I just checked out this book on CD from the library, but haven't started listening to it yet.  It sounds like it might be a tearjerker.  Here is an Amazon.com review of it:

At the heart of Pam Houston's tender novel Sight Hound is a surprisingly thoughtful three-legged Irish wolfhound named Dante. Convinced that it is his responsibility to teach the humans around him about love, he concentrates his efforts on his owner Rae.

Rae hasn't had much luck with men, but her love for her dog Dante is pure and uncomplicated. When he is diagnosed with cancer, she puts all of her energies into prolonging his life, volunteering him for experimental surgery. The ups and downs of the three years he spends in remission are narrated from the perspective of the motley friends who float in Rae's out-sized orbit. And of course, Dante has his own say, as does Rae's rambunctious second dog, Rose, and Darlene's cat, Stanley. Houston isn't afraid to venture into boggy terrain—readers who squirm at the notion that dogs have human "moms" and "souls as deep and authentic as anything in creation" will resist being carried along at first—but the novel's humor and irony are bracing, and different voices provide welcome contrasts in tone.

a 23 CD book - that's like a HUGE novel ! Wow that's alot of cd's!

I had to share this part of the book with y'all.  It had me laughing out loud.  I edited it, but it's still pretty long.  Those of you with cats can tell me if this is typical cat mentality.

Stanley the Cat from The Sight Hound:

If you want the unsentimental truth of the matter, always ask a cat.

I’d like it also to be clear that the dogs and I have an understanding. That’s how I like to think of it, an understanding. Rose likes to use me as a chew toy from time to time, and I’ll allow it, as long as she doesn’t have any little friends over who think the sky’s the limit, and as long as when I make the move to the cabin roof Rose understands that’s enough for one day. She’s got a lovely soft mouth, and it feels good, for a while, to be massaged in such a manner.

Dante is another matter. He likes me a bit too much--if you’ll excuse me saying so time, even me.  I suppose it’s to be expected, given his over-close relationship with his mother, and neither of them is to be blamed for that considering all they’ve been through together. 

I wouldn’t know much about any of that, had my balls chopped off back in ’92. Sure I get a little thrill when Rose chews on me, but that’s kind of a size thing. That girl outweighs me by almost a hundred and thirty-five pounds.

Rae and I, too, have an understanding.   She allows me to live in her house rent free in exchange for keeping the mouse population in check to the point where she doesn’t find little red wriggly babies in her underwear drawer. She’s not required to pet me or talk to me or make nice with me in any spurious display, but I am appreciative when she turns a blind eye to how much I enjoy sleeping on her writing chair between ten and twelve in the a.m. when the sun hits it in a very particular way, and when she lets it slide if she finds me sucking and kneading on her blue fleece robe with the grizzly bears on it. A cat’s got to exercise his instincts from time to time after all, even a cat who has lost his balls.

I’d like to go on record as saying that I like Howard too. That I am willing to overlook all the unpleasantries involving the squirt bottle, that I now understand he was new to the house and not fully cognizant of the power structures in place. That he believed Rae when she said she was allergic, and he didn’t understand, as we all have come to, that she’s actually talking about an allergy of the spirit, and if I do happen to sleep on her pillow between 2:30 and 4:30 when the afternoon sun comes in their bedroom window, he now knows that it is hardly going to send her into anaphylactic shock.

I’m aware that there was some confusion about the interpretation of my response to the squirt bottle—ten little mouse heads, all lined up in the mud room, all facing the door—and I want to clarify that there was no threat intended whatsoever.  I was sending one message and one message only and that was just a note to the front office about how consistently and effectively I do my job around here. Don’t think I’m not as capable as the next cat of spelling out REDRUM in the body parts of small furry creatures. If I want to send a threatening message, they’ll be the first to know.

That aside, Howard’s a good egg. When you’ve lived as long as I have in a house with two women who are mad at their fathers, a hundred and sixty pound girl dog and a three-legged mama’s boy who’s as queer as a two-dollar bill, you’d be happy anytime an extra y chromosome showed up.

And while he’s a far cry from what I’d call a man’s man, Howard’s officially in charge of disposing of the rabbits I chase into the basement, corner and eventually kill, and he never fails to say, “Jesus, Stanley, this one’s more than half your size,” and I’ll admit this old cat chest puffs up a little.

And let’s face it. This ranch is the Morrison’s Cafeteria of Catly Delights. You’ve got your field mice by the hundreds, your pack rats out in the barn, the swallows that build their nests in the eaves, the rock marmots who live in the culvert, and the jack rabbits that taste like pottymouth but have got game like you cannot believe. That and the reducing diet cat food Darlene and the vet have suddenly decided I need. I say, Sure thing sister, give me a little RD snack just before I go out and hit the north 40 serve-your-self mouse-o-rama.

I’m a cat, for Chrissake, and I have my own interests to consider. I have lived too long and come too far to share my bed with any man who comes down the pike. If he drives a milk truck for a living, or maybe raises wild Coho salmon in his spare time, maybe we can talk. In the meantime, I’ve got everybody under control around here, and that’s the way I like it.

I'm on the last CD now and I think I might return it to the library without finishing it.  It's getting near the part where Dante the wolfhound dies.   His cancer is out of remission.  I just know I will be driving down the road, listening to the CD, and crying at the sad parts. 

I'm going to need to get a humorous book to listen to next.

Thanks Pam for a funny read!  Love the part from the cat.  But with the sad part about Dante I don't think I could read the whole book.