The Shih Tzu — Weekly

Lander was eighteen and a half, with an unruly mane and the unshakable belief that the house belonged to him and I was merely the butler. This is the story of growing old together: of shorter walks, endless vet visits endured with imperial dignity, laughter when there was still plenty to laugh about, and long nights when all I could do was hold him and make sure he knew he was safe.

But this is not a book about losing a dog. It is about what it means to share a life with one—and what happens when years of companionship slowly turn into years of caregiving, when his restless nights become your sleepless ones, and looking after him becomes its own language of love.

Told through letters between a human and the imagined voice of a seven-kilo emperor, Lander's story moves beautifully between humour and grief, medicine and memory, and ordinary routines and extraordinary loyalty. In the end, loving someone well may not mean having all the answers. Sometimes it simply means staying.

And Lander was never alone.