Bad Dog, Good Cop โ Partners in Crime Fiction
Plenty of lawmen have a little larceny in their past.ย Harry was no exception. His mugshot turned up in the re-homing section of a breederโs website. What put him there? He was guilty of wearing his first family out in just ninety daysโbeyond mere exhaustion and right to the point of hopelessness. So this young offender was sent back to the re-homing site to do some hard time.
It wouldnโt be his only crime; once there heโd quickly escalate to identity fraud. He was majority Australian Cattle Dog (by DNA) but passing himself off quite convincingly as mostly Border Collie. That false identity formed the basis of his escape. He had someone on the inside (my daughter) who took one look at his photos and knew Iโd find him utterly irresistibleโI have a soft spot for Border Collies. His accomplice knew exactly what she was doing when she showed me the pictures. I never stood a chance.
Thinking back, the irony that really stings is that while Harry was the one with the record, we were the ones who had to provide character references. When I found out my wife and daughter had submitted an application essay, I was immediately gripped with fear that it wasnโt enough and debased our family further by filing a passionate supplemental brief detailing the many ways weโd give this hardened criminal a better life. A grown man, fifty years of dog ownership behind him, writing a college-application essay to rescue a mutt with a rap sheet.
When news arrived from the breeder, Iโd bought so fully into Harryโs con that I burst out the front door waving my arms, jumping up and down and shouting โWe got him! We got him!โ to my wife and daughter unloading groceries from the car. The witness statement from my wife records the moment: โIโd never seen him look happier.โ I was in no mood for patience, so, despite it being Thanksgiving weekend, my daughter and I began planning the prisoner transport immediately. As soon as a secure hand-off rendezvous could be arranged, we set off on a two-person detail for a straight-through fourteen-hour round trip to his facilityโa single-story family home in suburban Philadelphia where heโd been shackled to a large shade tree for his own safety.
After intake at our facility, he sized the situation up and immediately set to work winning over the resident dog, a curmudgeonly spaniel mix who had never once been charmed by man, beast or fowl. The offensive was cunning and relentless, involving a determination and patience rarely seen from such a youthful subject. It provided the first evidence that Harryโs rap sheet did not tell the whole story.
We began integrating him into the family with a rigorous exercise regimeโprepared to hold firm and give no quarter to any whining but soon found ourselves struggling to keep up with the very subject of our reforms. He quickly proved himself the smartest dog Iโd ever worked with, and whatโs more, he was completely unflappable; no challenge we threw at him, no calamity that befell him, no growl from his adopted brother could dampen his gentle, upbeat outlook on life.
It was not long before he was the chief of the station. He established his jurisdiction immediately and set to work taking full command of his beat, using up-close, round-the-clock surveillance, tailing me from room to room, out to the yard, to the hardware store and back. Heโs always known exactly what time it is and uses that knowledge to enforce routines strictly. He herds me off the keyboard when it is time for me to eat, he stares me down when it is departure time for his walks, and in the early evening he badgers me up to bed when he is ready to sleep (sprawled across my ankles).
The ongoing criminal enterprise continues to this day, despite every effort at intervention and reform. Whatever faith I had in his eventual rehabilitation was gloriously misplaced. Heโs incorrigible: prying the trash can lid off with his nose to execute warrants for butter wrappers, regular counter-surfing for anything edible left unattended when everyone sits down for a meal, and scavenging the beach daily for contraband seafood.
But this malfeasance has never mattered, because like any of us, he contains Whitmanโs multitudes. He may be a criminal, but heโs my criminal, and heโs proven himself useful and worthy of love.
His most important exploit was lending his playbook to my main characterโs dog Bandit. Silas Lopez, the protagonist of my Cape Cod mystery series, is a laconic, introverted former rancher transplanted from the wide-open Southwest to become police chief of a crowded little New England beach town. A character in need of someone readers could watch him talk toโgiven his background as an outdoorsman and cattleman, that someone was always going to be a dog, and an Australian Cattle Dog was the only realistic choice.
Banditโs job in the Silas Lopez series? Win over every heart with mischief but save his own scruffy neck by making himself an indispensable member of the team. Itโs a writing craft point that barely needs acknowledgement (as Jamie Day has noted on these very pages): if you want to make a character more likable, especially a tough, quiet hero, give him a dog and show him caring for it. But the contribution to craft goes beyond character likability. Putting a dog in a scene forces you to ground it: where the dog is, what he senses, what he is doing. The sensory detail and setting logistics provide the physical world from which dialogue would otherwise float away.
From Harry, Silasโs dog Bandit inherited the steadiness, the loyalty, the vigilance and the joy. It’s right there in the acknowledgements, on the record: โ…and to my dogs, especially Harry, who lent Bandit his soul.โ
I think I always knew, on some level, that he would. When I first saw him I knew, with more certainty than I have ever had about anything before, that we were meant to be together. Iโve always been moved by the special relationships that can form between dogs and the people who pay attention to their wonderfulness. Service and working dogs, especially, have always felt close to magic. Now Iโve experienced firsthand some of what that is like.
I could say more, but the chief has checked his internal clock and says writing time is over. I am being herded away from my keyboard by my writing assistantโan ever-present shadow always faithfully at my feetโexcept when he stands and does the stare.
Christopher Mirabile is the author of the Silas Lopez MysteriesโTHE WASHASHORE and THE HOLDFAST, with book three planned for 2027โfeaturing a plainspoken ranch hand turned Provincetown police chief and Bandit, the cattle dog who keeps him human. The middle child of a small-town librarian, Christopher spent a career as a corporate lawyer and startup mentor, writing six nonfiction books before turning at last to fiction. He lives year-round at the far tip of Cape Cod, the setting and inspiration for the series, with his wife and three dogs โ one of whom may recognize himself in the column above. Find him, and Harry’s ongoing case file, at authorchristophermirabile.com.
