The beloved boy-meets-dog story by legendary adventurer, Farley Mowat. The man who became famous for a memoir about living with Arctic wolves, Never Cry Wolf, grew up on the Canadian prairie in Saskatoon. His life was changed when his mother paid four cents for a black and white mongrel who Farley quickly named “Mutt.”
Mutt displayed great skills at hunting and retrieving — once going so far as to retrieve a plucked and trussed ruffed grouse from the grocer. But Mutt truly 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 misadventures.
Originally published for young people, this is a memoir that will delight dog lovers of all ages.
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 KindA 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