The Second Smartest Dog That Ever Lived
Will Pass
387 pages
Thiessen Press
Published October 4th, 2024
🐕🐕🐕 &1/2
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The Second Smartest Dog That Ever Lived is a hard-to-categorise book by a retired vet, told from the point of view of Leo/Rou, a super-intelligent rescue dog with amnesia who goes on a quest to find out who or what made him so special. In the end I shelved it as fantasy rather than sci-fi, and it’s definitely not a comedy, nor is it suitable for children. I actually almost abandoned it after a horrific scene where a cat is killed by coyotes, and only kept going to find out what Rou’s backstory would be.
After being dumped from a car on a highway, a young dog wakes up at the vet’s with no memory of when he came from. Taken home to join her menagerie of other pets by lonely alcoholic Mary, he meets lovably dimwitted pug Shakespeare, but resents being kept captive, so seizes the chance to escape in order to find the human who abandoned him. Naming himself Rousseau, he has a series of unlikely adventures, encountering a range of other animals, on his mission to discover the truth.
This was a fantastical story that would probably appeal more to dog lovers than Cat Ladies (childless or otherwise) – while not all the cats featured are bad, they are not portrayed sympathetically. While aspects of Rou’s voyage of discovery were amusing, as he attempts to make sense of the human world, the plot got quite dark at times. In the end I quite liked it but think it was a bit drawn out and the mystery aspect a bit disappointing. There are some good characters though, and I liked the originality of the premise and plot. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
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