Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
SBD: Woof
For today’s Smart Bitches Day post, I ask the question: what’s up with all the dogs?
A friend and I were getting into it the other day. Or rather, I was getting into it, and she was egging me on. She told me Janet Evanovich had a dog in her stories, and I had that very morning been placed into a tizzy by Jennifer Crusie’s needless introduction of a dog in Welcome to Temptation.
This person went to the bother of assembling a partial list of critter characters. Here’s the Crusie portion of the list:
Crusie, Jennifer – Anyone But You (Fred the Basset hound)
Crusie, Jennifer – Crazy For You (Katie the dog)
Crusie, Jennifer – Getting Rid of Bradley (dog)
Crusie, Jennifer – The Cinderella Deal (Liz the cat)
Crusie, Jennifer – What the Lady Wants (Bob the dog)
and she left out Welcome to Temptation! This dog (in WtT), I’m talking serious left field. As if a light bulb suddenly flickered in Crusie’s brain: “Need . . . more . . . comic relief!”
Listen:
Something furry brushed her leg and she looked down and screamed.
There was an animal there–a big one, it came halfway up to her knee–and it had matted red-brown fur on its barrel-like body and short white legs with little black spots on them, and Sophie had never seen anything like it in her life.
I didn’t mind the dog in Crazy for You. That dog was instrumental to the plot; Crusie couldn’t tell Crazy for You without Katie the Dog.
I remember liking Kate’s dog, but I read Somebody Wonderful very early in my romance-reading life. Would I still like the ugly mutt as much today?
Botty must have heard his steps. The scruffy little mutt came careening down the stairs, a misshapen cannonball of a dog. He’d lurked up in the the top floor, probably hiding from the widow.
Mick put down the full basin and bent to scratch the dog’s remaining ear. Botty pushed at his hand with ecstatic wheezing growls.
Kate, you had me at “remaining ear,” and you cinched the deal with “wheezing growls.” Okay, I still love Botty. In a literary universe of ugly mutts, Botty out-uglies all of ’em. Botty is Teh Mutt.
But, what are they doing here, these dogs? Is it a “Must Love Dogs” kinda thing? I hope not, because that movie sucked. Suhhhcked. And the dog in that movie was named Mother Theresa — that’s what I call really reaching for a laugh.
I can understand giving your hero a dog, especially if said hero is the gruff silent type. Gotta show he has a heart, he’s capable of love. And if he can love a flatulent*, one-eared mutt, he’s bound to love our heroine.
But why do Crusie’s heroines need dogs? Except in Crazy for You, of course. That dog made sense.
I admit to placing a cat in my romance, and yes, he’s the heroine’s cat, but he’s only there to pounce on my hero’s balls in the middle of the night. I never bothered to turn the cat into a character. Was that a mistake?
Yes, I know: I have more questions than answers, but You Who Are Wise in this genre will, I’m sure, educate me.
D.
*I don’t remember for certain if Botty was flatulent, but Kate went out of her way to make him disagreeable. If he wasn’t flatulent, he should have been.
I end up putting dogs in most of my books. They’re all over the place in real life so it’s writing what I know. Or maybe it’s more like when I’m falling asleep my characters doze off or when I’m hungry all of the sudden I’m describing a meal. (“Hey wait a sec! They’re supposed to be running away from Bad Guys not snarfing donuts!”)
Funny you mentioned Botty in passing in a note and I had no idea what you were talking about. Past books are so in the past.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DOUG!!
PS what annoys me isn’t the presences of a dog– it’s when an author uses the same sort of dog over and over. that’s like using the same stock character over and over. I think Crusie sort of goes for the small, pathetic, shivering type (of dog).
The first Crusie I ever read was Anybody But You, and Fred the Dog worked there as a character. Same with the dog in Crazy for You. Other than that? Eh, I would rather they were omitted, to tell the truth. Yes, the dog in WtT was supposed to signal (I think) Sophie’s establishment of family/roots in Temptation, along with the reminder that she cares for people, is the responsible one, always picking up after them and nurturing them. But the repeated use is kinda stale.
Plus, why always dogs? Are there no other pets that can be used as metaphors? What about ferrets? Birds? Just no more yappy little dogs.
Happy bday! 🙂
Dogs can so work in romances – for evidence, I cite The Truth about Cats and Dogs.
Or, that Tom Hanks movie, Turner and Hooch. Now, that dog was a great character, and it made perfect sense to draw Hanks into a romance with the vet.
I’d forgotten The Truth About Cats and Dogs. I should rent that . . . Janeane Garofalo is cute 😉
Thanks for the happy bdays, too.
I’m biased, but I’d rather have the author use a dog as a means of character development or to demonstrate his/her kindness to innocents than have the author drop a drooly cherubic child into a romance.
Yeah, I like the use of the dogs in Crazy for/Anyone But You. And even Elvis the cat in Bet Me. The other Crusie dogs are kinda just there so she can have a dog in ’em.
The real question is: what about Moot the alligator in Don’t Look Down?