Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

As much as I love reading, I am relatively new to graphic novels, comics, manga, and other illustrated works. I requested an ARC of You’re Not a Real Dog Owner Until … by Scott Dooley and Jason Chatfield to broaden my perspective on this mixed media form of literature. (It didn’t hurt that I am a dog lover!)

If you know me, you know all about my experience owning my first ever dog, the late Puccini, the very best dog who ever lived! We adopted him in 2011 when he was four years old, from our now dear friend Sister Marie, who adopted him from a rescue organization when he was nine months old. We don’t know what Puccini’s first nine months of his life were like, but we do know that his remaining fifteen years were spectacular. He was beloved by Sister Marie, and beloved by my family. When his health quickly deteriorated in October of 2022, we were devastated and did everything we could to save him, but in the end, nothing worked, and his quality of life was simply not worth putting him through anything more. As a writer, the only way I could process what I was feeling was to “write it out,” thus the obituary I posted here on my website. If you choose to read it, have a tissue ready.

We are currently dog-less, but we hope to remedy this very soon. We are recently retired and wanted to wait to get a puppy once we had done a bit of travel. Pretty soon, there will be lots of essays on my website about our new family member…as I just can’t wait for this to happen!

Back to this new book! First of all, this book is full of truths. Every. Single. Page. If you own a dog now, or ever owned a dog in the past, you will see yourself in every cartoon. I don’t know Scott Dooley and Jason Chatfield, but it is pretty clear that these two men OWN DOGS.

The illustrations are realistic but in a cartoonish way. The dogs depicted on each page have personality, whether it is in their pose or in their eyes or in the way they are holding their tongue. The slightly maligned expression of the humans on each page is eerily reminiscent of feelings I’ve had when my dear Puccini was up to no good.

At 130 pages, this is a quick “read,” since the captions to each cartoon are short and to the point. However, comparing each cartoon and its caption to your own dog-owning experiences will take much longer!

This is a fun book, and would be a great present to your favorite dog owner, which of course is best captured by the cartoon on page 78, a man sitting next to his Christmas tree sipping a hot beverage from a mug that reads, “World’s Best Doggy Daddy,” while the piles of gifts at his feet are all presents for his dog! The caption: “You’re not a real dog owner until…gifts for you are all dog-related!”

Thank you to NetGalley and Andrew’s McMeel Publishing for this fun read!