They Drive My Muse: Dogs and the Craft of Writing

Let me tell you about Arthur and Gladys

There are days when I sit at my desk and I think of quitting. I mean really quitting. This will be my last book! Shoving my research and paperwork into my bag, turning off the flickering screen, and going outside to center myself. When I taught English, the results were measurable in the rapport I developed with my students and the people I worked closely with. But when you’re a writer, there isn’t that immediate response to validate your words. People aren’t there to tell you what they really think after reading a sentence or one paragraph. You’re all alone, writing these small sections of prose that will hopefully add up to something. But who is there during the slog, the indecision, the sheer hell of getting that one word right?

Gladys and Arthur

And then I hear the familiar clatter of nails against the hardwood. He comes padding in with that tilted head—half question, half judgment—and flops down near my feet like a hairy punctuation mark. My dog, Arthur. a soft- coated wheaten terrier, is more philosopher than anything else. Aloof and often distant, he exhibits that keen laser focus bred into terriers. The thing about Arthur is, he doesn’t know what procrastination is or writer’s block or what it looks like when I second guess something and delete an entire day’s work. He doesn’t understand what it means to be stuck between metaphors. But he knows presence. He knows how and when is the perfect time to be in a room. And when he knows it, then Gladys, my reluctant Frenchie, knows to take Arthur’s cue and follow him.

And that—somehow—has come to mean a whole lot to me. Being alone with the dogs at the cottage for a few days, a chance to escape and write without all the “noise” of living in the city, I think I understood the subtle ways these two animals move me and support me.

Dogs Fill an Empty Room

Writing is, to be blunt, a lonely man’s sport. Not lonely like a sad country song, but lonely like sitting-in-your-underwear-talking-to-yourself-for-six-hours lonely. Even the voices in your head need someone to bark at them occasionally.

When a dog is in the room, the silence feels less threatening. You’re not alone; you’re accompanied. There’s a breathing, blinking, twitchy-eared creature who neither judges nor interrupts, who never says your plot is “derivative” or “unfocused.” A dog doesn’t care if your character arc is too subtle or if you used “as if” one too many times. A dog just is. And that “is-ness” is contagious.

Sometimes Gladys will nudge my leg when I’ve been in my head too long, when the sentence I’ve rewritten nine times still reads like it was written by a caffeinated squirrel. She reminds me to breathe. To take a break. To walk, preferably to her bag of treats. To look up. These are not small things.

Dogs turn the solitary into the shared, even when not a word is exchanged.

A Tail-Wagging History of Inspiration

Great writers have always known the value of a good dog. Virginia Woolf had Pinka, a cocker spaniel who was more confidante than pet. E.B. White wrote Charlotte’s Web with a dachshund on his lap and a barnyard in his heart. Steinbeck took Charley on a road trip and found not only America, but the rhythm of longing.

I imagine them all, hunched over papers or battered typewriters, while their dogs slept nearby—sometimes snoring, sometimes sighing deeply, as if burdened by the weight of their humans’ genius. These animals were not muses in the traditional sense; they didn’t whisper in iambic pentameter or lyrically set a novel in a place so different and yet familiar to the reader. But their influence was no less real. They brought the writer back to earth when the ideas got too high, too heady, too far removed from the blood and breath of the real world.

Dogs root you. They remind you that you’re responsible for their care. They need to eat and pee and shit and very often that’s far more important that trying to weed out your overused adjectives.

Dogs Are Masters of Economy

I’ve spent hours—days, if I’m honest—trying to get the rhythm of a single line right. To distill the mess of emotion into something lean, something true. Dogs don’t have that problem.

A single look from Arthur—his eyes just slightly squinted, that head tilt that says, “You again?”—contains volumes. He can say more with one heavy sigh or whine than I can say with a thesaurus and a deadline. There is a kind of emotional economy in dogs that writers should study. We bury our truths in clauses and subtext. They embody theirs.

Watching a dog is like reading Hemingway: deceptively simple, almost abrupt, but layered with feeling. They don’t explain. They don’t rationalize. They do. A tail wag is a sentence. A paw on your forearm is a paragraph. A whine is a cry of desire.

If only I could write like that.

Therapy by Fur and Fang

Let me switch gears for a moment. I want to talk about the days when writing isn’t romantic, isn’t mystical, isn’t even productive. Lets face it . . . that is most days! The days when the page is a mirror and what you see looking back is failure, fatigue, fear. It happens to all of us. The imposter syndrome, the creative collapse, the dread of your own thoughts.

The science is clear: petting a dog lowers cortisol, raises oxytocin, slows your breathing. But the heart of it can’t be captured in graphs. It’s the emotional permission dogs give us to not be okay. Arthur has stayed close to me when he knows I’m upset or feeling blue. Gladys curls against me in moments when I didn’t need advice, only closeness. That’s therapy, even if she doesn’t charge by the hour.

As a writer, this emotional grounding is essential. You can’t write authentically about pain if you’re trying to outrun it. You can’t write joyfully if you don’t feel safe. Dogs make us safe. They sit vigil beside our mess and remind us we’re still good even when the prose isn’t. My previous dog, BOO, named after the character Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, always made me feel this way. He was my gentle giant, a silver grey weimaraner that had such an affect on me that he figures prominently in my new book, All the Good Sinners. There was just something about him, an understanding between us that always set my mind at ease. God, how I miss Boo.

BOO with my youngest son, Simon. Twelve years ago on he dock.

The Humor in It All

Before I run the risk of over-sainting the creatures, dogs are also ridiculous and a lot of work and costly. Not to mention they can get into all sorts of situations that make you hold your breath: Arthur fights other dogs at the park, got sprayed by a skunk and ran into the house, rolling on carpets and couches. Gladys was born with a heart defect so expensive surgery and lifelong monitoring will be in her future for the rest of her life. I’ll never forget the time Arthur lifted his leg over a young family having a picnic in the park and peed on them and all their carefully prepared dinner. I was horrified! Just thinking about it again dredges up so many awful feelings.

Some stories, it seems, are meant to be unearthed. If only to remind you of those dormant feelings. It also reminds you not take yourself too seriously with a dog around. And that’s a good thing. Writing that is too self-important becomes brittle. A dog keeps you honest. Keeps you laughing. Keeps you wiping drool off your keyboard and in my Frenchie’s case, wiping her bum after every poo. Nothing like that interruption to stop a run-on sentence.

Writing Is a Bodily Act

I used to think writing was all in the head. That it lived in the folds of the brain, somewhere between vocabulary and trauma. But the longer I do this work, the more I realize it’s physical. It’s in the gut, the chest, the fingertips. And if writing is a bodily act, then dogs—those walking bundles of nerve and joy—are perfect companions.

They teach you to move. To stretch. To feel the sun on your face after five hours of digital cave-dwelling. They remind you that the body has needs. That the mind is sharper when the blood is moving. I’ve solved more plot holes on walks with these two dogs than I have staring at blinking cursors. And when they are allowed to roam free up at the cottage or just lay on the deck by the water, there is a peace about them and I allow myself to take deep breath and relax.

The Final Scratch Behind the Ears

In the end, maybe the reason dogs matter to the act of writing is simple: they keep us human. And writing—at its best—is an act of profound humanity. It’s how we bear witness. How we connect. How we survive.

A dog doesn’t understand theme or point of view. But they understand presence. And that’s what writing asks of us. To be here. Fully. Honestly. Messily.

So if you ever find yourself staring at a blank page and wondering if you’ve lost it—if the words have packed up and moved to someone else’s brain—get a dog. Or borrow one. Or just go to a park and watch how they live. How they love.

And then go back to your desk. There’s work to be done. Hopefully there’s a tail thumping softly by your feet and the steady snore of a frenchie with a bad heart.