Hola, star of Martin Kihn’s memoir Bad Dog: A Love Story stopped by the HighBridge offices yesterday. She’s a beautiful Bernese mountain dog (and as friendly as she is beautiful). The Bernese mountain dog is a very old breed. The ancestors of today’s dogs served as all purpose farm dogs
in Switzerland and as rescue dogs.

Hola’s owners Martin and his wife (who stopped by with Hola) live in Minneapolis. You’ll perhaps
recognize Martin’s name from his making the TV talk show rounds with actor Don Cheadle, who stars in the Showtime version of another of Martin’s books House of Lies.

As you learn if you listen to Bad Dog (check out the excerpt), Hola lives up to the history of her breed as a rescue dog—but perhaps in an unusual way. It’s in attempting to train Hola that Martin learns he needs to get much more in his life under control than just his dog.

The writing Bad Dog: A Love Story is sharp and witty, and narrator David Drummond delivers this portrait of a man who seems to know even less about himself than he does about training a dog with the perfect mixture of misplaced assurance and bewildered revelation.

“This wry memoir of the human-dog bond is one that eschews the usual treacly sentimentality in favor of a raw, deeply sincere, and self-aware homage to this powerful bond.”
      —Publishers Weekly [HC starred review]