"...Hard as it is to believe at this late date, not everyone gets yet that Carpenter is up to something a lot more wily and smart than just being a sex goddess. It would be difficult to miss that she is a comedienne at heart if you saw her madcap Christmas special a couple years back, or if you’ve seen her on awards shows pulling weird stunts like a note-for-note remake of an old Goldie Hawn routine. But the passing outrage over the album cover for the standard edition of “Man’s Best friend” speaks to the fact that not everybody gets here, or cares to. It’s clearly a kind of satire — she may or may not wanna be your dog in a relationship — not a serious endorsement of S&M, or worse. Just as clearly, it was meant to button-push a little, so maybe we can’t blame the part of the world that was properly provoked for taking the imagey at surface value. But this was not Madonna doing a “Sex” book; this was Carpenter being , sa clever goofball, spoofing her own submissive tendencies."

- Variety