Golden Retriever Quotes

So when the moon's only partly full, you only feel a little wolfy?" "You could say that." "Well, you can go ahead and hang your head out the car window if you feel like it." "I'm a werewolf, not a golden retriever.

I'm a werewolf, not a golden retriever." (Luke/Lucian)

The little ball went up, then down, then up in his palm. My inner golden retriever couldn’t look away.

Hey, do you know what you call a blond with a brain?" I asked, and the continued on the same breath, "a golden retriever." I've heard that one, too," she said, no longer smiling. I'll keep trying." I promised.

Well, you can go ahead and hang your head out the car window if you feel like it.” Luke laughed. “I‘m a werewolf, not a golden retriever.” -Clary & Luke, pg.415-

I am the planet's most affectionate life-form, something like the cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle.

It is not mysterious to be home on a Saturday night, reading a novel in a pile of smelly golden retrievers.

Golden retrievers are not bred to be guard dogs, and considering the size of their hearts and their irrepressible joy in life, they are less likely to bite than to bark, less likely to bark than to lick a hand in greeting. In spite of their size, they think they are lap dogs, and in spite of being dogs, they think they are also human, and nearly every human they meet is judged to have the potential to be a boon companion who might, at many moment, cry, "Let's go!" and lead them on a great adventure.

The face of a golden retriever feels like home.

Well you can go ahead and hand your head out the window if you feel like it" "I'm a werewolf not a golden retriever

You have a roommate." "Yeah." He sounds confused. "The, um, picture on your door surprised me." "NO. No. I prefer my women with...fewer carnivorous beasts and less weaponry." He pauses and smiles. "Naked is okay. What she needs are a golden retriever and a telescope. Maybe then it would do it for me." I laugh. "A squirrel and a laboratory beaker?" "A bunny rabbit and a flip chart," I say. "Only if the flip chart has mathematical equations on it." I fake swoon onto his bed. "Too much, too much!

Moments of quiet friendship are what make life-everyone's life-grand

This is who I am. I am loving but wounded, and I need someone to take me as I am.

Okay, you drive," she said. "I'll sit with m head hanging out of the window like a golden retriever.

Rev is about as aggressive as an old golden retriever.

The dogs brought it all back to, you know, to the human side.

If Levi were a dog, he'd be a golden retriever. If he were a game, he'd be a Ping-Pong, incessant and bouncing and light.

When he lay beside me with his dog-breath sighs, it was if he was saying, Give me your sadness. I will take it, as much as you need. If it kills us both, so be it. I am here.

Nick is actually the human embodiment of a golden retriever puppy, as well as being Truham’s rugby captain and a genuinely lovely person.

We don’t even have a goldfish.” “You’ve got to think toward the future.” My dad smiled at me. “Maybe one day you’ll move out and your mom and I will get a golden retriever to replace you.

Good dog," Nick said. "That's one of the tricks I've taught him, shaking water on girls so they back into my arms." "Really! How smart of Rocky - and you, of course." "That's another thing I've been wanting to tell you," he said, turning me to face him. "I'm tired of getting jealous of my dog. I mean, he has nice eyes, but so do I." I looked from Rocky's golden eyes to Nick's laughing green ones. "I didn't enjoy the way Rocky got to stick close to you while I played Holly's boyfriend. He's going to have some competition from now on." "Oh, yeah? Are you good at retrieving sticks?" "I'm good at stealing kisses," Nick said, then proved it.

well, you can go ahead and hang your head out the car window if you feel like it" He laughed. "I'm a werewolf not a golden retriever.

I am, in fact, committed to being honest with myself so that I can overcome this situation. This includes not succumbing to the path of least resistance (denial) but rather the path of hardship which I know will lead to my evolution.

The theory is simple. Every boy, every man, is really a bit of a golden retriever or a big chocolate Lab. Watch any man's eyes at the bounce of a ball. His head tilts slightly sideways, just a hair, as a primitive focus comes to life.

The voice in my head is is fond of upper-case. It's like having a sub-cranial golden retriever.

That's the moment when Tuesday, after all his caution, stopped being just my service dog, and my emotional support, and my conversation piece. That's when he became my friend.

Charlotte: Giordano is terribly afraid Gwyneth will get everything wrong tomorrow that she can get wrong. Gideon: Pass the olive oil, please. Charlotte: Politics and history are a closed book to Gwyneth. She can’t even remember names—they go in at one ear and straight out of the other. She can’t help it, her brain doesn’t have the capacity. It’s stuffed with the names of boy bands and long, long cast lists of actors in soppy romantic films. Raphael: Gwyneth is your time-traveling cousin, right? I saw her yesterday in school. Isn’t she the one with long dark hair and blue eyes? Charlotte: Yes, and that birthmark on her temple, the one that looks like a little banana. Gideon: Like a little crescent moon. Raphael: What’s that friend of hers called? The blonde with freckles? Lily? Charlotte: Lesley Hay. Rather brighter than Gwyneth, but she’s a wonderful example of the way people get to look like their dogs. Hers is a shaggy golden retriever crossbreed called Bertie. Raphael: That’s cute! Charlotte: You like dogs? Raphael: Especially golden retriever crossbreeds with freckles. Charlotte: I see. Well, you can try your luck. You won’t find it particularly difficult. Lesley gets through even more boys than Gwyneth. Gideon: Really? How many . . . er, boyfriends has Gwyneth had? Charlotte: Oh, my God! This is kind of embarrassing. I don’t want to speak ill of her, it’s just that she’s not very discriminating. Particularly when she’s had a drink. She’s done the rounds of almost all the boys in our class and the class above us . . . I guess I lost track at some point. I’d rather not repeat what they call her. Raphael: The school mattress? Gideon: Pass the salt, please.

Being a hero to someone, even if it is a dog, is a feeling like no other. Though it can be frustrating, it can be the most rewarding thing to give someone a second chance at a happy life.

Oh, yes—that thing about house cats is true. Your faithful golden retriever might sit next to your dead body for days, starving, but the tabby won’t. Your pet cat will eat you right away, with no qualms at all. Like any opportunistic scavenger, it will start with your eyeballs and lips.

People everywhere pray for a job where they can “work from home,” so I guess, going with the gratitude theme, I should be grateful for this opportunity. I wonder how, though, when people get one of these jobs, they keep themselves from spending the entire day going on YouTube and looking at videos about baby deer that have been adopted by golden retrievers. Because that’s all I’ve accomplished today so far.

In friendships or relationships, usually one person is the cat—guarded, a little standoffish—someone where you have to work for it. And then the other person is the golden retriever. Loves immediately and completely.

What could he say? That, back then, I wasn't caught by the Wen Sect because I wanted to go back to Lotus Pier to retrieve my parents' corpses. That, at the town we passed on our way, when you were buying food, a group of Wen Sect cultivators caught up. That, I discovered them early and left where I sat, hiding at the corner of the street and didn't get caught, but they were patrolling the streets and would soon run into you outside. That this was why I ran out and distracted them. But just like how the past Wei Wuxian couldn't tell him the truth of giving him his golden core, the current Jiang Cheng wasn't able to say anything either.

May I tell you a wonderful truth about your dog? ... You have been given stewardship of what you in your faith might call a holy soul.

They say that a few minutes each day of petting your dog can raise your serotonin levels.

He’s got the personality of a golden retriever.” “Yeah, a rabid one.

It's not just his understanding of me, although that's part of it. With a word, Tuesday can guide me to dozens of places. He can be my surrogate or a mirror to my heart.

A lifetime's experience urges me to utter a warning cry: do anything else, take someone's golden retriever for a walk, run away with a saxophone player. Perhaps what's wrong with being a writer is that one can't even say 'good luck'--luck plays no part in the writing of a novel. No happy accidents as with the paint pot or chisel. I don't think you can say anything, really. I've always wanted to juggle and ride a unicycle, but I dare say if I ever asked the advice of an acrobat he would say, 'All you do is get on and start pedaling'.

Okay,” I say at last. “But you have to teach me how to do animals. I can’t keep myself from wilting when I’m a plant, so I’ve been afraid to try a living form.” She laughs and shifts into the shape of a large golden retriever and almost licks me to death before I can make her stop.

Mike, who was taking on the qualities of a golden retriever, walked faithfully by my side to class.

My libido was like a Golden Retriever puppy, ready to jump all over him and lick his face. Down, girl.

... occasionally I see rich-looking women on Rollerblades gripping leashes and being towed bodily by golden retrievers. That's my kind of jogging.

The big one was at least cute, and as annoying as she was, you couldn't get mad at a golden retriever.

a purebred golden retriever—dopey, glossy, and expensive.

The first thing everyone notices is the dog.

Hey, do you know what you call a blonde with a brain?” I asked, and then continued on the same breath, “a golden retriever.

I want to lean out the window to breathe in the green of the leafy tunnels above our heads. I resist, however, because I’m not a golden retriever.

Such a better world it would be if we all had the morals of a Golden Retriever; butt sniffing notwithstanding.

He was like a golden retriever. She imderstood the apeal, but that didn't mean she wanted to take him home.

For all the thirsty bitches who love a dirty-talking golden retriever boy. Eat your hearts out.

Now that I know he’s Ezra’s new maybe-special friend, I pay a little more attention to him than I would have before. He kind of reminds me of a golden retriever, with his floppy blond hair and blue eyes. The first time I saw him in acrylics class, I kind of immediately hated the guy. He’s the sort of person the world adores, just based on the way he looks, a little like the way people obsess over men like Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans and Chris Pine and all the other famous Chrises, plus Ryan Gosling, claiming that they’re liberal and that they aren’t racist and that they’re feminists, but not really thinking about why they’re so obsessed with white men, and why they don’t love any people of color the same way.

where the Army we loved sold us out for careerist brass, a war-porn-fixated media and military-industrial-complex corporate greed; where the only honor and integrity seemed to exist among the troops on the line.

We threw chew toys to Misty, Mom’s golden retriever that she bought two years ago secondhand. Misty was supposed to be a seeing-eye dog, but she failed her exam because she’s too affectionate. It’s a flaw we don’t mind.

I was still very much a kid but, suddenly, I had the body of a teenager. This is like waking up one day and finding out that your golden retriever puppy shoots lasers from its adorable puppy eyes. Someone is bound to get hurt.

Some assistance dogs also wear harnesses that have a large solid, handle, intended for use instead of a leash.

The most hateful grief of all human griefs is this, to have knowledge of the truth but no power over the event.

Otis, on the other hand, didn't miss home a bit. He had always hated the stairs in our house in Massachusetts. He was now five years old and very large for a golden retriever. I thought he was fat, but Bruce insisted he was just "big-boned". Either way, climbing the steep stairs at home was a challenge. Whenever Bruce and I went upstairs, Otis would sit near the bottom step, carefully calculating whether we would be on the second floor long enough to make it worthwhile to heave himself up the stairs. And on the way down the stairs, Otis was like a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler barreling down a steep hill. We just got out of his way. But in the new Washington apartment building, Otis had an elevator. As far as he was concerned, life was sweet.

Whenever I needed a reassuring touch, Tuesday was there. He was my miracle dog. I already loved him and depended on him more than any other animal I'd ever known- and most other people, too.

Tripp was on the sailing team, a third-generation Bonesman, a gentleman and a scholar, a purebred golden retriever - dopey, glossey, and expensive. He was rumpled and rosy as a healthy infant, his hair sandy, his skin tan from whichever island he'd spent winter break on. He had the ease of someone who had always been and would always be just fine, a boy of a thousand second chances.

A few days later, Tuesday quietly crossed our apartment as I read a book and, after a nudge against my arm, put his head on my lap. As always, I immediately checked my mental state, trying to assess what was wrong. I knew a change in my biorhythms had brought Tuesday over, because he was always monitoring me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Breathing? Okay. Pulse? Normal. Was I glazed or distracted? Was I lost in Iraq? Was a dark period descending? I didn't think so, but I knew something must be wrong, and I was starting to worry...until I looked into Tuesday's eyes. They were staring at me softly from under those big eyebrows, and there was nothing in them but love.

Golden retrievers are not bred to be guard dogs, and considering the size of their hearts and their irrepressible joy in life, they are less likely to bite than to bark, less likely to bark than to lick a hand in greeting. In spite of their size, they think they are lap dogs, and in spite of being dogs, they think they are also human, and nearly every human they meet is judged to have the potential to be a boon companion who might, at any moment, cry “Let’s go!” and lead them on a great adventure.

May I tell you a wonderful truth about your dog? ... In our religion, we believe in reincarnation. We live many times, you see, always seeking to be wiser and more virtuous. If we eventually lead a blameless life, a perfect life, we leave this world and need not endure it again. Between our human lives, we may be reincarnated as other creatures. Sometimes, when someone has led a nearly perfect life but is not yet worthy of nirvana, that person is reincarnated as a very beautiful dog. When the life as the dog comes to an end, the person is reincarnated one last time as a human being, and lives a perfect life. Your dog is a person who has almost arrived at complete enlightenment and will in the next life be perfect and blameless, a very great person. You have been given stewardship of what you in your faith might call a holy soul.

Dicks...are like golden retrievers." My Face screwed up in confusion. "That's your theory?" "Yep." Zach smirked, crossing his arms over his chest. "Think about it. They get excited when they see something they want. They're shit at communications. And, if they like you, they'll follow you around until you finally give in and play with them.

For the senior officers in Iraq, at least in 2005-2006, the responsibility was to the men at the top, the media, the message, the public back home - anything and everything, it seemed, but the soldiers under their command. And that's the ultimate betrayal of Iraq, the one that disillusioned me in Baghdad and Nineveh and keeps me outraged today.

When I put my hand on his head,he stepped onto the couch and raised his face to my own. We stared at each other for a few seconds and then slowly,Tuesday licked me. Yes,on the lips...and the chin...and the nose...slobbering all over my face with that big slow-moving tongue. That's the moment when Tuesday,after all his caution,stopped just being my service dog,and my emotional support,and my conversation piece. That's when he became my friend.

Kolbert put away his sword and . . . . . . from his inventory, retrieved . . . . . . an enchanted golden shovel.

Why don't you grab a chair," I joked, "and sit down!" And then, like she so often did, Mary smiled.

Moments of quiet friendship are what life-makes everyone's life-grand".

Everyone wants a golden retriever,” he says in a low voice. As ridiculous a statement as it is, he looks serious, concerned.

Mike, who was taking on the qualities of a golden retriever

Nice polka dots,” I say. He smiles. “Nice Labradors.” I mean, he’s cute, so I’ll let it slide, but the dogs on my pants are clearly golden retrievers.

I've watched goldfish make babies, and ants execute earwigs. I've seen a fly deliver live young while having its head eaten by a mantis. And I had a golden retriever behave like one.

The two “idiots” Ginger and Zach, both golden retrievers, both beautiful-looking dogs—and both thicker than bricks when it came to brains—had been out sunning on the bedroom deck. They stood up and barked madly, as if he were an invader. Though if he were a real invader they’d have cowered in terror and stained the carpet as they fled into Jennifer’s room to hide.

Cease to exist, he urged us, disappear the self. And all of us nodding like golden retrievers, the reality of our existence making us cavalier, eager to dismantle what seemed permanent.

Maybe, for whatever reason, you just don’t want to date right now,” I say, “and that’s fine. People feel that way all the time. But if it’s something else—if you’re afraid you’re too rigid, or whatever your exes might’ve thought about you—none of that’s true. Maybe every day with you would be more or less the same, but so what? That actually sounds kind of great. “And maybe I’m misreading all of this, but I don’t think I am, because I’ve never met anyone so much like me. And—if any part of all this is that you think, in the end, I’ll want a golden retriever instead of a mean little cat, you’re wrong.” “Everyone wants a golden retriever,” he says in a low voice. As ridiculous a statement as it is, he looks serious, concerned. I shake my head. “I don’t.

Bieber is a golden retriever, and he has these big, brown, kind of manic eyes. Alice was way too pleased with herself when she came up with his name, but I'm not going to lie. It seriously fits.

There is no heroism without responsibility; there is no shining example without an honest accounting of actions. There is no valor for the troops at the bottom if there's no honor among the generals at the top.

No, not my dog. I was walking down the street, saw this golden retriever, and decided to name her Saskya and bring her home with me. It's not like I planned it or anything. It was just a spur-of-the-moment decision.

The Devil's Rose You would never take a rose from a beast. If his callous hand were to hold out a scarlet flower, his grip unaffected by pricking thorns, you would shrink from the gift and refuse it. I know that is what you would do. But the cunning beast will have his beauty. He hunts not in hopeless pursuit, for fear would have you sprint all the day long. Thus, he turns toward the shadows and clutches the rosebud, crunching and twisting until every delicate petal is detached. One falls not far from your feet, and you notice the red spot in the snow. The color sparkles in the sunlight, catching your curious eye. No beast stands in sight; there is nothing to fear, so you dare retrieve the lone petal. The touch of temptation is velvet against your thumb. It carries a scent you bring to your nose, and both eyes close to float on a cloud of perfume. As your lashes lift, another scarlet drop stains the snow at a near distance. A glance around perceives no danger, and so your footprints scar the snowflakes to retrieve another rosy leaflet as soft and sweet as the first. Your eyes shine with flecks of golden greed at the discovery of more discarded petals, and you blame the wind for scattering them mere footprints apart. All you want is a few, so you step and snatch, step and snatch, step and snatch. Soon, there is enough velvet to rub against your cheek like a silken kerchief. Your collection of one-plus-one-more reeks of floral essence. Distracted, you jump at the sight of the beast in your path. He stands before his lair, grinning without love. His callous hands grip at thorns on a single naked stem, and you look down at your own hands that now cup his rose. But how can it be? You would never take a rose from a beast. You would shrink from the gift and refuse it. He knows that is what you would do.

[it] isn't something you just get over. You don't go back to being who you were. It's more like a snow globe. War shakes you up, and suddenly all those pieces of your life - muscles, bones, thoughts, beliefs, relationships, even your dreams - are floating in the air out of your grip. They'll come down. I'm here to tell you that, with hard work, you'll recover. But they'll never come down where they once were. You're a changed person after combat. Not better or worse, just different.

to pull away. “I promise this dog will not hurt you,” he said. “This is a golden retriever. He has a scary bark because he’s big, but he would let anyone into the house. For a belly rub, he’d help the thieves carry the valuables to their getaway car.

Considering what a hot, wed dog smells like, dog stew has a surprisingly savory odor To tell the truth, it tastes pretty good, like oxtail. To be perfectly honest, it's delicious. (Anything about this to my golden retriever, and I'll punch your lights out.)

It wasn't a remarkable face in any way, but it had a clean-lined sweetness that brought up summer barbecues, golden retrievers, soccer games on new-mown grass, and I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.

Oh, yes—that thing about house cats is true. Your faithful golden retriever might sit next to your dead body for days, starving, but the tabby won’t. Your pet cat will eat you right away, with no qualms at all. Like any opportunistic scavenger, it will start with your eyeballs and lips. I’ve seen the result.

Maybe PTSD really is triggered by a single incident, a stressor, as it's known in the psychiatric community, and maybe the attack at Al-Waleed was that stressor for me, but as I have learned in the intervening years, I was not damaged by that moment alone. In fact, while there are specific memories that resurface with some frequency, like the suicide bomber in Sinjar or the order riot at Al-Waleed, I find myself most traumatized by the overall experience of being in a combat zone like Iraq, where you are always surrounded by war but rarely aware of when or how violence will arrive. Like so many of my fellow veterans, I understand now how that it is the daily adrenaline rush of a war without front lines or uniforms, rather than the infrequent bursts of bloody violence, that ultimately damages the modern warrior's mind.

We aren't just service dog and master, Tuesday and I are also best friends. Kindred souls, Brothers. Whatever you want to call it.

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. —KAHLIL GIBRAN

Tripp was on the sailing team, a third-generation Bonesman, a gentleman and a scholar, a purebred golden retriever—dopey, glossy, and expensive. He was rumpled and rosy as a healthy infant, his hair sandy, his skin still tan from whichever island he’d spent winter break on. He had the ease of someone who had always been and would always be just fine, a boy of a thousand second chances.

Tripp was on the sailing team, a third-generation Bonesman, a gentleman and a scholar, a purebred golden retriever-dopey, glossy, and expensive. He was rumpled and rosy as a healthy infant, his hair sandy, his skin still tan from whichever island he'd spent winter break on. He had the ease of someone who had always been and would always be just fine, a boy of a thousand second chances.

When I started working in commercials, I quickly learned some rules for hawking products: 1. Audiences like their soda in frosty mugs. It should look straight out of Santa’s Village. 2. People respond to cereal floating in foamy milk. 3. When lapping up soup, viewers like to see kids dressed in cable knit sweaters by a fire. 4. A golden retriever in the background never hurt the sale of anything.

While he watched, the phenomenon diminished. The whirl of leaves settled, and the night grew still once more. As the last leaves floated to rest on the grass, John thought he heard a familiar sigh of pleasure, one he hadn’t heard for a long time. If this had been a ghost, it had been a blithe spirit. Filled with sudden wonder, remembering their golden retriever that had died two years earlier, John whispered, “Willard?

It is not glamorous that I can’t drive a car. It is not mysterious to be home on a Saturday night, reading a novel in a pile of smelly golden retrievers. However, I am not immune to the feeling of being viewed as a mystery, as a Sinclair, as part of a privileged clan of special people, and as part of a magical, important narrative, just because I am part of this clan. My mother is not immune to it, either. This is who we have been brought up to be. Sinclairs. Sinclairs.

The dog looked nothing like the lonely mongrel in her stories. The bedraggled golden retriever halted where the bungalow walkway met the public sidewalk. Girl and beast regarded each other. She called to him, “Here, boy, here.” He needed to be coaxed, but eventually he approached the porch and climbed the steps. Bibi stooped to his level to peer into his eyes, which were as golden as his coat. “You stink.” The retriever yawned, as if his stinkiness was old news to him. He

Depending on their size and temperament, they were—and are—capable of delivering a joy I rarely accessed elsewhere. The mere sight of a doe-eyed golden retriever puppy or a massive, Sphinx-like Leonberger can temporarily alter my brain chemistry. To encounter a Great Pyrenees or a malamute feels to me like meeting a unicorn. That such creatures roam in our midst seems nothing short of magical. That such creatures might share our beds or lie on the sofa with us while we watch TV seems like proof that heaven is capable of dipping down and grazing the earth with the tip of its toe.

Harper se acercó a mí con un propósito en la mirada, y con un último vistazo hacia Art, cruzó. No vi el dolor y el miedo que había sufrido durante todos esos años. No la vi aterrorizada, y tampoco vi la pesadilla que había sido su estancia en el hospital psiquiátrico. Lo que vi fue cómo su padre la cogía y se la subía a los hombros mientras ella le señalaba la ruta a seguir a través de los árboles que había en la parte trasera de la propiedad. Vi a su perro, un golden retriever llamado Sport, que le lamió los dedos hasta que ella no pudo soportar las cosquillas. Y vi el primer beso que le dio Art. Ella estaba en el instituto, viendo uno de los partidos de baloncesto en los que él participaba. Art se había lesionado y estaba en el vestuario. Harper corrió a ver cómo estaba. Estuvo a punto de desmayarse al ver el enorme bulto del brazo que tenía sujeto al costado, donde el hueso casi atravesaba la piel. Art se había tapado los ojos con el otro brazo para ocultar su angustia. Harper se acercó y, antes de que se diera cuenta de lo que ocurría, él le rodeó la cabeza con la mano y tiró de ella hasta que sus labios se unieron. Y luego cruzó. Ese toque romántico, la agonía del amor perdido, fue mi perdición.

And by the early 1970s our little parable of Sam and Sweetie is exactly what happened to the North American Golden Retriever. One field-trial dog, Holway Barty, and two show dogs, Misty Morn’s Sunset and Cummings’ Gold-Rush Charlie, won dozens of blue ribbons between them. They were not only gorgeous champions; they had wonderful personalities. Consequently, hundreds of people wanted these dogs’ genes to come into their lines, and over many matings during the 1970s the genes of these three dogs were flung far and wide throughout the North American Golden Retriever population, until by 2010 Misty Morn’s Sunset alone had 95,539 registered descendants, his number of unregistered ones unknown. Today hundreds of thousands of North American Golden Retrievers are descended from these three champions and have received both their sweet dispositions and their hidden time bombs. Unfortunately for these Golden Retrievers, and for the people who love them, one of these time bombs happens to be cancer. To be fair, a so-called cancer gene cannot be traced directly to a few famous sires, but using these sires so often increases the chance of recessive genes meeting—for good and for ill. Today, in the United States, 61.4 percent of Golden Retrievers die of cancer, according to a survey conducted by the Golden Retriever Club of America and the Purdue School of Veterinary Medicine. In Great Britain, a Kennel Club survey found almost exactly the same result, if we consider that those British dogs—loosely diagnosed as dying of “old age” and “cardiac conditions” and never having been autopsied—might really be dying of a variety of cancers, including hemangiosarcoma, a cancer of the lining of the blood vessels and the spleen. This sad history of the Golden Retriever’s narrowing gene pool has played out across dozens of other breeds and is one of the reasons that so many of our dogs spend a lot more time in veterinarians’ offices than they should and die sooner than they might. In genetic terms, it comes down to the ever-increasing chance that both copies of any given gene are derived from the same ancestor, a probability expressed by a number called the coefficient of inbreeding. Discovered in 1922 by the American geneticist Sewall Wright, the coefficient of inbreeding ranges from 0 to 100 percent and rises as animals become more inbred.

The Frog was the only one who could retrieve the golden ball because he was the only one who could descend into the well. He was the only one who could descend into the well because the art of diving was still unknown in Europe at this time. The art of diving was still unknown in Europe because it had not yet been imported from India. Therefore the Frog was the only one who could retrieve the golden ball. Q.E.D.

Excerpt from Storm’s Eye by Dean Gray With a final drag and drop, Jordan Rayne sent his latest creation winging its way toward the publisher. He looked up, squinted at that little clock in the right hand corner of his monitor, and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. His cover art was finished and shipped, just in time for lunch. He sighed and stood, rolling his shoulders and bending side to side, his back cracking in protest as the muscles loosened after having been hunched over the screen for so long. Sam raised his head, tilting it enquiringly at him, and Jordan laughed. “Yeah, I know what you want, some lunch and a nice long walk along the beach, hmm?” Jordan smiled fondly at the furry ball of energy he’d saved from certain death. With his mom’s recent death it was just Sam and him in the house. Sometimes he wondered what kept him here, now that the last thread tethering him to the island was severed. Sam limped over and nuzzled at his hand. When Jordan had first found him out on the main road, hurt and bleeding, he hadn’t been sure the pooch would make it. Taylor, his best friend and the local vet, had done what she could. At the time, Jordan simply didn’t have the deep pockets for the fancy surgery needed to mend Sam’s leg perfectly, he could barely afford the drugs to keep his mom in treatment. So they’d patched him up as well as they could, Taylor extending herself further than he could ever repay, and hoped for the best. The dog had made a startling recovery, urged on by plenty of rest and good food and lots of love, and had flourished, the slight limp now barely noticeable. Jordan’s conscience still twinged as he watched Sam limp over to his dish, but he had barely been keeping things together at the time. He had done the best he could. He’d done his best to find Sam’s real owners as well, papering downtown Bar Harbor with a hand-drawn sketch of the dog, but to no avail. The only thing it had prompted was one kind soul wanting to buy the illustration. But no one had ever come forward to claim the “goldendoodle,” which Taylor had told him was a golden retriever/standard poodle cross. Who had a dog breed like that anyway? Summer people! Jordan shook his head, grinning at the dog’s foolish antics, weaving in and around his legs like he was still a little pup instead of the fifty-pound fuzzball he actually was now. So without meaning to at all, Sam had drifted into Jordan’s life and stayed, a loyal, faithful companion.

From my WIP "In Hiding" Hidden in the darkness, she exhaled, releasing the tension. As she sunk into the worn cushions, Kate felt the wave of exhaustion crash over her. She dug in her backpack for the crackers wrapped in a paper towel. Closing her eyes, she ate, using her imagination to change the bland wafer into something more appealing. Retrieving her cell from her pocket, she shielded the artificial light with her hand as she set the alarm, always set to vibrate mode. The glow from the screen briefly illuminated her face. Her blond hair was history, the honey golden hue hidden under the dull dark cheap hair dye. Without makeup, she appeared younger than her twenty years, until you looked into her eyes. Here her anguish was center stage for the world to see. She barely slept and seldom ate. Worse were the dreams. Trapped in a surreal world, the explosion of gunfire surrounded her followed by blood splatter. Often, she woke on the edge of a scream waking in time to stifle her terror. She could ill afford this, screaming could bring him down on her. There were nights that she prayed it would, thus ending the torment for them both. Perhaps another night. Kate took one last glance around the room as she tucked her phone into her back jeans pocket. Slumping over, she was out before her head hit the sofa. Camouflaged she appears to be nothing more than a bundle of rags. Unseen in the darkness he slipped inside the house, blending into the shadows, he had waited patiently hidden in the edge of the woods, knowing she would seek shelter. Wayne closed his eyes and zoned in on her. Chasing this bitch was wearing on him; it was killing his focus. As his prey, she had developed self-persevering habits. She never left a trace of herself, not a sound, not a fiber or a hair. He drew a deep, silent breath, directing his senses, he concentrated on Kate, how she thought, what she feared.

Space is nearly empty. There is virtually no chance that one of the Voyagers will ever enter another solar system—and this is true even if every star in the sky is accompanied by planets. The instructions on the record jackets, written in what we believe to be readily comprehensible scientific hieroglyphics, can be read, and the contents of the records understood, only if alien beings, somewhere in the remote future, find Voyager in the depths of interstellar space. Since both Voyagers will circle the center of the Milky Way Galaxy essentially forever, there is plenty of time for the records to be found—if there's anyone out there to do the finding. We cannot know how much of the records they would understand. Surely the greetings will be incomprehensible, but their intent may not be. (We thought it would be impolite not to say hello.) The hypothetical aliens are bound to be very different from us—independently evolved on another world. Are we really sure they could understand anything at all of our message? Every time I feel these concerns stirring, though, I reassure myself. Whatever the incomprehensibilities of the Voyager record, any alien ship that finds it will have another standard by which to judge us. Each Voyager is itself a message. In their exploratory intent, in the lofty ambition of their objectives, in their utter lack of intent to do harm, and in the brilliance of their design and performance, these robots speak eloquently for us. But being much more advanced scientists and engineers than we—otherwise they would never be able to find and retrieve the small, silent spacecraft in interstellar space—perhaps the aliens would have no difficulty understanding what is encoded on these golden records. Perhaps they would recognize the tentativeness of our society, the mismatch between our technology and our wisdom. Have we destroyed ourselves since launching Voyager, they might wonder, or have we gone on to greater things? Or perhaps the records will never be intercepted. Perhaps no one in five billion years will ever come upon them. Five billion years is a long time. In five billion years, all humans will have become extinct or evolved into other beings, none of our artifacts will have survived on Earth, the continents will have become unrecognizably altered or destroyed, and the evolution of the Sun will have burned the Earth to a crisp or reduced it to a whirl of atoms. Far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the memories of a world that is no more, will fly on.

The only way that Jason can claim his rightful place as ruler of Iolcus, Greece, is by retrieving the fabled Golden Fleece from distant lands. The problem? Everyone considers the task impossible, fraught with terrifying perils certain to kill any man. Jason isn’t so sure. He assembles a mighty team of warriors—the Argonauts—and builds the largest ship ever constructed. He then figures out how to successfully navigate the legendary maze of crushing rocks known as the Symplegades, yoke fire-breathing, bronze-hoofed oxen, trick a mighty army guarding the Fleece into ravaging itself to pieces, and drug a sleepless dragon into its first slumber. Four months after departing, Jason returns with the Fleece to take his throne.