Dog Dad, How Animals Bring Out the Best In Us and Can Help Save the World, by Topher Brophy (Vertel Publishing, $27.99 HB, 2022, 241 pp) Review by Skye Anderson
Slightly mistitled, Dog Dad could be divided into three parts: before Dog, life story until a revelation, and life after the revelation. We follow author Topher Brophy from New York City as a boy, through his college fraternity days, to his travels and tribulations around the world, ending up back in New York living with his parents and undergoing therapy.
Always a writer and a philosopher, yet also an introvert who shares his feelings of inferiority profusely, perhaps overly profusely, Topher Brophy does manage to find his lifelong mate and that is a story unto itself, but this book should be about being a dog dad and the bond between man and dog.
Dog does manage to save Man and turn his life around, as dogs do for all of us. After all, we have to let them out a few times a day, exercise them, etc., but, in turn, they open up a new world for us to inhabit, the world of dog parks, and people wanting to pet our dog, and people wanting to talk about their dog, ad infinitum or so it seems!
Topher and Rosenberg
Perhaps you know of Topher? Starting in 2016, photos of him and his dog Rosenberg appeared - dressed alike - all over. The woman photographer who created these photos turns out to play a major role in the rest of the book, but still, Dog Dad is written as if by a philosopher, not a storyteller.
Murphy's Law
What can go wrong, will go wrong. As author Brophy succeeds in life and gains self-confidence, unfortunate things happen to him and his family - but he recovers. We especially (sort of) enjoyed the Pandemic snafus when Rosenberg runs off, the Brophys leave New York for a healthier rental house in the country only to have the landlord need it back to live in, himself - from getting stuck in snowstorms to getting soaked in rainstorms on the way to the hospital to welcome into this world a baby. These are things we just have to live through so we can reminisce about them ten years later.
Now, Back to Instagram
Invited to be interviewed on television, Brophy had to be convinced yet he had a wonderful time. Unfortunately, the editor edited out all the good things and the slanted version that was televised almost made Brophy hide under a rock. He managed to survive because of the charities he believed in and donated to, plus realizing that photos of himself and Rosemberg just could change the world and make it better a little. See for yourself on the book cover, on Instagram, on Facebook.
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