Quick Take
- Narration: Xe Sands brings warmth and quiet humor to Achterberg’s memoir, her voice grounding even the most chaotic multi-dog episodes without tipping into sentimentality.
- Themes: Foster care, empty nest grief, community and rescue networks
- Mood: Warm and bittersweet, with flashes of comedy
- Verdict: A genuinely moving account of how fostering dogs rebuilt one family’s sense of purpose, best suited to listeners who want heart alongside the chaos.
I came to Another Good Dog on a rainy Saturday afternoon when I had no particular agenda and no emotional defenses in place. That turned out to be exactly the right condition for it. Cara Sue Achterberg writes about fostering dogs the way people write about parenthood when they finally feel safe enough to tell the truth: with love, exhaustion, occasional desperation, and a humor that never cheapens the real feeling underneath it all.
What surprised me was how quickly the book stopped being about dogs and became about a woman trying to figure out who she is when the job of raising her children starts winding down. That’s the thread that connects everything, and it gives the memoir a gravity that a simpler animal-rescue story wouldn’t have.
Our Take on Another Good Dog
This is a memoir structured around a series of dogs that came through Achterberg’s Pennsylvania farm as fosters for Operation Paws for Homes, an organization that rescues dogs from high-kill shelters in the rural South and places them in northern homes while they wait for permanent families. The sheer variety of animals she describes is part of what makes the book compelling: there are nine puppies arriving with less than a day’s notice, a heartworm-positive dog who requires weeks of restricted activity, and a traumatized stray from Iraq who takes months to trust anyone. Each dog arrives with its own backstory and its own particular demands, and Achterberg never lets them blur into one undifferentiated mass of cute.
The book does something honest that a lot of animal memoirs shy away from. It shows fostering as genuinely difficult. Dogs destroy things. Dogs grieve. Dogs test a family’s patience in ways that don’t resolve themselves in a tidy montage. Achterberg’s husband Nick comes across as a man who signed up for one dog and found himself overrun, and his evolution from quiet skeptic to committed participant is one of the subtler pleasures here. Her teenagers, meanwhile, become attached in ways that complicate every goodbye.
Why Listen to Another Good Dog
Xe Sands handles this material with the right touch. She has a voice that carries both warmth and credibility, and she doesn’t oversell the emotional beats. When Achterberg describes the moment of saying goodbye to a dog she’s grown close to, the line is clean rather than melodramatic: if I don’t give this one away, I can’t possibly save another. Sands delivers that kind of plainspoken philosophy without leaning on it, which is the correct instinct. The listening pace is easy and undemanding, which suits a memoir that’s best absorbed in longer stretches rather than short commute chunks.
One listener who had been fostering dogs for years noted that the book “hit home on so many levels,” and I think that’s the likely response from anyone who has direct experience with rescue work. But Achterberg writes with enough specificity and self-awareness that the book also works for people who have never fostered an animal and are simply curious about what that life looks like from the inside.
What to Watch For in Another Good Dog
The emotional arc here is gentle rather than dramatic. If you come expecting a tidy narrative of transformation, you may find the book a little loose in its structure. It is more episodic than plot-driven, which makes sense given that the subject matter is literally an ongoing series of arrivals and departures. Some chapters feel more developed than others, and a few of the individual dog stories are resolved more quickly than they deserve. One review noted a reference to “100 Dogs and Counting” in what is clearly a review of this book, which suggests some readers may be conflating it with Achterberg’s follow-up work. The story she tells here is genuinely her own and doesn’t need inflation.
The audiobook is just under eight hours, which is a comfortable length for this kind of material. There’s no padding, no manufactured drama. The 80-pound bloodhound who sang arias for the neighbors is mentioned and I am happy to report that this detail is not exaggerated for effect. It is simply a thing that happened in Achterberg’s house.
Who Should Listen to Another Good Dog
This audiobook works well for listeners who have ever thought about fostering an animal and want an honest account of what that commitment involves. It also works for anyone navigating a major life transition, particularly the particular disorientation of watching children grow into independence. If you have a low tolerance for animal suffering, there are difficult passages involving neglected and abused dogs, though none of them are gratuitously detailed. Listeners looking for a fast-paced or plot-heavy experience should look elsewhere. This is a book best listened to while doing something slow and purposeful with your hands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to be a dog person to enjoy Another Good Dog?
Not necessarily. The book is fundamentally about family, purpose, and the empty nest transition. Plenty of readers with no particular connection to dogs have found it genuinely affecting. That said, Achterberg’s love for dogs is pervasive, so if animals leave you cold, the emotional logic won’t quite land.
Is Another Good Dog related to Achterberg’s follow-up book 100 Dogs and Counting?
They cover related ground and similar themes since they’re both memoirs about her fostering journey, but they are separate books. Another Good Dog is the first memoir and focuses on her early years fostering for Operation Paws for Homes. You can read them independently.
How does narrator Xe Sands handle the more emotional passages?
Sands is restrained in the best way. She doesn’t push the tearful moments harder than the writing calls for, which is one of the reasons the book avoids tipping into sentimentality. Her pacing is steady and her warmth is real without feeling performed.
Does the book address the practical realities of fostering, or is it mostly emotional narrative?
Both. Achterberg is specific about logistics: the arrival of nine puppies on short notice, the medical needs of a heartworm-positive dog, the coordination with Operation Paws for Homes. She doesn’t turn the book into a how-to guide, but readers curious about the actual mechanics of fostering will come away with a genuine sense of what it entails.
