I read this story on my phone before work and thought it was remarkable and then, embarrassingly, only hours later realized, "Oh and they HAVE pets," that the pet-name title has a very obvious double-meaning that just went completely over my head because of the amazingly *nested* feeling in this whole story. There's the kernal of the pet name issue, and of the characters' relationship, that then gets wrapped in some details of their respective romantic pasts, and then we come back to the kernal issue, which is expanded/made complicated by the pets, and then we get wrapped in the details of how these pets (or their avatars) factored into earlier relationships, those questions of safety/nurturing/etc.
There's this imagery over and over of the two lovers wrapped and snug in bed together with the dogs and there's something about the way the story's constructed that...it kinda mirrors that? Like the way the issue at the center keeps getting wrapped up in all these other details, other anecdotes, earlier loves--they're all about affection, and holding, and bonding. This is the only thing I've ever read that seems to EXIST under blankets.
I once found a weird gray block at a thrift store, it was $1, so I scanned it with Google Lens and it turned out to be like a $400 Lenovo charging dock. I picked it up and walked it to the register feeling like a criminal. Bought it for $1. Walked out and got to my car and didn't quite believe I was holding it.
That's kinda the feeling I have about this story. Like I just popped into my local hangout and found a legitimately capital-G great short story. But I don't wanna draw attention to my own enthusiasm?
I've been thinking about this on and off for the 20ish hours since I read it.
Wow, Alex, thank you for reading so thoughtfully and well. I'm so glad I can sneak a $400 story in as a $1 one!
Yes, I was thinking a lot about nesting here: layers of blankets, of trust and comfort and distrust in a new relationship, of memory and baggage from old relationships, of human and animal love. As we get older, it's less possible to have a "pure" new love without everybody bringing their relationship history into it, so I was thinking of that too. And I wanted to foreground pet love and push human love to the background, to see if that was maybe a new way of writing a love story. Just adjusting the focus, basically.
This felt to me like a river of voice: thought, memory, desire, humor, fear—moving fast, almost faster than you can keep track of it, and somehow never losing its footing.
What I admire most is how unforced the language feels. This is the kind of voice-driven fiction that can so easily tip into contrivance, and here it just doesn’t.
There’s a real ease to the way it unfolds. It’s confident without being showy, intimate without trying to charm. Nothing stops to explain itself or translate what it’s doing for the reader. The prose trusts its own momentum, and you can feel that trust as a reader.
And it just swept me up.
And the ending, I love it. It doesn’t resolve or explain. It stops while everything is still happening: words still being said, dogs still breathing, the present still fragile and alive. The story refuses to step back and turn the moment into something finished.
We aren’t spared the knowledge that loss is coming—we’re spared having to watch it happen. The story stops short, and suddenly the weight shifts. We carry the rest.
The ending isn’t avoiding pain. It’s holding onto the conditions that made the writing possible in the first place.
Some stories don’t end because they’re finished. They end because that’s as much tenderness as the moment can bear.
Good gracious, Courtney, excellent writing. I know all writers have moments of doubt about their ability to write but please don’t ever let those go on for so much as a half second; that’d be a lifetime too long.
I’ve read several articles from your Craft Lab for Writers sub. They’re very helpful. It’s such a rush seeing someone who clearly knows the writing craft well lay down something this good under their own pen. Appreciate you sharing this with TMR and on here.
One thing I noticed and truly loved about this story is the use of dogs as this echo and beacon for loss. The characters are clearly still working through lingering pain from divorce and break up. The perfect use of dogs here fits so well in that dogs never outlive us. They may outlive a relationship, as they did in this story with the main chars’ ex, but dogs always carry with them an event of imminent loss, as do relationships. Not necessarily complete loss or dying of a relationship, but certainly a passing of particular aspects (remember when we used to ____) often times these things we look back on as having lost are those found in the early stage of a relationship, such a wonderful arena to set this story. Look forward to reading your book.
Thanks, Matt. This especially means a lot to me: "It’s such a rush seeing someone who clearly knows the writing craft well lay down something this good under their own pen." It's fun to teach, but of course we never want to be the "those who can't do..."
And thanks, too, for saying that about the self-doubt. I've definitely had some rough goes at the book-publishing world (though to be fair, I've been pretty lucky in the story/essay-publishing world, and I was finally able to get a story collection out with a smaller press), but I'm just about to finish final edits on my new novel now, so this comes at a particularly good time.
Great read, re: dogs as beacon for loss. It's true that we're always at risk of losing those we love, but at least with a partner or a child, we can pretend the risk isn't there so strongly. But with a dog, we know that's not just the risk but the eventual promise. Thanks for drawing that parallel with the loss of that fleeting early relationship stage.
I hear you on the “those who cant do” thing… I don’t buy that much. If Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff can teach, imo, a writer can do both if she/he chooses. I’m grateful for all writers who share what they learn and know. I was more referring to the way you went for it on the page. You wrote about human stuff that matters, in a beautiful way. That builds next level trust with readers. Wishing you best of luck and prosperity with your work, craft advice and fiction.
Excellent piece. Examining different realms of love (both the romantic and “pet”-onic varieties) and their parallels was quite the brilliant stroke. Masterly executed as well. Nicely done!
Thank you! I set myself the game of seeing what might happen with a love story in which I foregrounded the new love of dogs and backgrounded the new love between the people.
Catching up on posts I saved months ago. Oh no, I thought, she’s going to fall in love with his dogs before she knows if she loves him. The way you shifted the viewpoint between the two so often yet so seamlessly made this an engaging read. Quantum entanglement indeed.
Thank you for reading, Abra! I was thinking about how to tell a love story where the human love was in the background and some other love in the foreground. Glad you felt that "oh no" in there :)
I read this story on my phone before work and thought it was remarkable and then, embarrassingly, only hours later realized, "Oh and they HAVE pets," that the pet-name title has a very obvious double-meaning that just went completely over my head because of the amazingly *nested* feeling in this whole story. There's the kernal of the pet name issue, and of the characters' relationship, that then gets wrapped in some details of their respective romantic pasts, and then we come back to the kernal issue, which is expanded/made complicated by the pets, and then we get wrapped in the details of how these pets (or their avatars) factored into earlier relationships, those questions of safety/nurturing/etc.
There's this imagery over and over of the two lovers wrapped and snug in bed together with the dogs and there's something about the way the story's constructed that...it kinda mirrors that? Like the way the issue at the center keeps getting wrapped up in all these other details, other anecdotes, earlier loves--they're all about affection, and holding, and bonding. This is the only thing I've ever read that seems to EXIST under blankets.
I once found a weird gray block at a thrift store, it was $1, so I scanned it with Google Lens and it turned out to be like a $400 Lenovo charging dock. I picked it up and walked it to the register feeling like a criminal. Bought it for $1. Walked out and got to my car and didn't quite believe I was holding it.
That's kinda the feeling I have about this story. Like I just popped into my local hangout and found a legitimately capital-G great short story. But I don't wanna draw attention to my own enthusiasm?
I've been thinking about this on and off for the 20ish hours since I read it.
Wow, Alex, thank you for reading so thoughtfully and well. I'm so glad I can sneak a $400 story in as a $1 one!
Yes, I was thinking a lot about nesting here: layers of blankets, of trust and comfort and distrust in a new relationship, of memory and baggage from old relationships, of human and animal love. As we get older, it's less possible to have a "pure" new love without everybody bringing their relationship history into it, so I was thinking of that too. And I wanted to foreground pet love and push human love to the background, to see if that was maybe a new way of writing a love story. Just adjusting the focus, basically.
Again, and sincerely: thank you.
This felt to me like a river of voice: thought, memory, desire, humor, fear—moving fast, almost faster than you can keep track of it, and somehow never losing its footing.
What I admire most is how unforced the language feels. This is the kind of voice-driven fiction that can so easily tip into contrivance, and here it just doesn’t.
There’s a real ease to the way it unfolds. It’s confident without being showy, intimate without trying to charm. Nothing stops to explain itself or translate what it’s doing for the reader. The prose trusts its own momentum, and you can feel that trust as a reader.
And it just swept me up.
And the ending, I love it. It doesn’t resolve or explain. It stops while everything is still happening: words still being said, dogs still breathing, the present still fragile and alive. The story refuses to step back and turn the moment into something finished.
We aren’t spared the knowledge that loss is coming—we’re spared having to watch it happen. The story stops short, and suddenly the weight shifts. We carry the rest.
The ending isn’t avoiding pain. It’s holding onto the conditions that made the writing possible in the first place.
Some stories don’t end because they’re finished. They end because that’s as much tenderness as the moment can bear.
What a beautiful response to my story! Thank you. This is what writers write for.
Hi Courtney,
I’m so glad it connected. Thank you for the lovely note.
Wishing you a happy New Year.
Good gracious, Courtney, excellent writing. I know all writers have moments of doubt about their ability to write but please don’t ever let those go on for so much as a half second; that’d be a lifetime too long.
I’ve read several articles from your Craft Lab for Writers sub. They’re very helpful. It’s such a rush seeing someone who clearly knows the writing craft well lay down something this good under their own pen. Appreciate you sharing this with TMR and on here.
One thing I noticed and truly loved about this story is the use of dogs as this echo and beacon for loss. The characters are clearly still working through lingering pain from divorce and break up. The perfect use of dogs here fits so well in that dogs never outlive us. They may outlive a relationship, as they did in this story with the main chars’ ex, but dogs always carry with them an event of imminent loss, as do relationships. Not necessarily complete loss or dying of a relationship, but certainly a passing of particular aspects (remember when we used to ____) often times these things we look back on as having lost are those found in the early stage of a relationship, such a wonderful arena to set this story. Look forward to reading your book.
Thanks, Matt. This especially means a lot to me: "It’s such a rush seeing someone who clearly knows the writing craft well lay down something this good under their own pen." It's fun to teach, but of course we never want to be the "those who can't do..."
And thanks, too, for saying that about the self-doubt. I've definitely had some rough goes at the book-publishing world (though to be fair, I've been pretty lucky in the story/essay-publishing world, and I was finally able to get a story collection out with a smaller press), but I'm just about to finish final edits on my new novel now, so this comes at a particularly good time.
Great read, re: dogs as beacon for loss. It's true that we're always at risk of losing those we love, but at least with a partner or a child, we can pretend the risk isn't there so strongly. But with a dog, we know that's not just the risk but the eventual promise. Thanks for drawing that parallel with the loss of that fleeting early relationship stage.
I hear you on the “those who cant do” thing… I don’t buy that much. If Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff can teach, imo, a writer can do both if she/he chooses. I’m grateful for all writers who share what they learn and know. I was more referring to the way you went for it on the page. You wrote about human stuff that matters, in a beautiful way. That builds next level trust with readers. Wishing you best of luck and prosperity with your work, craft advice and fiction.
Excellent piece. Examining different realms of love (both the romantic and “pet”-onic varieties) and their parallels was quite the brilliant stroke. Masterly executed as well. Nicely done!
Thank you! I set myself the game of seeing what might happen with a love story in which I foregrounded the new love of dogs and backgrounded the new love between the people.
Catching up on posts I saved months ago. Oh no, I thought, she’s going to fall in love with his dogs before she knows if she loves him. The way you shifted the viewpoint between the two so often yet so seamlessly made this an engaging read. Quantum entanglement indeed.
Thank you for reading, Abra! I was thinking about how to tell a love story where the human love was in the background and some other love in the foreground. Glad you felt that "oh no" in there :)
Beautiful! I, too, fell in love with his dog first.
It's a real phenomenon! Hope the good dog-love led to good person-love.
This is wonderful, Courtney.
Thank you, Vinny! Glad you liked it.
Beach Boys Album "Pet Sounds" came out in 1966. Brian Wilson would be proud
I am listening to that album right now!!
beautiful, thank you
Thank you!