A wonderful account in photographs and text of training a Labrador puppy, as well as a poignant memoir of love and loss.
"A writer's writer whose voice was among the most distinctive in contemporary American letters, Bob Jones was a dog man to his very marrow. Poignant, passionate, and profoundly insightful, Gone to the Dogs is his valediction--and I can't imagine a more fitting one. With Bob's wife Louise offering her own wise, clear-eyed perspective on the canine companions they loved in common and son Benno's beguiling photographs, Gone to the Dogs, like the press of a muzzle against your thigh, cuts straight to the heart."
--Tom Davis, Senior Editor and Gundogs columnist for Sporting Classics and author of Why Dogs Do That, To The Point, and The Tattered Autumn Sky.
"What Bob started, Louise lovingly and seamlessly finished. Gone to the Dogs is an honest, at times joyful, look into the life of one of the country's finest writers and one of his true passions - dogs. Benno's photographs capture the essence of this lifetime pursuit. This one takes off where Upland Passage and Jake ended."
--John Holt author of Hunted: A Novel and Coyote Nowhere
Robert F. Jones was one of the foremost outdoor writers in America. He was also a novelist of great prowess. His thirteen books include the novels Blood Sport; The Buffalo Runners; Deadville; and The Run to Gitche Gumee, and his nonfiction includes Hunter in My Heart, Dancers in the Sunset Sky, and Upland Passage (page 156). He is an American literary treasure.
Louise Jones, a senior writer and book columnist for Stratton Magazine in southern Vermont, is also a longtime bookseller at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont. Her work has appeared in Organic Gardening and Country Journal. She lives in West Rupert, Vermont.
Benno Jones is a photographer living in Seattle, Washington. His work has appeared in shows at Photographic Center Northwest and in Shooting Sportsman magazine and the Manchester Journal. This is his first book.
Dogs enrich our lives, teach us to be our better selves, and offer unconditional love as only they can. A life lived with dogs cannot be recalled without including canine companions.
Robert F. Jones has written about his dogs in previous books. There was Luke, the great black Lab who was the perfect bird dog, and a beloved friend. When Jones worried that Luke’s time was short, he brought a yellow Lab puppy, Jake, into his home. The account of Jake’s training was documented in the charming book Upland Passage.
Ten years later, Jones began to worry about Jake’s age and health. That’s when Bart came into the picture. Bart was an irascible and adorable black Lab puppy, whom the Joneses, Jake, and their Jack Russell terrier, Roz, welcomed into their home. Jones and Jake together began training Bart to become a bird dog. Gone to the Dogs was meant to be not only an account of Bart’s tutelage under Jake, but also of all the dogs in the Joneses’ lives. But Jake did not live to see Bart come into his own. And worse, Robert Jones didn’t either. What began as an account of the young life of Bart, became a much deeper story about the love of dogs and their human companions, the enrichment that relationship can bring to a life, and the profound transforming effects of love and loss.
Louise Jones has completed Bart’s story and in doing so, she has offered a lasting testament to the lives of Jake and all their dogs and to her late husband, Robert F. Jones.
Imprint: The Lyons Press
Distributor: The Globe Pequot Press
Publication Date: 09-01-2004
Pages: 96
Measurements: 9.00in X 8.00in
