"Last year I was puppy-sitting this adorable yellow lab, Hakuna, for her volunteer raiser for Guide Dogs for the Blind," writes Elizabeth Wrenn. So when she had to get an author photo taken for her debut novel, Around the Next Corner, which happens to be about a woman who gets pulled through a big mid-life transition by raising a service dog for a year, well, there you go. "What I didn't know then was that Hakuna would suffer a torn ACL at six months, be operated on successfully, but still be retired from the program... and I would be asked to adopt her. So though she was just a visiting canine friend in my author photo last year, she was destined to become our beloved family dog by the time the book came out this June."

Some of the dog pictures we got didn't have very long stories to go with them, but we're still happy to show you Zoe, the "official pug" of Alison Pace's Pug Hill, and Maggie, the "sleep at my feet writing partner" of Steve Clackson. "We discuss story lines and concepts on long walks and type into the wee hours of the morning without complaint," Steve reports, "not something I can say about other family members."