WALKING WITH TWO SHADOWS

This memoir celebrates the bonds in life and the hereafter between a woman and her dogs.

Following up on Walking With the Shadow of Love (2013), her tribute to her dog Zeak and his ongoing presence after his death from cancer, Bowblis—a retired art teacher living in New Jersey—sketches a loving profile of Lakota, her black Labrador. An appealing, charismatic pooch, Lakota was athletic when madly pursuing tennis balls, stalwart in standing his ground against other canines, yet so gentle with children and older people that he became a beloved therapy dog. Lakota succumbed to a tangle of ailments but he consoled the distraught author by contacting her from the beyond in dream visitations, waking apparitions, ghostly outlines in photographs, and a fleeting sense that he was lying beside her in bed. Thus heartened, Bowblis adopted Kaya, a border collie who seemed tranquil at the shelter but turned into a terror at home, chewing everything within reach and relieving herself on the carpet. Heroic training ensued—the author would keep the dog tethered to her all day as a calming maneuver—that transformed Kaya into a better girl. Bowblis salutes other canine acquaintances as well, including Shy-Ann, her son’s Doberman, who died of a heart attack while chasing a bear, and delivers stories from animal lovers like Samantha, whose cat died of cancer but then returned as the sensation of an invisible feline rubbing against her legs. The author paints richly textured portraits of relationships between very involved owners and their pets, exploring everything from the niceties of obedience training to intimate canine toothbrushing techniques. She conveys it all in prose that’s vividly evocative and emotionally stirring. (“This exhausted dog would not go inside without doing his job one last time, and he headed for the mailbox to get the newspaper,” Bowblis writes of a dying Lakota. “He reached up into the newspaper tube and took the paper out. Five times on the way in, he stopped to lie down and rest….He brought it all the way into the house and dropped it at my feet. Then he collapsed into a deep sleep.”) This engrossing and luminous account of how canines weave themselves into people’s souls will resonate with dog lovers.

A poignant homage to animals and the psychological ties they forge with human companions.