And A Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life by Helen Humphreys

Grizzle was a good dog. (Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and Mrs. Dalloway were written under her supervision.) So was Carlo, Emily Dickinson’s “shaggy ally,” and Peter, the wirehaired terrier to whom Agatha Christie dedicated her 1937 novel Dumb Witness. Wessex was not a good dog (just ask Thomas Hardy’s postman), but he did inspire his owner’s poetry. Keeper was a bad dog but an ideal companion for Emily Brontë.

Writers are often thought of as solitary types. But, according to Helen Humphreys—a poet, a novelist, and an owner of a Hungarian vizsla—a dog can be a writer’s best friend. Woolf’s model for the writing life has yet to be bettered: she wrote all morning, then took a long, rambling walk with her dog in the afternoon.