The Best Dog in the World

Edited by Alice Hoffman

I went into The Best Dog in the World expecting something light, and ended up lingering over a genuinely great collection of short, deeply personal stories—each one offering not just a dog, but a window into the writer behind it. I appreciated how much of the book quietly reveals about the authors’ lives, their routines, their grief, and the oddly specific ways their dogs fit into all of it, which made the essays feel more intimate than I expected. Across several pieces, there are clear nods to the pandemic era, moments shaped by isolation, anxiety, and that strange slowing of time which added another layer of context without overwhelming the central theme. By the end, it felt less like a simple anthology about dogs and more like a snapshot of a particular period in people’s lives, captured through the constant, grounding presence of their animals.