The Dog Who Wouldn't Be

by Farley Mowat

Publisher:

David R. Godine, Publisher

, 2020

Overview

The heartwarming, classic true story of a dog who didn’t understand he’s a dog—and the imaginative boy who loved him.

Funny and poignant, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be is a lively portrait of an unorthodox childhood and an unforgettable friendship. Growing up in on the frontier of Saskatoon, Canada, the legendary adventurer and naturalist, Farley Mowat, received a gift from his mom: a dog she bought for four cents. Farley quickly named him “Mutt.”

Mutt displayed skills at hunting and retrieving that were either pure genius or just plain crazy—once going so far as to retrieve a plucked and trussed ruffed grouse from the grocer. Mutt also loved riding passenger in an open car wearing goggles and climbing both trees and ladders — the perfect companion for a child with a love for animals and misadventures.

Originally published for young people, this is a memoir by the author Never Cry Wolf that will delight dog lovers of all ages.

“The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be was, and will forever remain, one of my first and deepest literary loves. When I first read it as a child, it became my “gateway book” to Farley Mowat’s other great works, books which inspired me throughout my life. Re-reading it as an adult . . . I fell in love all over again with the eccentric and talented Mutt, with Farley’s boyhood adventures, with the wild Saskatoon prairie. This classic remains one of the best biographies of an animal ever written–a masterful tribute to the bond between an extraordinary boy and an extraordinary dog.” —Sy Montgomery, author of Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind

Product Details

• Title: The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
• Author: Farley Mowat
• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Print Publication Date: 2020
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 282
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781567926347, 9781567926125, 1567926126, 1567926347
• Resource ID: LLS:9781567926347
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-21T10:14:54Z

About Farley Mowat

Farley McGill Mowat (1921–2014) was born in Belleville, Ontario. The author of more than forty books, he was a popular and distinguished naturalist and conservationist whose internationally acclaimed novels, books for young readers, and memoirs have been translated into fifty-two languages and have sold more than seventeen million copies. Mowat’s oeuvre includes People of the Deer; Lost in the Barrens, a recipient of Canada’s Governor General’s Award; The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float; A Whale for the Killing; The Snow Walker; and Virguga: The Passion of Dian Fossy. 
 
Mowat is most widely known for his 1963 book Never Cry Wolf, which recounts his adventures as a biologist on a solo mission in 1946 to study Arctic wolves in the Keewatin Barren Lands in northern Manitoba. The book is credited with changing the stereotypically negative perception of wolves as vicious killers. New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof named Mowat’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, first published in 1957, one of the best children’s books of all time.
 
Mowat served in World War II from 1940 to 1945, entering the army as a private and emerging with the rank of captain. He began writing professionally in 1949 after spending two years in the Arctic. He was an inveterate traveler with a passion for remote places and peoples. 
 
Mowat was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981. In 2002 the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society named a ship for him in recognition of his activism against the whaling industry.