D is for Dogs

For this, my third year doing the challenge, I am going literary. For every letter of the alphabet I will talk about a book, an author or a character from fiction or myth that made an impression, was inspirational, or caused me to think.




I was into dog stories, but not your sissy Lassie types. Nope, not me. As I've mentioned in past posts the first book that I can remember making me cry was Jack London's Call of the Wild. I was around eight when I read the Classics Illustrated addition, maybe ten when I read the book. Both times I sobbed at the end. I still do. Obviously, Call of the Wild lead to White Fang.

Which was followed closely by Kazan the Wolf Dog.

On the heels of Kazan came the Silver Chief series. This is a picture of the book I still have. It's got my name and address in it and everything.

It seems kind of odd that a little girl in the tropics would be taken by wolf-dog stories that mostly take place in Alaska or Canada.

Maybe it was precisely because the setting was so different that I was attracted to them. Maybe it was because the dogs were so different from our ornery family mutt. And yet they were similar. They were fearless, and so was our dog Happy.

Then came Farley Mowat's book, The Dog Who Wouldn't Be. This was the first true story of a dog I ever read. Talk about bawling at the end.


In high school I read Mowat's, Never Cry Wolf. 

One of my goals is to write a novel about our dog Happy. He personality was so huge. As it is, he makes an appearance in my novel, A Lizard's Tail. But it's not enough, he deserves a book of his own. 

D is for Dogs Other D influences: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire