Book Review: My Broken Dog
My Broken Dog: Living with a Handicapped Pet, Sandy Kubillus, McFarland & Company, Inc., August 2024, print and e-book, 316 pages
Reviewed by Renee James
The title of this memoir makes it sound like a dog story, and it is, but it’s so much more. My Broken Dog is an engaging and often dramatic story about how we relate to our pets, and how that relationship helps to define us.
Sandy Kubillus is an environmental consultant (lakes, ponds, wetlands) in northern Illinois. The book opens during a period in her life when she’s working full-time as a consultant and also working on her thesis, and, eventually, also teaching classes at a local community college. As the book opens, she is living with Mitch, the man she will eventually marry, and his adolescent son—and Penny, her Border Collie who suffers from seizures.
Mitch indulges (mostly) her dedication to the dog, but his life’s focus is white-water paddling (canoes and kayaks on the rivers of the Great Lakes states and Tennessee) and cross-country skiing in the winter, and Sandy is his faithful companion on these outings despite the pressures of work, academics, and Penny.
The inciting event for this story occurs on a 1993 cross-country ski trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Penny is hit by a snowmobile and suffers a crippling injury. Sandy is left with horrible choices—put the dog down, amputate his injured leg, or invest a staggering amount of money in a risky, exotic surgery that might save the injured limb.
After Sandy’s gut-wrenching decision, she invests a huge amount of time and angst in nursing Penny back to health while also dealing with her many other responsibilities. From there, we wind through many twists and turns in life, both with pets, with Sandy’s relationship with Mitch, and Sandy’s struggle for a full life without flinching on commitments to Mitch, her career, her dog(s), and her education.
This is a terrific read because it’s rich in conflict. Every chapter presents new barriers and challenges. The author develops the conflicts with storytelling skill and strong writing. The story moves along briskly, and the linear story structure makes it easy for episodic readers to stop and resume as frequently as necessary.
All good storytelling involves character development and change, and My Broken Dog is no exception. Sandy and Mitch are the two main characters, and in the course of the story, they both change and their relationship changes, too. Their struggles will be familiar to many readers, just as their adventures with Sandy’s beloved dogs will have echoes in the experiences of many pet owners.
This is a highly recommended read, both for its entertainment value and for its ability to awaken each reader’s awareness of how our relationship with pets defines us as human beings. This message is well delivered in My Broken Dog because even as Penny and her successors in Sandy’s life remind us of our own treasured pets, Sandy’s arduous journey to fulfillment, filled as it is with constant and epic challenges, will remind us of our own journeys.
