Old Dogs Are the Best Dogs

The memories that people have of dogs they have loved and lost are almost always of the animal in his final years; somehow, those are the images we treasure most. There is a reason. Old dogs can be rheumy-eyed and grump, gray of muzzle, graceless of gait, eccentric of habit, pimply, wheezy, lazy, lumpy. But that is not the whole of him. The old dog is resolute. He is canny. He is noble. She is funny, and seems to know it. She is sweetly vulnerable. He has character and dignity and an elegance of bearing that belies his circumstances, and above all, he seems at peace. You'd call that wisdom, if it didn't sound so silly. Old Dogs is a portrait book featuring 60 classic black and white photographs of sweet old dogs-Michael Williamson has photographed store-front dogs, mutts, elegant purebreds, junkyard dogs, little dogs, and big dogs. With their stories-sometimes sad, sometimes funny, and sometimes uplifting-- told by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post, the old dogs featured in this book will captivate any dog lover.

Washington Post photographer Michael S. Williamson was born and raised in Washington, DC. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Williamson has covered a variety of global events over the last thirty years, including the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the Philippine revolution, strife in the Middle East, the Gulf War, and conflicts in Africa and the Balkans. At the Post, Williamson works as both a photographer and a photo editor. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his daughters, Sophia and Valerie.

Gene Weingarten is a nationally syndicated humor columnist and a Pulitzer Prize–winning staff writer for The Washington Post. He lives in Washington, DC.