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About The Good Companion
The Good Companion is Pet Lore’s journal for nonfiction stories, art, research, field notes, and guided storytelling about the lives we share with animals.
The journal publishes work about companionship, memory, grief, service and working animals, pet owner culture, family lore, animal care, and the everyday rituals that shape our relationships with animals over time. Some pieces may be personal and reflective; others may be research-informed, visual, interview-based, or rooted in lived experience.
The Good Companion founded by Liana Meyer, exists alongside the broader Pet Lore project as a home for public storytelling, community reflection, and the preservation of the emotional histories we build with animals.
Why This Journal Exists
Animals shape human lives in ways that are intimate, ordinary, practical, funny, difficult, and profound.
They are present in childhood memories, daily routines, caregiving roles, family systems, disability support, grief, work, migration, aging, recovery, and identity. They become part of our private language. They mark seasons of our lives. They carry stories that often disappear unless someone takes the time to notice and preserve them.
The Good Companion exists to make room for those stories -- from the extraordinary ones to the quietly profound: the favorite spot by the window, the old leash by the door, the drive to the vet, the working partnership, the animal who helped someone through a season no one else fully saw.
What We Publish
The Good Companion publishes thoughtful nonfiction and visual storytelling about animals and the people who love, care for, work beside, remember, and learn from them.
We welcome personal essays, research-informed articles, art and photo stories, field notes, interviews, multimedia work, and tribute pieces that explore companionship, memory, grief, care, devotion, service, disability, aging, community, and the everyday rituals that shape our lives with animals.
Who Can Submit
You do not need to be a professional writer to submit. The Good Companion welcomes pet owners, handlers, caregivers, artists, researchers, students, animal workers, first-time writers, and people with lived experience.
We welcome polished drafts, rough ideas, photos, memories, questions, and stories that may need editorial support to take shape. Everyone has a story to tell; sometimes it just needs the right place to begin.