteem and becomes sought-after. It's a story that feels as if it has a lot of undercurrents and as if it's not as simple as it looks: in some way the dog stands in for the guy, or represents the guy or becomes a totem for him. Or something.
posted by glasseyes to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

This doesn't bear much too resemblance to your description, but I wondered if you were thinking of the viral Facebook photo of a man swimming with his arthritic dog. In this story the man went into a terrible depression after being dumped by his fiancee, and the company of his dog helped him get through it...
posted by lgandme0717 at 12:50 PM on March 3, 2013

This sounds a lot -- Alsatian included -- like the story My Dog Tulip, adapted into a fine animated film recently. (Really -- it sounds too cloying to stand, but it's superb.) The story, however, really doesn't start with a girlfriend; he just randomly encounters a dog that desperately needs a new home (his acerbic sister, however, may be what turned into the girlfriend in your head). In the broader sense, though, the author certainly believed that his relationship with the dog made him a better person.
posted by dhartung at 5:47 PM on March 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks, I don't think either of these is what I'm after though. I have a feeling the story was by a serious hardcore male writer, like Colm Toibin, but I just can't remember who. Also I think it's set in New York and...it kind of has an ironic undertone. Very slight, hardly discernable.

Who'd have thought there's be so many stories about heroic Alsations? Thanks for both of these though, they're fascinating references.
posted by glasseyes at 2:56 AM on March 4, 2013