Mark Doty’s friends think he’s lost his mind:

You’re taking care of a man who can’t get out of bed and you’re adopting a golden retriever?

They have a point, Doty admits, but that doesn’t stop him from adding Beau, a malnourished golden retriever, to his family, which already consists of Wally, his dying partner, and Arden, a black retriever.

Arden and Beau help Doty live through the pain of losing Wally, and later Doty and new partner Paul care for the dogs in their final days. That’s the gist of “Dog Years: A Memoir” (HarperCollins $23.95), Doty’s reminiscence about a loving, nontraditional household, which also includes two mere cats.

Doty, a poet and memoirist, loved his dogs passionately while noting their foibles, but his contribution to the giant corpus of human-canine love stories is no “Marley and Me.” In fact, it’s a very highbrow memoir, with italicized Entre’actes between chapters and discussion of how human masters serve as the ontological ground for dogs.

The book’s opening is especially slow going, with Doty, mourning the loss of a friend in the 9/11 attacks, seeming to have to persuade himself it’s OK to grieve his dogs in print. “One of the unspoken truths of American life is how deeply people grieve over the animals who live and die with them …,” he writes. Maybe that’s true in his circles in New York (where he lives) and Houston (where he teaches), but not where I live and work. The family dogs I know are showered with love; when one aging Lab up the street, who was practically the mayor of the block, died unexpectedly, his human masters received fistfuls of sympathy cards.

Call me lowbrow, call me sentimental, but as a golden retriever owner I wanted more stories of Doty’s dog-human family and less metaphor, less meditation. After his initial spell of throat-clearing and ontological ground-setting, Doty does dish up more meat, describing how he and his partner had to sneak four animals into motel rooms on the road and, of course, detailing many veterinarian visits.

As an alternative to reading “Dog Years,” consider listening to the unabridged 5-CD audio book version (listed at $39.95, but available for less online), read by the author. Doty’s voice is calm, his tone intimate; his telling of the tale is dignified