Mish... we're talking about it in the threat that has the title of the essay in it!  (We hid it from you that way.  Aren't we mean?)  This thread had just gotten a little long already.

Ok, here are my comments. I have read the whole thread above.

There is always one, isn't there? By that I mean, I probably would not have read this on my own. I know it was picked up by the New Yorker and was included in Best Essays of Whenever, but it did not paticularly appeal to me. I realize that a dog, especially a dying much loved dog is a great hook. That will capture nearly everyone's heart in the same way that sex sells. Who wouldn't want to read about a dog? Well, I don't. So the dog angle didn't hook me except that it did show me about the narrator's character. She cared about the dog and the potential death of the dog was hanging over the whole narrative.

For me the most intriguing person was the husband. He seemed to be saying, "I'm going to be leaving you now. Could you help me with that?" I was into the quirkiness of her voice, her situation when she landed the lead balloon of foreshadowing. In the last sentence of the third paragraph she writes: Guys whose lives are ticking like alarm clocks getting ready to go off, although none of us are aware of it yet.--- she tells us too much her, IMHO. The bit about the woman visiting Bob's office is again heavy handed foreshadowing and would have been better later. Not at the very end in the reflective phase, but possibly as part of her having to accept the reality.

I noticed the naming thing, too. She never names the husband or the collie, but she carefully gives us the name of each of those shot. I think for that reason it would have been more consistent or parallel not to name Caroline, the woman who got rid of the squirrels. I did not understand that whole thing about HOW she got rid of them, but it was interesting that they were all over the husband's stuff.

I was not taken back by the head hopping as someone called it here. I noticed it, too and was happy to see it. If it is not done well it can certainly be disconcerting, if not confusing. Again, I'd like to see POV listed in the hallowed rules of writing as a guideline not a law. Obviously this essay made it past a few cuts the way it is.

I thought it was interesting that the gathering at her house was all women and that they all left when the husband came there.

I know that it is a wonderful essay, but I'm torn that it includes such a catastrophic event. I was enjoying the quirky personal life and was disappointed when it changed over to more of a news report. A very personal news report, I admit. At first I thought it was a great coincidence that this occurred to such a well known writer and now I think she  is such a well known writer because of this essay.  I will check out her book of essays, but doubt I'll buy it.

In other essays in her book, Beard does something that bothers me more:  she tells stories about her family as if she fully rememberes them when, in fact, she was younger than the age of memory.  Because the WHOLE essay takes place before she would have had the capacity to remember it, at least in the detailed way she recounts it, I found it... more fiction-ish.