Guest Post
by Laurie Ann Thompson
     As you can probably guess with a book title like My Dog Is the Best, I love dogs! I can thank my family for this, since I grew up having dogs my whole life. In fact, for the first three or so years of my life, I’m pretty sure I thought I was a dog. As a toddler I ate and drank from the dog bowls regularly, and once—before I was even old enough to walk—I disappeared from the house completely, only to be found later out in the doghouse snuggled in with the puppies. I must have crawled out the dog door. Thank goodness we had a tolerant mama dog!
      Throughout my childhood, dogs were always my best friends. I dressed them up in doll clothes, pushed them in the baby swing and toted them up to the treehouse. They rode my horse with me and sat in my bicycle basket, ears streaming. They slept in my bed, were perfect listeners, and let me cry into their fur on many occasions. Later still, they had final approval (or disapproval) of any boy I brought home. If my dog didn’t like them, I knew they weren’t worth my time.       My Grandpa was full of humor and personality, and he had a number of saying that are ingrained in my speech and thinking to this day. As a dog lover himself, one of those sayings was to describe a good dog as “one of the better dogs.” He was always saying that about his dog, Porky Pig, and I thought it was pretty special. Whenever he would meet one of my dogs for the first time, I would worry that my beloved companion might not make the cut. What if my dog wasn’t “one of the better dogs?” But, much to my relief, they always were.
      It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that every dog is “one of the better dogs.” When we share our lives with a dog and let it into our hearts, it doesn’t matter what that dog’s flaws might be—and they all have them, just like we do—that dog that we love is the best.
      My current dog, Prim, would be considered by most to be unadoptable: she can’t walk, she suffers from anxiety and abandonment issues, and she sometimes barks too much and drives us all crazy. Still, we fell in love and adopted her, becoming “foster failures” for the first time. She is definitely “one of the better dogs.” In fact, I’d go so far as to say my dog is the best. And, if you love a dog, I’m absolutely positive yours is, too, just like the dog in my book.      My Dog Is the Best is the funny, lighthearted story of a young boy with an active imagination and an abundance of energy. He knows with all his heart that his lethargic but tolerant dog is the best. They may not always be in sync, but it really doesn’t matter to either one of them: They’re just happy to be together.       I think most of us dog lovers can relate.

BIO:
      A former software engineer, Laurie Ann Thompson now writes for children and young adults to help her readers–and herself–make better sense of the world we live in, so they can contribute making it a better place for all of us. She strives to write nonfiction that gives wings to active imaginations and fiction that taps into our universal human truths, as seen in her books BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS, a teen how-to guide filled with practical advice and inspiration for young social entrepreneurs; EMMANUEL’S DREAM: THE TRUE STORY OF EMMANUEL OFOSU YEBOAH, a picture book biography of a young man who changed Ghana’s perception of people with disabilities; and MY DOG IS THE BEST, a fiction picture book about the bond that exists between a child and a beloved family pet. Learn more at lauriethompson.com and on Twitter at @lauriethompson.

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