Flawed Dogs

When I heard that Berkeley Breathed was making the jump to novels, I was tickled. I have been a huge fan of Breathed's work for years, back when he was doing the newspaper strip Bloom County. I have followed his characters over the years, from Bloom County to Outland and finally on to Opus. I have picked up his childrens books and am now anxiously awaiting the release of the first volume in a collected edition of his Bloom County newspaper strips.

When I heard about Flawed Dogs, the Novel, I assumed that it was simply an extension of his children's book Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton 'Last Chance' Dog Pound, maybe telling the story of the riot at Westminster that was mentioned in the book. While this is partly true, show more basically Flawed Dogs, the Novel takes a mirror image of the original story, using characters from the original (mostly the dogs), and slightly altering others (Heidy Strüdelberg, former Westminster judge becomes Heidy McCloud, young niece to Hamish McCloud, owner of McCloud Heavenly Acres, and a famous dog shower in his own time), to make an entirely new and refreshing story of the love between a dog and their human. I firmly believe in the idea that there are 'dog people' and 'not dog people' out there; dog people have a dog and will understand what this story is all about. Not dog people simply won't get beyond that it's a fun little story.

The story revolves around Heidy McCloud and her dachshund, Sam the Lion. Sam is going to be a show dog, living only to make his owner happy. Heidy McCloud is an orphan who has been sent to live with her reclusive uncle Hamish McCloud. Through a chance encounter at the airport, Heidy and Sam become best friends (this chance encounter results in a taxiing 737 following Sam driving an electric airport cart who is following Heidy in a cab - trust me, in Berkeley Breathed's world, this works). Heidy and Sam make themselves a new home with her Uncle Hamish, secure in the knowledge that Heidy has found her dog and that Sam has found his human. However, Sam eventually is framed by the housekeeper's poodle, Cassius, when it becomes clear to Cassius that Sam will win Best in Show at the next Westminster Dog Show, a prize that Cassius feels has every right to go to him.

Uncle Hamish sends Sam away after he has been framed, and Sam eventually winds up at the Naional Last-Ditch Dog Depository, a dog pound for the mot unloved, un-adoptable dogs. Sam decides that this is not the place for him, decides to leave, knowing that if he could make it back to Heidy, he could make her understand what has happened. When he reaches the McCloud estate, Cassius heads him off, and Sam finally understands that it was Cassius who framed him. Sam is injured in a scuffle with Cassius, and is left to die when he is found and sold the New England University Research Labs. After several years imprisoned there, Sam organizes a mass breakout with all the other animals kept there. He then finds himself living with the Rough Handed Man, who has a kind heart but is in need of money and enters Sam into a dog fighting contest for money. It is here that Sam sees the poster for the upcoming Westminster Dog Show, with Cassius' picture prominently displayed, and it is here that Sam realizes that Cassius is to blame for his years of torment. He escapes the dog fights, returns to the Dog Depository, convinces the other dogs there that they must help him overthrow the Westminster and take revenge on all the other perfect, pampered dogs in the world. This is where the book really takes off.

Breathed's unique flavor of humor really shines through in the assault on Westminster. The lengths the dogs go to to sabotage the show are hysterical, especially when they try to get into the show disguised as a woman. My favorite scene in the entire book occurs here, and while most of this won't make much sense to anyone until they read the entire sequence, I have to share this bit:

'...As the small curly-haired dog tried to regain traction, he slid around toward the rear, giving the full appearance to the observing crowd that below the coat, Mrs. Nutbush's left bosom had gone rogue and begun a migration to better shores.

The club secretary watched this without expression beyond a single perfectly arched eyebrow.

'Madam,' he said, 'Your bits are restless.''

I kept having to go back and reread this bit, because it kept making me giggle each and every time. In continuing Breathed fashion, the story eventually loops right back around to become a touching story of friendship and the love between a dog and human, as Heidy and Sam are finally reunited. I am always surprised by how Berkeley Breathed is able to make something that can in turns be so ridiculous and funny and absurd, yet still bring it around to become a story that has true heart and soul. show less

I love just about anything Berkeley Breathed writes or illustrates. This is no exception. Funny, fast, a little sad. For those that see rescue dogs as perfect, you will love this whimsical, quirky tale.

Flawed Dogs is by far the best new book I’ve read all year.

On a recent trip from one U.S. coast to the other, I spent all six take-offs and all six landings with my nose buried in the pages of one book or another, trying to concentrate on the words instead of the terror. Thanks to inclement weather that caused me to miss my last connecting flight, I had to stay over in Denver. On standby the next day, I found Flawed Dogs in the airport bookstore. It was the only one of the books I read during that trip to successfully distract me from my fear of flying.

I grew up reading Bloom County. Berkeley Breathed’s books sat side-by-side with Bill Watterson’s in the many family bookcases. Billy and the Boingers Bootleg, Babylon, Tales Too show more Tall to Tell—all were loved to the battered and splattered-upon stage. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew Breathed had written some stuff for the younger crowd, but I’d never checked it out.

My loss.

This book is written for middle-grade readers and illustrated in the author’s unique comic style, with both black and white pictures and full-page color inserts. But even though the illustrations give us insight into Breathed’s vision for his characters, I have to say the story is so well-written it could have stood on its own.

Sam doesn’t know it, but he’s a Dachshund so purely bred he’s got the ‘holy grail of Dachshundom,’ on his head, the Duuglitz Tuft. He belongs to the large, hairy (in chinchilla) Mrs. Nutbush, but through a series of hilarious hijinks, changes his own destiny. Fourteen-year-old Heidy is his true love, and after she leaves boarding school to come live with her emotionally distant uncle, she needs Sam as much as he needs her. Life settles down into peaceful, happy routine in Uncle Hamish’s big house with his assistant, Mrs. Beaglehole, and her fancy poodle Cassius. But Cassius is a jealous, vicious dog who sets Sam up for an unthinkable crime. Uncle Hamish is forced to put him down, but can’t finish the job. Instead, he calls some men to come pick Sam up, but before they show, Cassius tricks Sam into stepping on a spring-loaded animal trap. Sam loses a leg and spends the next three years at a research facility enduring unspeakable horrors. He escapes, and is rescued by the Rough-Handed Man, who straps a soup ladle onto Sam as a substitute leg. Unfortunately, the Rough-Handed Man’s kindness is short-lived. He’s got money trouble and needs Sam to bail him out—in the dog-fighting ring. While waiting to die in the ring, Sam sees a poster advertising the Westminster Dog Show, and the pampered pooch featured on the poster is none other than the traitorous Cassius. This gives Sam a new purpose: Sabotage the show! And he sets out to do just that with the help of a group of oddball dogs (and one disguised cat) from the National Last-Ditch Dog Depository. There’s Wee Willy, so small he has no problem indulging his favorite past-time, nose diving; Pooft, with the inflammatory rear end; Fabio the two-legged dog, ‘Ol Blue, who’s actually blue; Tusk, often mistaken for a ‘furry rhinoceros,’ Bug, ‘with a face overwhelmed with wrinkles, piano-wire hair, and bulging eyeballs;’ and Madam, the Great Dane who’s really a cat with remarkable sewing skills.

I cried by page eight and laughed like a loon only a few pages later. That’s the way it went. I was packed in like a sardine on an airplane, probably annoying the hey out of my seatmates by snorting, chuckling and outright guffawing, followed closely by sniffles and surreptitious eye swipes. Several times I had to close the book and blink up at the ceiling to stop the tears.

Really, truly good read.

(Review originally posted to Booksquawk) show less

A few years ago, Berkely Breathed produced a children's book called "Flawed Dogs", which I have yet to read. This is apparently the expanded novel form of the story, and a very nice work it is, with Breathed's trademark humor, sly pathos and paired heart and funnybone. Sam is a show dachshund, or was, who just as he was settling into an idyllic and loving life with 14-year-old Heidy, had it all sabotaged by a jealous show poodle, Cassius. Three years later, torn and mutilated by life, he leads a motley crew of fellow canine rejects to the dog show at Westminister, with the aim of wreaking havoc for show and Cassius alike. Things do not go quite according to plan - of course, for this is a Berkely Breathed story. And a very good thing show more that is indeed, with his wonderful illustrations as sweetener. show less

I found the book Flawed Dogs a bit flawed. The illustrations are interesting and worth picking the book up and looking at them, but then you might be tempted to want to read the book and wind up like me at the end of the book going, 'huh?'

I guess it is meant as a kids book. It has the feeling of a very looney tunes cartoon. The genius of Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed writing is there, but splatters all over the place and across some touchy bad dog areas as springboards for jokes, appropriating another person's dog, dog fighting, dog getting hit by a car, using dogs in laboratories, the longing for a forever home, and derogatory stereotyping a poodle into a villain. But it is all in good fun as long as you don't stop long enough to think show more about it.

Here is one passage to show Berke's random genius in writing (the picture helps, otherwise try to frame the image in your mind as you read it):
"On the weaving, bouncing electric cart, the dog spotted the girl peering at him through the car’s rear window ahead of him. Amidst the troublesome day where nothing made sense, the girls face was a lifeboat of familiarity. He leapt from the electric cart’s accelerator pedal, stopping it cold. The airliner behind it slammed on its brakes in front of Piggly Wiggly grocery store, which the passengers decided was the Piddleton Airport baggage claim.
The dachshund streaked up alongside Heidy’s car, leapt onto the running board and scrambled up the rear door, through the open window, and into Heidy’s open travel bag tucked next to her leg.
Panting hard, he looked up at the startled girl and said simply: “I love french fries.”

And one more interesting passage:
"The guard squinted and refused to believe what he thought he saw at the front of the phalanx of hopping, running, stumbling animals: Two beagles ran side by side, strapped across their backs a sort of missile launcher made of a half-curved aluminum rain gutter. Within this lay the now three-legged Sam, aimed and read to launch like a furry bullet in a hot dog bun. Stretched onto the dachshund’s nose was a human’s latex glove, its index finger filled with several ounces of Elmer’s glue hardened rock solid. The guard believed it was aimed directly at his nose."

My favorite thing was reading to my boys when they were little. I would put all the excitement into my voice, and use different voices to really make it fun. I can imagine doing it with this book, but I think think at the end of it then both of us would just be going 'huh?'

It was a quick read. If you really like big dramatic random silly you may enjoy the book with illustrations (many in color too!) than you may enjoy the book.

In parting, for those of you who have read the book, I only have one last thing to say, “Look! The Duüglitz tuft! THE DUÜGLITZ TUFT! show less

This is a sophisticated YA novel with a rather sarcastic tone. It's rather worrisome for dog lovers, painful incidents are referred to but not detailed, fortunately. However this is one of the rare dog novels in which the dog doesn't die. The world needs more of those.

Flawed Dogs by Berkeley Breathed

A fairy tale illustrating that everyone or every dog should have it’s day. That regardless of size, shape or breed overweening ambition can corrupt and unconditional love can console. A perfect dachshund becomes flawed, despondent, abandoned and maligned. He conquers all and returns in triumph. It is a story of acceptance and redemption.

You may not recall Opus the penguin or Billy and the Boingers but Berkeley Breathed has been around for quite awhile. I admit to being a fan and having reveled in his skewed look at politics, computers and society in general. I lust for a Banana 2009 computer. The illustrations were classic Breathed and added to the flavor of the book. I enjoyed the characterizations show more and the anthropomorphic nature of the characters. The cover may lure parents into thinking it is for young children. I don’t feel it is appropriate for young kids. It has a dark side that may be more revealing and intense for any kid under 10. I am giving the book to my 11 year old grandson, who I feel is age appropriate for the story. I will make sure that I am available to discuss it as it has things that lead to discussion. Regardless of it being labeled for young readers, I enjoyed it. I am sure my grandson will as well with oversight.

I recommend the book. show less