We need to keep this between you and me, OK? But I’m reading Dean Koontz’s Watchers because of an adorable dog.

You understand, of course, that I’m not a dog person. I’m a cat person, in the worst way.

It’s not that my cats would get jealous, knowing that I’m turning these pulpy pages, saying, “Aww!” over the way this golden retriever wags his tail or fetches a beer for his master. What worries me is that the pooches in my own neighborhood might catch wind of this slight softening of my standards, and I’ll soon be assaulted by their wet lipped friendliness.

Down, boy! Heel! Go home!

Koontz’s book will never change my soft spot for cats.

You might also be thinking, “A golden retriever that fetches a beer?”

You heard me right. The dog can open the fridge. In fact, the dog knows his master, Travis, needs a beer before Travis even says so.

You may recall last week that we talked about two novels commencing on the same wavelength and I stood at a fork in the road, reading-wise.  The man-in-the-forest story won out.

As he hikes in the southern California woods, the retriever appears out of nowhere and blocks him from taking a certain dark path through the pines. The dog knows that something awful lurks out there.

So Travis takes the dog home. Soon — sometime around that fetched beer — he discovers that the dog is unusually smart. Before long, Travis understands that his new dog is the result of some DNA tinkering.

Meanwhile, out in the woods, the Horrible Thing lurks. And a couple hikers end up dead in a particularly messy way. As the Horrible Thing moves across the landscape, as the victims pile up, as the sheriff and the National Security Agency investigate, we learn that this monster is also the result of DNA tinkering.

Yep, science has been playing God, and things have gotten out of hand.

Things look grim for the people of California, and for Travis and his new dog in particular.

Watchers was a good read, in spite of some hokey parts.

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Not everything that lurks is bad. In today’s dinner, I unwittingly fell into a theme of raspberry jam. It lurked in the sauce on the Raspberry Chicken Sandwich and it lurked between all the other good stuff in the Lemon Cheesecake Squares.

The remaining jam lurks in the fridge, waiting for somebody to bring home something fancy, like English muffins or brioche bread.

Nutrition-wise, we balanced out the sweet cheesy goodness of the rest of the meal with Fruit Medley.