This book left me feeling unsettled - perhaps that was its goal. The question of whether added intelligence could lead to happiness was the stated theme, and the answer seems to be firmly negative. In fact, the stronger dogs formed a pack and used their intelligence to plan ways to dispatch the dogs they considered less useful.

But there is one delightful feature which I completely missed until I read the 'Note on the Text': dog poems in which the names of all fifteen dogs are concealed. Finding the names was both more difficult and more fun than I expected. Before I release this, I think I'll tuck an envelope with the answers inside the covers, for the enjoyment of future readers.

This book is reserved for Gypsysmom's Canada Day release challenge.

Mailed to Olivia-Lo for the 2018 Canadian Literature Sweepstakes. It won the Giller Prize, Canada's most prestigious award for fiction, in 2015. Here's a link if you'd like more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giller_Prize

Thank you for the book!