Gary Paulsen

Character Analysis

Dog's Best Friend

Mr. Paulsen is the guy who's telling the story, and in case you haven't noticed, he's a big fan of dogs.

I am—I say this with some pride and not a little wonder—a "dog person." I make no excuses for unabashedly loving them—all of them, even some that have bitten me. I have always had dogs and will have dogs until I die. I have rescued dozens of dogs from pounds, always have five or six of them around me, and cannot imagine living without dogs. They are wonderful and, I think, mandatory for decent human life. (1.1)

Paulsen's a humble guy, and his purpose in writing this book is to put the spotlight on his dog friends—not himself. In a way, his own story exists in the margins of their stories. His approach to autobiography is indirect, but we still learn a few things about him over the course of the book. Don't worry, Shmoopers, we'll keep our eyes peeled for clues.

Lonely Boy

As a kid, Paulsen didn't really have a lot of role models or even friends in his life. His parents were alcoholics and they didn't take care of him at all. Dogs and the great outdoors became his salvation.

When he was only seven, he was living in the Philippines, where his father was stationed in the army. That's where he met Snowball, his first dog. His parents were caught up in the life of an army officer, and they were starting to drink heavily. Not a good situation for a young child in a foreign county. Snowball became his constant companion.

We were in the Philippines two and a half years and I can't think of a day I spent without Snowball next to me. In many ways she became a kind of parent, watching out for me. (2.40)

When the family moved back to the U.S., things weren't any better. Without Snowball, he was alone most of the time.

This isolation was not natural, of course, especially for a child, and most of the time I was excruciatingly lonely. I sought friends whenever I could, but I was rarely successful. (3.1)

When his uncle gave him a hunting rifle, he'd spend time in the Minnesota woods, hunting rabbits and grouse. He loved it, but that didn't solve his problems:

The problem was that I was alone. I had not learned then to love solitude—as I do now—and the feeling of loneliness was visceral, palpable. I would see something beautiful—the sun through the leaves, a deer moving through the dappled light […] and I would turn to point it out to somebody, turn to say, "Look…" and there would be no one there. (3.6)

We don't know about you, but that's one of the saddest things we've ever read.

Paulsen pretty much gave up on expecting anything from his parents. By the age of 12, he lived more or less on his own, sleeping in the basement of his parents' apartment building and working jobs after school and weekends to pay for food and clothes:

For a time in my life I became a street kid. It would be nice to put it another way but what with the drinking at home and the difficulties it caused my parents I couldn't live in the house. I made a place for myself in the basement by the furnace. (4.1-4.2)

Around that time, he found Ike, a mysterious black Lab that joined him every day to hunt in the woods.

When the flights weren't coming we would "talk." That is to say, I would talk, tell him all my troubles, and he would sit, his enormous head sometimes resting on my knee, his huge brown eyes looking up at me while I petted him and rattled on. (3.49)

In various canine companions, Paulsen found a way to fill the roles of the friends and guardians and protectors he didn't have in his human life—sort of like a real life Nana, minus the hat. Even when he grew up, got married, and had a child, he still considered dogs as important companions, and adopted hundreds of them throughout his lifetime. He found acceptance and devotion with them that he never experienced with his parents.

Not a People Person

Perhaps because of his difficult childhood, Paulsen often compares dogs favorably to people. He often writes about how dogs—and on one memorable occasion, his pet pig—are more intelligent than humans. Watching Rex the farm dog take a herd of cows out to graze, Paulsen writes:

I knew then, and I know now, people who would not be able to learn that. (5.28)

To be sure, many of the dogs he profiles in the book are canine Einsteins. Still, we have to wonder if all those years spent befriending dogs instead of people have made Paulsen a little bit of a hater.

But here's the thing: Paulsen is not as hard on any human as he is on himself. He spends much of the book contrasting his own bumbling around with the skill and expertise of his dogs. The nine dogs he writes about are remarkable creatures, no doubt. At the same time, it may be true that he puts his canine companions on a pedestal because they were there for him at a time in his life when no one else was.

In any case, one thing's for sure: this is a guy who steps up when it comes to his animal friends. At one point, Paulsen gives us a partial list of the animals he's taken in, which include dogs, cats, ducks, geese, guinea pigs, horses, cows, pigs, turtles, birds, chipmunks, squirrels, one ocelot, a blue heron, a hawk, a porcupine, a lizard, and a llama.

Whew. His posse is almost as impressive as this guy's.

Mother Nature's Son

Paulsen always loved being out in the woods. When things were miserable at home, he'd pick up his hunting rifle and take off.

There was great beauty in running the rivers, especially in the fall when the leaves were turning. The maples were red gold and filtered the sunlight so that you could almost taste the richness of the light, and before long I added a surplus army blanket, rolled up over the pack, and I would spend the nights out as well. (3.5)

For the rest of his life, nature would be his escape and his delight. He learned to love being out in the wilderness alone, and he lived in more and more secluded places—the mountains of Colorado, a cabin in the Minnesota woods, and a 200-acre ranch outside a ghost town in New Mexico. He lived off the land and built his own houses, ran sled dogs in remote Alaska, and wrote constantly about all the natural beauty he experienced. He still has trouble living anywhere near a town (source).

Paulsen has a deep appreciation for the beauty of the natural world, but not just because it's beautiful. It was his haven when he was growing up, a place where he could feel safe from the stresses of his life. The dogs he hunted and traveled with made it even more special.