Dog's Life: You Have to Know Dog, to Understand Dog
What does the world look like when you experience it four paws first?
Dog doesn't know he is a blond cockapoo. He doesn't understand why Humans give everything names, why chocolate is forbidden despite smelling magnificent, or why a perfectly good piece of cheese sometimes contains a disgusting chalky pill.
He does know the important things.
Mum is warm. Cheese is ten out of ten. Squirrels cheat. Cats are suspicious. Hedgehogs require careful consideration. Outdoor insects that buzz and hurt when eaten are clearly Spicy Flies. And moths remain one of life's great mysteries.
Dog's Life follows one ordinary, extraordinary dog from his first moments beside Mum through fifteen years of discovery, mischief, companionship and love.
As a puppy, Dog watches Humans arrive and take his brothers and sister away one by one. Eventually only Dog and Mum remain.
Then RobRob and JenJen arrive.
And they take him too.
Kidnapped.
At least, that's how Dog sees it.
His new Humans bring him to a strange house filled with unfamiliar smells, mysterious rules and an astonishing number of things that apparently aren't for chewing. Slowly, Dog begins working out how the Human world operates.
There are commands to learn, although obeying them often depends upon whether the reward is worth the effort. There's the lead, an irritating restraint that somehow means adventure. There are walks containing entire newspapers written in scent, suspicious strangers, unpredictable children, other dogs, cats, squirrels and a postman whose intentions remain under review.
There's Bear, the soft toy who gradually becomes much more than a toy.
There are play fights with RobRob, quiet snuggles with JenJen and annual stays with the Slow Humans, where one perfectly ordinary week seems to last forever.
And there's Cornwall.
Caravan holidays bring salt air, sand, enormous waves and a whole new world of smells. As the years pass, Cornwall becomes somewhere Dog recognises before he even sees the sea.
Through summers, rain, snow, thunderstorms, house moves, vet visits, peanut butter, suspicious medication and questionable Human decisions, Dog constructs his own understanding of life.
But while Dog is busy learning about Humans, RobRob and JenJen are becoming his family.
The strange house becomes home.
Then the Humans move it.
Twice.
Dog eventually discovers something Humans sometimes take years to understand: home isn't walls, furniture or a particular garden.
Home is who stays.
As puppyhood becomes adulthood and adulthood quietly gives way to old age, Dog's world changes again. Walks become shorter. Jumps become harder. Sounds become quieter.
But Dog remains Dog.
Cheese is still ten out of ten.
Squirrels still cheat.
Bear is still Bear.
And RobRob and JenJen are still his Humans.
Funny, warm and ultimately deeply moving, Dog's Life is a story about loyalty, ageing, memory, family and the thousands of ordinary days from which a life is made.
Most of all, it's the story of a dog who begins life knowing only Mum and spends the next fifteen years discovering the meaning of another word.
Home.
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