Book Review: The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be by Farley Mowat
(Five Stars)
“He carried with him the aura of Don Quixote and it was in that atmosphere that my family and I lived for more than a decade.”
Great animal story; great growing up story. Well told in 1957. If you’re tired of current crop of insipid animal stories which are really about the author, try this.
“In twenty-nine years a man can remember a good many things that ought to have happened.”
If this isn’t exactly the way it was, it’s the way he remembered it three decades later.
“By the time he had retrieved fifteen out of the original eight ducks, he was beginning to grow annoyed.”
Mowat eventually made his living by words. It shows. Just the right word or phrase to capture the scene. A pleasure to read.
“We learned not to waste adrenalin cursing at him when he abandoned normal procedure and went off on his own.”
A dog named Mutt, purchased as a pup for four cents (you read that correctly) in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1929, turned out to be anything he wanted to be, but he confounded the expectations of humans near and far.
“The pact of timelessness between the two of us was ended, and I went from him into the darkening tunnel of the years.”
As a Matter of Fancy 
Yes, I recall that book from ages ago! Thanks.