One book reviewer called it the finest study of the mind of a dog ever written, while another said the story of the life of a dog, a simple and strangely marvelous thing, was true to the life of a dog. “Bashan and I,”  is the moving story of Thomas Mann’s relationship with his spirited German Short-haired Pointer, from their first encounter at a local farm, to Mann’s contemplation of Bashan’s inner life. Honestly, it’s a book that any of us who are besotted with our dogs could write, only we don’t, and Mann did.

It’s hardly the only book in which a GSP features large. Robert B. Parker’s mystery series about a detective named “Spenser,” feature three German Shorthaired Pointers, all named “Pearl.”