The next story in my Hitchcock reread was 'Man's Best Friend' by Dee Stuart. I definitely remember reading this one before. This story just felt familiar all the way through, and I could even remember the ending.
It's hard to say where your sympathies are meant to lie with this one. With the wife displaced by the husband's beloved dog? With the dog who is distrusted for no reason (possibly) by the wife? Or with the husband who just loves his pet dog?
I definitely didn't sympathize with the husband. The bit where he tells his wife to give up her career of 25 years because she'd worked 'enough'. But then, I feel like the wife is projecting her feelings towards her husband onto the dog and that doesn't exactly elicit a lot of sympathy. Ultimately, this is a story about a dysfunctional couple with a dysfunctional dog. The ending is nicely unsettling, and it was clearly memorable enough to stick in the back of my mind for decades!
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