A memoir about getting a first puppy, turning forty and transforming a son and mother's complicated relationship. On the eve of the millenium, the life of therapist and best-selling self-help author Andrew Marshall was in a dark place.
The counselling that he recommended to everybody else had not shifted the grief from the death of his much-loved partner - despite trying three different therapists.
His career as journalist had reached a dead end. He was struggling with low-level depression and his polite but distant relationship with his mother had left them both tip-toeing round each other.
His Solution? To get Flash, a collie cross puppy - perhaps not the best choice for someone who'd never owned a dog, or even lived with one, before. In this funny and moving memoir, Marshall chronicles not only the ups and downs of training an excitable puppy but how Flash brings back his childhood fear of wolves and the unresolved issues with his parents.
Slowly but surely, by looking though Flash's eyes, Marshall starts to laugh again, fall in love with the Sussex countryside and heal old wounds with his mother.
At the climax of Flash's puppy years, he gives him enough confidence to take a real-life wolf for a walk. And in the final section of Marshall's diary, Flash still has one last lesson to teach him.