Dogs

Dogs are woven into the Sheff family’s domestic life as unruly companions, sources of comedy, and objects of sustained care. Moondog and Brutus, the household’s two named dogs, arrive with sharply different temperaments, but both become part of a larger canine presence that follows family gatherings and outdoor excursions. Their scenes register the texture of ordinary family life even as that life grows more difficult around Nic Sheff’s addiction.

Arrival and Domestic Habits

Looking for a puppy at the Humane Society, Karen Barbour instead falls for a smelly, sad-eyed, nearly starved hound sitting in a kennel with its paws crossed. She brings Moondog home, along with Brutus, a ball of fur and a chocolate Labrador puppy. Moondog has never been inside a house before. He lifts his leg on the floor and chews wooden furniture; he tears through the rooms, baying whenever a car passes or someone comes to the front door, and howls at the vacuum cleaner. Brutus is introduced in a gentler register, hopping through the grass like a bunny.

The contrast gives the dogs distinct presences rather than treating them as an interchangeable pair. Moondog’s first encounters with household life are noisy and destructive, while Brutus’s puppyish movement supplies the scene’s image of exuberance. Neither dog is presented as trained or decorous. Their habits become part of a busy home that already contains three children, Nic Sheff’s friends, and amplified and percussion instruments. The combined racket is so extensive that David Sheff’s agent jokes that the house might be a daycare center or a dog kennel. When the family needs a new car, its collection of children and animals makes a minivan the obvious choice; surf racks are added as a small protest against the practical purchase.

Pack Life and Family Gatherings

The dogs’ world extends beyond the two animals in the Sheff home. Wednesday dinners at Nancy and Don’s bring together their children and families, occasional guests, and a revolving pack of dogs. The gatherings are raucous, with the dogs claiming the best couches and stealing food left unattended on the dining table. Their behavior is not incidental to the scene: the animals share in the crowded, noisy informality of a family that assembles regularly around Nancy’s cooking.

At the beach before Nic Sheff’s freshman orientation, Brutus and Moondog run amok with a motley pack of local dogs while Karen Barbour, Jasper Sheff, and Daisy Sheff stay on the sand. Brutus at one point steals a picnicker’s baguette. The dogs’ ungoverned energy contrasts with the more intimate conversation taking place offshore, where David Sheff and Nic Sheff paddle out together and Nic admits that he is nervous about high school, though also excited. The dogs belong to the same family outing, but their play and opportunistic theft give the scene a separate, comic current.

Care, Attachment, and Vulnerability

Brutus’s later decline alters the meaning of the family’s relationship with him. One day he lies flat on the kitchen floor with his hind legs splayed and cannot move. Karen Barbour places a towel beneath his belly and uses it as a sling to help him stand. His frail hind legs tremble, but with her support he manages to move forward. The vet prescribes new medicine, leaving the family to confront the possibility that his condition may worsen without yet being able to contemplate putting him to sleep.

The prospect of losing Brutus is understood through the household’s particular routines of attachment. Daisy Sheff wraps herself around him every evening before bed. Jasper Sheff spends hours in a garden chair throwing a tennis ball, which Brutus retrieves and spits into his lap. Karen Barbour helps him stand; the children seek him out in familiar, repeated acts of closeness. The decision about his care is therefore not abstract: it touches several members of the family through the small, established ways they spend time with him.

Narrative Significance

Across the book, Dogs appear in scenes of domestic disorder, shared meals, outdoor play, and illness. Moondog’s destructive first days indoors, the pack’s raids on dinner tables, and Brutus’s stolen baguette give the animals a comic, physical presence; Brutus’s failing legs bring that presence into a more vulnerable register. They are not merely scenery for family life: their habits shape the household’s noise and practical arrangements, while their particular bonds with the children make care visible in everyday gestures.

That movement from exuberance to frailty gives the dogs’ appearances a quiet emotional arc without making them stand in for the family’s larger crisis. The book also presents family strain directly through Nic Sheff’s addiction and the effects it has on those around him, but the dogs’ scenes keep attention on another part of family life: the routines of feeding, playing, making room, and helping an animal take a step. Brutus’s towel sling is especially telling because it turns affection into physical assistance, while leaving the outcome uncertain.