Itching to Love: The Story of a Dog

A beloved NPR storyteller and award-winning author discovers life after kids when a neighbor's dog steals her things--and her heart--in this hilarious and uplifting memoir.

In this hilarious memoir, award-winning author Shelley Fraser Mickle takes readers on a humorous yet heartwarming and intimate journey into a slice of her life. Itching to Love gives readers not only laughs but also a realization that their own lives are a singular magnificence enhanced by unexpected detours.

Shelley shares how a woman discovers her neighbor’s dog has been stealing her things and stashing them next to his food bowl and forcing her to ponder, What did he see in her that she did not see in herself? Never in her wildest dreams would she have predicted that she would fall in love with a dog with yellow snake eyes who refuses to let her be owned by anyone else.

In this short memoir you will find yourself smiling, laughing, and crying as Shelley introduces you to astronauts, Founding Fathers, family members we can all relate to, along with many others who educated her heart. And, of course, Buddy the ordinary dog who sensed she was secretly harboring an unrecognized sorrow.

When her second novel Replacing Dad was translated into film, one reviewer said it was the funniest story since Auntie Mame. Yes, Shelley is indeed funny, which is why NPR in Washington D.C. called one day to ask her to tell her stories on Morning Edition, which she did for six years.