The Spuddy (1974)

The Spuddy

Lillian Beckwith

1974, Hutchinson & Co. (UK),1976, Delacorte Press (US)

Despite his hybridism (Joe used to say his coat looked as if someone had dipped him in a barrel of glue and then emptied a flock mattress over him) the dog had an air of self-assurance emphasized by an arrogantly held head and a long droop of a setter-like tail which, as he moved with his easy sauntering gait, swung from side to side with the stateliness of an ermine cloak.

Andy is nine, and lonely. His father is a merchant seaman, away for long stretches of time, and his mother has run off with another man. Worst of all, Andy is mute. Shipped off to stay with his aunt and uncle in a fishing village, Andy strikes up a friendship with an abandoned dog, a grey-black mongrel named The Spuddy. His relatives are kind, but forbid him to keep the dog at home, putting Andy to some trouble to provide for his new friend. But it's worth it to the abandoned boy.

As he walked toward him the Spuddy sat watching, cautiously assessing the boy's approach. Andy saw the dog's ears twitch, the tail begin to wave, and most comforting of all, the eyes brighten with welcome. Love and gratefulness surged through Andy. He began to feel wanted again and he bent down and let the Spuddy lick his ear before they raced off happily toward the open moors.

The two soon befriend Jake, skipper of the Silver Crest. Jake should be a happily married man with a baby son, but his wife has essentially abandoned him to go live with her parents, and he's lonely too. The mutt turns out to have a nose for sniffing out fish, and Jake's luck begins to turn.

It's notable that the women in this book are all villains. The aunt comes off best, but she's the one who refuses to let Andy keep the dog at home. The men are all gruff, baffled victims of feminine whims, and you get the sense that everyone on the fishing boats prefer the wild and woolly seas to the drama of the hearth.

A well-written adventure which is curiously muffled, as Andy and the dog don't speak, and much of the plot is related as a story, not shown as action.

About the Author

1916-2004

Her real name was Lillian Comber. She and her husband moved to the Isle of Skye in 1942, and several of her books were based on her life there. They moved to the Isle of Man in 1962.

Other Books - based on Skye

The Hills is Lonely

The Sea for Breakfast

The Loud Halo

A Rope - In Case

Lightly Poached

Beautiful Just!

Bruach Blend

Other Books

Green Hand

A Shine Of Rainbows

A Proper Woman

The Small Party

An Island Apart

A Breath of Autumn

Bay Of Strangers - short stories

About My Father's Business - autobiography

Links

Obituary

Links for the Skye books

Wiki about the Hebrides

The Greyhound - Helen Griffiths

The Greyhound
Helen Griffiths, il. Dick Amundsen (cover)
1964, Doubleday

Jamie's a small, nondescript 11-year-old when he falls in love with an elderly white greyhound named Silver Streak. When he gets a chance to own Silver, he seizes it although it means borrowing an impossible sum from the class bad boy. His mother won't let him keep the dog, so a newly determined Jamie hides him in a nearby bomb ruin. This works beautifully all summer, but winter brings new worries.

A typically dreary start from an author whose realism is sometimes a bit hard to take, this book stages a late happy ending. Silver brings Jamie out of his shell in classic dog-story fashion, as the boy forms friendships with his own sister and a classmate who admires the dog. But less classically, the dog himself is elderly, distant and, at least at first, rather dull. It's a very unusual look at how a dog adapts to an owner; Silver's quiet suits his initial owner, an elderly man who loves him but is not demonstrative. Once the dog adjusts to Jamie's more youthful, energetic ways, he sheds some of his reserve and becomes more affectionate.

Awkward language mars an otherwise well-done story. I've never liked Griffiths' writing style; her characters are strong, her plots strong, and her settings memorable, but the writing itself is weak and uninvolving.

Dogs
Silver Streak - greyhound

Other Books by Author
Running Wild
Grip, A Dog Story
The Kershaw Dogs
Just A Dog
Rafa’s Dog
Foxy
The Dog At The Window
Leon
The Blackface Stallion

Bel Ria
Sheila Burnford
1977, Little, Brown & Company

In Memoriam
1939-1945

Amidst the confusion of the German invasion of France, a small circus dog loses his owner to German air attacks and latches onto British corporal Sinclair, who had a brief encounter with the little circus and watched helplessly as it was obliterated. When German planes sink the destroyer on which he's being evacuated, Sinclair is injured and the dog becomes the responsibility of Neil MacLean, a sick berth attendant on the British destroyer Tertian. Now named Ria, the dog becomes an unlikely agent of change for the withdrawn, curt MacLean, who never liked animals and who is at first affronted by the smallness and delicacy of the canine life he's been charged with. This little dancing dog.

On the fourth note the toe began to tap, and the dog rose to his hind legs and began to dance. The tune had a lilting rythym, and in perfect time he pirouetted in a circle, forepaws held out and head held high.

Slowly, MacLean begins to respect the fragile Ria's stubbornness, so like his own, and for the first time in his life forms an affection for an animal. But he has promised to return the dog to Sinclair and when the ship takes a brief rest from its work patrolling the supply convoys that are all that keeps Britain alive, he sends the dog ashore with a crewmate's sister. When her house is bombed that night, it seems that Ria must have been killed. But the delicate little dog survives, and finds a new home and a new identity as Bel, pampered pet of elderly Mrs. Alice Tremorne. And as the war ends in Europe, events come to an almost full circle as Donald Sinclair manages to make his way back to the circus dog he'd scooped reluctantly out of the mud nearly five years earlier.

Burnford, best known for The Incredible Journey, surpasses herself here with a book that manages one of the harder tricks of fiction - putting a fictional personal story against the bitter background of war without taking away from either. Here, the tragedy of a small dog is given the same full consideration as the war; neither aspect of the plot detracts from the other. There is no sense of a dog's story cheapening the horror of war.

It's clear from the dedication of the book, quoted above, that Burnford regarded her book as being about the war, as well as her characters.

Reissued in 2006 by The New York Review Of Books Children's Collection

Animals
Bel/Ria - small male mixed-breed dog (probably terrier/poodle)
Louis - Capuchin monkey
Barkis - white male bull terrier
Hyacinthe - tortieshell female cat

Other books by Author
The Incredible Journey (1961)