The Dog Who Wouldn't Be

Rating:
Summary: Beg, borrow or steal, but read this book.
Review: Chock full of incredibly poignant stories of a young mutt growing up on the Canadian praires, with his human Farley in tow. Read it to yourself, your dogs, your children, your chickens. This is a book not to be missed!

Rating:
Summary: the dog who wouldn't be
Review: i am reading this book with my dad and having a fun time.mutt,comes to this family for only a penny but brings a millon laughs.he did not think he was a dog so he did not ACT like a dog.when he didn't want to do something he pretented not to hear it.he would put on an expression that said,''i'm sorry,were you speaking to MOI? my two favorite parts are when the dad turns mutt blue and when the dad shot his gun and fell into the dich.you will have to read the book to find out the rest.

Rating:
Summary: the dog who wouldn't be
Review: I must speak a dissenting voice to all the glowing reviews of this book. Mowat is, no doubt, an excellent naturalist, and many of the adventures described in the book are very entertaining. However, I am very disturbed that, although the author is ready to defend HIS pets with his shotgun against other animals, he pretty much gave his own animals not just free rein but also encouragement to kill the pets of others. Mutt the dog is deliberately set on a woman's cats, and the "secret cemetery" of neighborhood cats filled by his pet owl is described with almost pride.

Also disturbing to me is the author's attitude toward women. Any complaining woman is described as "spinsterish." The "Cat Lady" whose cats the author set his dog on to attack and kill was described as harboring "yearning hope" for a male intruder to come and presumably do things to her that I don't want to refer to in a review that children may read -- the implication is pretty strong, with a reference also to the Sabine women.

I may get flamed for this review, but I feel that these are very poor attitudes to be subtly or unsubtly conveying to children. I find it very unfortunate because I endorse the author's work as a naturalist.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but with serious reservations
Review: I must speak a dissenting voice to all the glowing reviews of this book. Mowat is, no doubt, an excellent naturalist, and many of the adventures described in the book are very entertaining. However, I am very disturbed that, although the author is ready to defend HIS pets with his shotgun against other animals, he pretty much gave his own animals not just free rein but also encouragement to kill the pets of others. Mutt the dog is deliberately set on a woman's cats, and the "secret cemetery" of neighborhood cats filled by his pet owl is described with almost pride.

Also disturbing to me is the author's attitude toward women. Any complaining woman is described as "spinsterish." The "Cat Lady" whose cats the author set his dog on to attack and kill was described as harboring "yearning hope" for a male intruder to come and presumably do things to her that I don't want to refer to in a review that children may read -- the implication is pretty strong, with a reference also to the Sabine women.

I may get flamed for this review, but I feel that these are very poor attitudes to be subtly or unsubtly conveying to children. I find it very unfortunate because I endorse the author's work as a naturalist.

Rating:
Summary: An all-time favorite
Review: I read this for the first time when I was in about 6th or 7th grade and loved it. It was my introduction to Farley Mowat and since then I have read many of his other works.

This book is one of the most entertaining books I have ever read. I loved it 30 years ago when I was a kid (maybe 11 or 12) and I enjoyed it again last year.

The story is about the life and times of Mutt, the dog that entered the Mowat family and grew up with Farley. Mutt is all dog and a little more. Frustrated with the local cat population and their dominance of the fencetop and rooftop world, he learns to walk fence tops. He develops hunting and retrieving techniques that are the talk of the country -- literally! Each chapter is a new story, a new adveneture into the life of Mutt.

Rating:
Summary: Bring it back into print!
Review: I was astonished to find "The Dog Who Wouldn't Be" is apparently out of print in 2001. I easily found a copy in the Springfield, Illinois city library, but it ought to be buyable in the marketplace for those who want to have it and keep it.

Have you ever wondered what your grandfather was like when he was a boy? The "yarns" and stories in this book may give you some clues. Don't believe for one second that all the adventures related in this book are strictly true. Mowat is a great storyteller and he, like Mark Twain, took his memories and made from them something great and wonderful.

This book declares war on all of the cats of the world, as one of my fellow reviewers has correctly noted. Cat lovers beware! You won't like this book. For everyone else who wants an idealized window on the lives of boys growing up in the 1930s and 40s, take a look. The boys you see in this volume are not boys any more. They are grandfathers. They won't be around forever. If you want to know and love them better while they are still here, read this book.

Rating:
Summary: very well written book
Review: Summary: The true story of naturalist Farley Mowat and the first love of his life, his dog Mutt. Mowat relates excerpted tales from his childhood, most of which center around his unusual dog, Mutt. Mutt seems to be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of dog, whose unusual personality manifests itself in everything from duck hunting to cat chasing. Towards the end of the book, with the majority of Mutt's exploits behind him, the book expands to include stories of other pets, most notably a pair of great horned owls. The final chapter has the inevitable death of Mutt, although the details of his demise under the wheels of a runaway truck aren't given graphically.
The Good and the Bad:
I didn't really enjoy this book very much, although my age might have something to do with it. Actually, I don't even believe that because the completely unnecessary verbosity asks for a certain amount of sophistication from the reader, and anyone smart enough to swallow the big words is probably not going to be open to the message. The grand verbiage is related to my other big problem with the book, which is that the mythic legends of the dog are almost certainly inflated. Mowat instills his dog with so much human character and emotion that it would have been more believable if it turned out to be a man in a dog suit. Yet, he pooh poohs another naturalist for "presuming to know what an animal is thinking," with no apparent irony. Also, Mowat's sense of humor and self-importance are both extremely irritating. The humor is like a broad physical comedy in its lack of subtlety, and it's couched in so many words that it sounds like a foppish English gentleman failing miserably at a dinner conversation.
On the positive side, it did seem like Mutt was a special dog, hyperbole aside, and it was interesting to get slice of life stories about a budding naturalist in Canada in the 1930s.


Rating:
Summary: The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
Review: The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
By: Farley Mowat
Reviewed by: Catherine Li

This book describes the life of a boy (Farley) with a dog named Mutt. Mutt was adopted by the author's mother when he was a puppy and was found by a boy who was selling baby ducks. Mutt was a very unique dog because he had excellent hunting skills. He could dive really deep to catch ducks under the water. Whenever the author's Dad fired his gun to hunt birds, Mutt could always retrieve a bird back even if the author's Dad missed his shot. Besides his hunting skills, he had ability to walk on fences, ladders, and trees - just like a cat! The first time he tried to walk on a fence he fell, but he kept trying until he was able to master his balancing skills on a narrow fence. Mutt was a very determined dog.
I really enjoyed reading this book because the writing describes a lot of details. The writing is very descriptive, and I could picture all the events in my mind. I love the huge vocabularies the author uses to make the sentences complex. "A swirl of muddy water marked his passing, and in the center of the swirl thee was a whitish blob that twisted back and forth lethargically." The author writes lengthy and quite difficult sentences. I remember when I tried reading this book a year ago, there was at least five to ten words I did not understand.
The author described the hunting skills and tricks Mutt could do in very expressive writing. Each chapter was extremely long, however I never got bored and kept reading. The events the author chose very amusing and thrilling. For instance, "The last jump took him well into deep water, and he began churning forward like an old-fashioned stern-wheeler." This book is so descriptive that it make the readers feel like they were really living in the Canadian plains.
I found this book very fascinating, especially when Mutt learns how to climb ladders, trees, and fences. My favorite section of this book is when Mutt climbed on top of a tree and there was a group of firefighters surrounding the tree. This section of the book is amusing because everyone thought it was a huge monster in the tree. Two people were holding guns and they called the firefighters to this event. It is a book worth reading. It has humorous stories and touching events. I really enjoyed reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
Review: The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
By: Farley Mowat
Reviewed by: Catherine Li

This book describes the life of a boy (Farley) with a dog named Mutt. Mutt was adopted by the author's mother when he was a puppy and was found by a boy who was selling baby ducks. Mutt was a very unique dog because he had excellent hunting skills. He could dive really deep to catch ducks under the water. Whenever the author's Dad fired his gun to hunt birds, Mutt could always retrieve a bird back even if the author's Dad missed his shot. Besides his hunting skills, he had ability to walk on fences, ladders, and trees - just like a cat! The first time he tried to walk on a fence he fell, but he kept trying until he was able to master his balancing skills on a narrow fence. Mutt was a very determined dog.
I really enjoyed reading this book because the writing describes a lot of details. The writing is very descriptive, and I could picture all the events in my mind. I love the huge vocabularies the author uses to make the sentences complex. "A swirl of muddy water marked his passing, and in the center of the swirl thee was a whitish blob that twisted back and forth lethargically." The author writes lengthy and quite difficult sentences. I remember when I tried reading this book a year ago, there was at least five to ten words I did not understand.
The author described the hunting skills and tricks Mutt could do in very expressive writing. Each chapter was extremely long, however I never got bored and kept reading. The events the author chose very amusing and thrilling. For instance, "The last jump took him well into deep water, and he began churning forward like an old-fashioned stern-wheeler." This book is so descriptive that it make the readers feel like they were really living in the Canadian plains.
I found this book very fascinating, especially when Mutt learns how to climb ladders, trees, and fences. My favorite section of this book is when Mutt climbed on top of a tree and there was a group of firefighters surrounding the tree. This section of the book is amusing because everyone thought it was a huge monster in the tree. Two people were holding guns and they called the firefighters to this event. It is a book worth reading. It has humorous stories and touching events. I really enjoyed reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: The lighter side of Farley Mowat
Review: This is a light-hearted book by Farley Mowat, a writer with whom we normally associate more serious texts. Yet Mowat is just as fun-loving as the next person and it comes out in this collection of stories about his youth in Ontario and Manitoba. Mutt, the dog of the book's title, is a dog who very reasonably refuses to act like one. So he won't hunt ducks properly or do much else that is reckoned too dog-like, at least while anyone's watching. Mutt was Mowat's constant companion throughout many boyhood forays into the wild country around wherever he happened to be living. On the prairies in the 1920s and 30s, he says, it was easy to get out in the bush, because it started right where the town stopped. You just had to walk out. So began Farley Mowat's lifelong love of the natural world. Indeed, he made a pretty good naturalist by the age of ten and earned himself a minor living for a time, through the dubious activity of collecting birds' eggs. This is an easy book to get along with and one that would probably be enjoyed by children. Indeed, I assume it may well have been intended for Mowat's own children. I thoroughly recommend it.