A Good Man with a Dog

A Retired Game Warden’s 25 Years in the Maine Woods

By: Roger Guay

Narrated by: John Pruden

Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

A Maine Literary Awards Finalist, A Good Man with a Dog follows a game warden’s adventures from the woods of Maine to the swamps of New Orleans. Follow along as he and his canine companions investigate murder, search for missing persons, and rescue survivors from natural disasters. This is a memoir that reads like a true crime novel.

Roger Guay takes listeners into the patient, watchful world of a warden catching poachers and protecting pristine wilderness, and the sometimes CSI-like reconstruction of deer- and moose-poaching scenes. When Guay’s father died in a tragic fishing accident, a kind game warden helped him through the loss. Inspired by this experience, as well as his love of the outdoors, he became a game warden.

Guay searches for lost hunters and hikers. He estimates that over the years, he has pulled more than 200 bodies out of Maine’s north woods! His frequent companion is a little brown Labrador retriever named Reba, who can find discarded weapons, ejected shells, hidden fish, and missing people.

A Good Man with a Dog explores Guay’s life as he and his canine partners are exposed to terrible events, from tracking down hostile poachers to searching for victims of violent crimes, including a year-long search for the hidden graves of two babies buried by a Massachusetts cult. He witnessed firsthand FEMA’s mismanagement of the post-Katrina cleanup efforts in New Orleans, an experience that left him scarred and disheartened. But he found hope with the support of family and friends, and eventually returned to the woods he knew and loved from the days of his youth.

©2016 Roger Guay and Kate Clark Flora (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

An Amazing Life, Incredible Story.

A amazing story filled with joy, fear and everything in-between. It shows the real side of Warden work.

Great story

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. We have been vacationing in Maine for 20 yrs and I was fascinated with Roger’s stories of life in the Maine Woods. I was equally interested to hear him speak of how his various experiences affected him personally. He sounds like the kind of guy you want to sit and enjoy a beer with, very real and down to earth. The narration was excellent as well. I was very sad when this book ended.

A good read before going in the wilderness.

I love the story, it is very eye opening about things that happen the wild, especially by the inexperienced, of which I am. I’ve never been a wilderness person, except for one trip to the Goat rocks Wa. as a teenager, which was guided. I loved it. I learned a lot about Maine as well, I didn’t realize it was so wild. I’ve worked on flood plains dealt with Army Corp. of Engineers, I could relate. This story is also about healing, which was good since I lost my own dad is a terrible accident. All of this to say, this book is believable. I love dogs as well.

What a life, sacrifice and legacy!

Never before had I heard anything about the life of a game warden/ k9 handler that explained the existence and true nature of the job and the bond between the handler and the dogs. After 9/11 I’d met a volunteer and his K9 who searched the wreckage of the twin towers for cadavers. The dog had to retire due to depression. It changed him. You could see it. But what didn’t realize until this book was the cost& control that the handlers would have to exhibit. I didn’t think of the danger day in, day out, and what it truly meant. Thank you, Sir, for your service and your story! Your 25 years of service was a lifetime of sacrifice worthy attention! Thank you for helping us to understand!! God bless you!!