Dog Breeding as a Vision Quest

Host Laura Reeves is joined by NYT best-selling author David Wroblewski discussing dog breeding as a vision quest.

Wroblewski is the author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Familiaris both based on the life and history of fictional dog breeder Edgar Sawtelle and his family.

“This sort of primal connection that we have with dogs, to me fundamentally is about how to live a larger, better life in a really broad sense,” Wroblewski said.

“One of the things that you mentioned, kind of like in the theme of the novels, is the importance of creating something lasting and beautiful in the world. The idea that you're pursuing one impossible thing,” Reeves said. “And let me tell you, as somebody who has been breeding dogs since I was a child with my family and still am today, that basically defines our life. So talk to us a little bit about how you came to that and how you incorporated that into your novels.”

“I think that there's only a couple of things that are worth writing about in the larger sense and one of them is love,” Wroblewski said. “And so I would hope that everything that I write is at some level and hopefully multiple levels a love story. But one of those love stories is the love of what you're trying to do in the world with your life.

“I mean, we all need to pay the bills. There are plenty of things that are just functional things about day-to-day living, but there's also the larger meaning of what you're doing with your life. And I've been lucky to have to work with people in a number of different realms that are lucky enough to be able to say I'm not just trying to pay the mortgage. I'm trying to do something bigger than just me.

“And one of the things that readers of Familiaris will run across partway through the book is a sort of accounting of this couple, John and Mary Sawtell. Familiaris is about this history of this kennel where everything takes place later for the Story of Edgar Sawtelle. But just an accounting of how all the work that they've done over the course of 40 years of raising dogs and placing them in the world, how that has accumulated and what the net effect across all human society has been. I feel like every time a dog gets placed with a thoughtful owner, that person's life has been changed forever.”