~ An Excerpt From “The Goodest Boys”
🎻 Music Credit: “I Never Left” by Embers To Stars (Daniel Carleo) — whose masterful cinematic soundscape elevates the message with depth, gravity, and reverence.
This is not a book about dogs.
It is a book about love in its purest form—love unburdened by expectation, ego, performance, or condition. The kind of love that shows up without asking who you were yesterday or who you plan to be tomorrow. The kind that sits beside you in silence and somehow says everything.
I did not set out to write this book. In fact, for a long time, I resisted it. Some experiences feel too sacred for paper, too personal to expose to the noise of the world. But certain stories do not belong solely to the ones who lived them. They insist on being shared because they carry something universal—something many people feel but struggle to name.
If you have ever loved an animal deeply, you already understand what I mean. And if you haven’t, this book is not here to convince you. It doesn’t need to. Truth does not require consensus.
What follows is a true story. Not polished, not exaggerated, and not written to persuade skeptics. It is written to honor a bond that changed me—one that challenged my understanding of loyalty, presence, loss, and the possibility that love may not end where we assume it does.
You will find no claims of certainty here. I do not pretend to have answers about reincarnation, the afterlife, or the unseen architecture of the universe. I only offer what I lived, what I witnessed, and what I could no longer ignore. You may explain it through science, coincidence, instinct, or something more mysterious. I leave that choice to you.
But I ask one thing as you read: do not rush to dismiss what makes you uncomfortable.
Some of the most meaningful truths arrive quietly. They do not announce themselves. They simply appear, sit down beside us, and wait to be recognized.
This book is for anyone who has loved deeply and lost painfully. For anyone who believes connection can outlive separation. For anyone who suspects that loyalty may be one of the highest forms of intelligence.
Most of all, it is for Lincoln.
And for every soul who has ever looked into the eyes of a dog and felt—without logic or language—that they were seen, known, and loved completely.
This is his story. And, in ways I am still discovering, it may be yours too.
