JOHN Grogan worked as a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer in the early 2000s.

Some columns brought as few as five or six emails, others a couple of dozen, which he regarded as ‘a good day’.

So, it was his habit every morning to check his emails for responses to his work, and that determined his mood for the day.

He wrote, he explained, worthy and weighty columns about politics, policing, wars, the human condition etc, but one column that he wrote almost as an after-thought was to change his life.

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It was about, of all things, his dog dying.

Indeed, he wasn’t sure such a personal issue was suitable for a column, but one Monday morning he was stuck for a subject to write about so he went for it.

In that now famous column, Grogan told his readers that he was heart-broken, that his dog had been with him at some of the worst moments in his life – like when he and his wife lost their first baby during pregnancy – and that he had bonded totally with his golden retriever in a way that he hadn’t with many human beings.

He wrote about loyalty too: “A dog has no use for fancy cars or big homes or designer clothes. Status symbols mean nothing to him. A........

© The Irish News