The Dog, Ray
By: Linda Coggin / Narrated By: Whitney Dykhouse
Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
A feel-good book, through and through
I struggled with not categorizing The Dog, Ray in with Animals; after all—it’s about a girl who comes back to life on earth as a dog. A dog! I mean, duh, right? But no. She maintains her thoughts as a human, and even though she does indeed have a few instincts as a dog (there is that desire to chase cats up trees), she can still do stuff like read signs. Still, she’s a faithful friend, but no. I don’t think it goes in the Animals category. Though your dog-loving funny bone might be tickled a bit.
Daisy, a young girl, is killed in a car accident and, after going to the afterlife, she accidentally goes through the wrong door on her journey back to life and is born into a litter of puppies. Unfortunately, she’s chosen by a family whose idea of having a dog means keeping her tied to a doghouse outside. Fortunately, her lax boy-owner lets her slip free on one of their “walks”, and she finds her freedom. She travels as a lone dog, eating trash from cans, discovering the joy of half-eaten junk food, a type of food she was denied when she was Daisy, the girl.
Though she was named Misty, she comes upon true kindred spirits among the homeless and Pip, a boy who takes a fancy to her, names her Ray because her spirit is like the sun. Pip, whose mother just died of cancer, is on a journey to find his biological father, the only option he feels is available to him now that he has nothing and no one. Together Pip and Ray brave trials and tribulations, trying to find food, shelter, trying to earn money to use for phone calls, all in hopes of narrowing down his search for his missing dad.
I liked the book because it also shows Daisy as she evolves: she begins losing more and more of herself as a human and starts being overcome more and more by doggy-like urges. She even almost loses everything because she WILL chase that rabbit down, darn it! Plus, it has good-hearted characters, and that’s always appreciated.
Whitney Dykhouse does a good job narrating the anxious voice of a girl becoming a dog—the frantic urgency as she tries to navigate in a world of people with only the tools a dog has available to communicate. At times, Dykhouse’s narration becomes fraught and shrill, and it became a bit too much for me, but she was able to rein it back in quickly enough so that I never thought about giving up on the audiobook.
If you’re looking for a happy ending with some taut times along the way, and if you’d like some dogginess thrown in, The Dog, Ray is a charming listen. Clever concept, nice execution. Appropriate for young people but a nice listen for those of us who are getting on in years also.
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