The Dog Who Wouldn't Be

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.