The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be
The uproarious true adventures of a dog who doesn’t understand that he’s a dog ― and the boy who loved him. Funny, heartwarming, and true, this is a classic story of a very imaginative kid and one very unusual dog.
Funny and poignant, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be is a lively portrait of an unorthodox childhood and an unforgettable friendship. Growing up in on the frontier of Saskatoon, Canada, the legendary adventurer and naturalist, Farley Mowat, received a gift from his mom: a dog she bought for four cents. Farley quickly named him “Mutt.”
Mutt displayed skills at hunting and retrieving that were either pure genius or just plain crazy ― once going so far as to retrieve a plucked and trussed ruffed grouse from the grocer. Mutt also loved riding passenger in an open car wearing goggles and climbing both trees and ladders ― the perfect companion for a child with a love for animals and misadventures.
Originally published for young people, this is a memoir by the author Never Cry Wolf that will delight dog lovers of all ages.
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Description
Review
“The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be was, and will forever remain, one of my first and deepest literary loves. When I first read it as a child, it became my “gateway book” to Farley Mowat’s other great works, books which inspired me throughout my life. Re-reading it as an adult, in this beautiful edition, I fell in love all over again with the eccentric and talented Mutt, with Farley’s boyhood adventures, with the wild Saskatoon prairie. This classic remains one of the best biographies of an animal ever written–a masterful tribute to the bond between an extraordinary boy and an extraordinary dog.” –Sy Montgomery, author of Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind
A deftly crafted memoir that still proves after the passage of 50 years to be an inherently fascinating and memorable read from cover to cover. –Midwest Book Review
From the Back Cover
Mowat and his family moved to Saskatoon in 1929. His father had (for reasons never completely explained) taken the position of librarian in this remote Canadian frontier town on the edge of a prairie enduring the ravages of the dust bowl, and set smack in a landscape “that appeared to be in the last stages of dry rot.” The journey was trying for his mother, but for Farley it was “a land foreign to all my imagination, and one that offered limitless possibilities for new kinds of adventure.” One adventure arrived at their doorstep that summer in the form of a black and white mongrel, snapped up for four cents by his enterprising and frugal mother, and was quickly named by Farley, to his father’s chagrin, “Mutt.” Mutt turned out to be a game changer, a dog of formidable character. He not only possessed extraordinary skills as a retriever (once going so far as to retrieve a plucked and trussed ruffed grouse from the grocer), but was a determined cat-hater, skunk-baiter, and ladder-scaler. He was, in short, the perfect companion for a boy with a fertile imagination and a preternatural way with words.
About the Author
Farley Mowat was a Canadian writer, environmentalist, and activist. After serving in the military and exploring as a field technician in remote areas of Canada, Mowat published his first book, People of the Deer, in 1952. Over the next half-century he published dozens of titles and is best known for Never Cry Wolf, an account of his adventures with Arctic wolves in northern Manitoba, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, a book for young adults, The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float about his adventures sailing along the Newfoundland coast.
