“The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be” by Farley Mowat
A hilarious true story of a family and their dog, Mutt, who liked to climb trees and ladders and do other eccentric things.
In this excerpt it is the 1930s and the family is on a trip in their open car which has a rumble seat. They are driving from Saskatoon, Canada to the Pacific and it is dusty on the prairie. They are wearing driving goggles (including the dog) to keep the dust out of their eyes and eating fruit.
“...Mutt shared our appetites, and for three days he ate nothing at all but fruit.
“He preferred peaches, muskmelon, and cherries, but cherries were his undoubted favorites. At first he had trouble with the pits, but he soon perfected a rather disgusting trick of squirting them out between his front teeth, and as a result we had to insist that he point himself away from us and the car whenever he was eating cherries.
“I shall never forget the baleful quality of the look directed at Mutt by a passenger on the little ferry in which we crossed the Okanagan River. Perhaps the look was justified. Certainly Mutt was a quaint spectacle as he sat in the rumble seat, his goggles pushed far up on his forehead, eating cherries out of a six-quart basket.
“After each cherry he would rise his muzzle, point it riverside, and nonchalantly spit the pit into the green waters of the river.”
What a picture that dog must have been spitting cherry pits!
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