Never Have Your Dog Stuffed cover art

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

And Other Things I've Learned

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

By: Alan Alda
Narrated by: Alan Alda
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £7.99

Buy Now for £7.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 He’s one of America’s most recognizable and acclaimed actors–a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, during his eleven years on M*A*S*H. Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances.

“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six,” begins Alda’s irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession.

Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow.

It is the story of turning points in Alda’s life, events that would make him what he is–if only he could survive them.

From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist’s shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can’t be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness is found in embracing them.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, filled with curiosity about nature, good humor, and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda has ever played on the stage or screen.
©2005 Alan Alda; (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc. Entertainment & Celebrities Relationships Celebrity Comedy Funny Witty Memoir

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself cover art
Rambling Man cover art
Moose cover art
Windswept & Interesting cover art
David Attenborough - Life on Air cover art
Here's the Deal cover art
MASH: An Army Surgeon in Korea cover art
I Said Yes to Everything cover art
My Adventures with God cover art
Yes, My Accent Is Real cover art
The West Wing: TV Milestones cover art
David Mitchell: Back Story cover art
May I Have Your Attention Please? cover art
My Happy Days in Hollywood cover art
Keep Moving cover art
Most Talkative cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Great to hear that people we see as 'stars' have ordinary lives and problems just like the rest of us. Alan Alda's voice is a little more monotone than I was expecting from an actor but nevertheless is easy to listen to and he has a story very much worth hearing.

Dog lovers beware

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
What a lovely book. It was very well written and narrated. I always loved Alan as Hawkeye in Mash and it was fascinating to learn more about his life. What a lovely man.

Beautifully written and narrated.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Love it, it has a lot of depth and great character. It also comes with a life lesson; you can't hold back change and take every opportunity to try new things.

Great

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Really well written, it was almost like a novel the way it was put together. I was hooked. Great narration by the author.

fantastic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Hawkeye is a gifted storyteller and his story is told with real wit. Highly recommended.

Brilliant

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews