By Gary Lloyd

Presented without context, here are some memorable quotes that will appear in my next book, Sonny Days.

“Dogs have been everything to me. My best friends were dogs. They were the ones who didn’t ask questions. They were the ones who unconditionally gave you that kind of fix that you needed, that love. They were very important to me all throughout my life. Every year of my life can be measured in the dog that I had. If I talk about one dog, i have a specific feeling about where I was and all that. It’s amazing how much they have guided me into adulthood.”

“I think that animals come to you when you need them. All three of my dogs came to me when I was not looking for a dog. All three of them have done things for me when they came to me that I needed desperately at the time I might not have known or might not have been able to get in another way.”

“I think research is showing more and more that they recognize and respond to our feelings and emotions. You see that with service dogs for veterans with PTSD and comfort animals for special needs kids. They truly ‘feel’ our feelings.”

“There’s something really poignant about the relationship when you take this dog and it’s had this really hard life. I think having a rescue dog as opposed to a dog from a breeder, it’s just that much more poignant given their history.”

“Dogs are love. Plain and simple. They’re just love. I’ve spent a lot of time in the world looking for love, trying to see it, and you can. If you look hard enough, you really can see love. You can put your hands on it. You can touch it. You can feel it. When I drop off dogs, end of summer and it’s warm, the people will be sitting in the grass, after everything is said and done, and they’re all touching their dog, they’re putting their hands all over the dogs. The dogs are licking them. The dogs are happy. Tails are wagging. People are smiling and giggling. And I can stand there and look out over that grassy area, and I can see love. The dog is love. The dog is a companion. The dog is so many things, but first and foremost, a dog is love.”

Keep an eye out for this book in the not-so-distant future!