Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had by Rick Bass | eBook

For many of us, it doesn't require much writing skill to make a dog story endearing. But even the most avid pet fancier will recognize the Rick Bass's tribute to his hunter Colter is the best in the litter.

Vicki Croke

Again and again, Bass is experiencing that great lesson dogs have to teach: to accept the ones we love for who they are, to embrace even the faults…There is something interior, something luminous, a spirit yet invisible to the world in the bond between people and dogs.
— Washington Post

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

[A] gorgeous, heart-tugging man-and-dog memoir.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Splendid...a tribute to great dogs everywhere.

Boston Globe

The most impressive work from Bass in years...as clean and clear as the human and natural landscape it explores.

Detroit Free Press

Breathtaking...If any writer can awaken a taste for outdoors, Bass can.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden," writes novelist and essayist Bass (Where the Sea Used to Be, etc.) of the arrival of his "goofy little knot-headed" genius of a pointing dog. As they roam the remote western Montana valley where Bass lives, and hunt the golden autumn plains in the eastern part of the state, Colter unfailingly ushers Bass into "an unexplored land" where the two become "as alive as we have ever been: our senses so sharp and whittled alive that we could barely stand it." Their prolonged hours of "wanting only one thing, a bird, wanting it so effortlessly and purely that [we] come the closest [we] will ever come to a shared language" are a blessing. But always, for Bass, there is the undertow of paradox: of living for the hunt but being a comically rotten marksman; of being a hunter yet an environmentalist; of his tendency to love with "a passion so intense it borders on gluttony," inevitably followed by the crushing numbness that marks the loss of what he loves. Bass's exhaustless appetite for natural beauty and his propensity for "bragging on" his dog occasionally lead to exuberant repetition ("It was just so damn great to be out in such open country with my dogs"), but more often result in luminously transcendent passages on the education and sorrowful loss of a brilliant and mischievous chocolate brown pointer that will transfix anyone who has ever loved a dog. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

KLIATT

Here is a very readable book in the line of The Voice of Bugle Ann and Old Yeller. Rick Bass owned dogs before Colter, and he will own dogs again, but there will never be another dog as dear to him as this brilliant (although slightly goofy) shorthaired pointer. Bass writes in a breezy tone, as if he's talking to the reader, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Even an anti-gun, anti-hunting "peacenik" who can't even picture the vastness of a Texas meadow or the vista of the Rocky Mountains in Montana and who knows virtually nothing about the birds that Colter can scent from miles away can find herself caught up in tales of Colter's abilities. Bass is realistic about Colter's goofiness and doesn't hesitate to laugh at him. The laughter is often at Bass himself, though—for a man who hunts with his dog as much as he does, he's a remarkably bad shot! But he doesn't care. The point is to be outside with his dog. Of course dogs don't live as long as humans, and the story of Colter's death is particularly wrenching. Bass is training one of Colter's brothers (who will never be the hunter Colter was) as he is grieving, and though some might underestimate Bass' depth of feeling, and his degree of mourning, for "just a dog," the reader will understand perfectly. The only objections I have to the book are in Bass' use of profanity (although words like "dipshit" and "fucked-up" are almost standard in much modern writing) and the occasional typo (indenting some but not all in a set of paragraphs that should have matched) but these are minor complaints.A good read. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Houghton Mifflin, Mariner,188p., $10.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Judith H. Silverman; Chevy Chase, MD , November 2001 (Vol. 35, No. 6)

Library Journal

This delightful book is really a love story about the special bond and level of understanding that can exist between a man and his dog. It is also a story that celebrates nature, describing life in the Montana woods and the thrill of hunting in the never-ending fields at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. In his latest book, nature writer Bass (The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness) tells the story of life with a very special hunting dog. Colter is the runt of the litter, and Bass ends up buying the pup because no one else wants him. But as he grows, Colter's instinct takes over, and his passion for hunting is unequalled. The dog's abilities are so outstanding that Bass, admittedly a poor shot, feels guilty when he misses a bird because he feels that he is letting his dog down. His enthusiasm is contagious and somewhat amusing: Bass loves to hunt, but does not particularly care whether he shoots anything; it is the thrill of watching his dog work that he finds exciting. Recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/00; BOMC selection.]--Deborah Emerson, Monroe Community Coll., Rochester, NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Richard Conniff

Bass is a wonderful writer, adept at drawing out the glory and momentousness of an autumn afternoon with a dog in the Montana hills.
—New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

"...luminously transcendant passages on the education and sorrowful loss of a brilliant…chocolate brown pointer that will transfix anyone who has ever loved a dog." Publishers Weekly, Starred

"Bass is a masterly writer . . . Your dog loves you, Bass, and this reviewer does, too." USA Today

"Bass' writing is cinematic—he lets readers run with Colter through the fields . . . [we] feel Colter's energy as he experienced it." Denver Rocky Mountain News

"Has anyone ever written so perfectly of a dog shaking water from its fur, curled up tight during sleep?" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

". . . A book to be savoured. . . on a lazy summer afternoon, with your dog asleep on the ground below." Bookpage

"Colter is a dog of boundless spirit, all grace and wild genius. And his terrific master, Rick Bass, happens to be a national treasure. What a terrific team they make!"—Carl Hiaasen, author of SICK PUPPY

Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had

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