I had been sober for most of that summer. An occasional slip now and then, but nothing compared to my former drinking. I was learning new things about myself. That I was as big a sucker for affection, even from a dog, as any man who ever lived. Martin brought out the boy in me. The surprise was that, in my basic nature, I had hardly changed at all. In many ways I was a ten year old in the body of a man. I was not hard or tough at all.

Thomas Healy was a drunk, a fighter, often unemployed, no stranger to the Glasgow police or to the courts. He came from the Gorbals, that byword for hard men and the school of hard knocks, and his life was going nowhere other than downhill. Then one day he bought a pup - a Doberman. He called him Martin. Gradually man and dog became unshakeable allies, the closest of comrades, the best of friends. Martin, in more ways than one, saved Thomas Healy's life. This is a story of one man and his dog. Such things can be sentimental.

Healy's is a memoir written with refreshing originality and love.