Character Analysis
Snowball was a black dog with a white circle on her side (hence her cheesy name). Tall, "with a thin hound look," she had one floppy ear and a "tail tightly curved over her back" (2.29). As Paulsen's first dog and his constant companion during a rough time in his childhood, she still occupies a special place in his heart.
Sorry to say, poor Snowball had a very short life. (She died before she saw her third birthday.) Paulsen's sadness over losing her is dark and difficult emotional territory in what is otherwise a mostly lighthearted book. "Now, forty-nine years later…I miss her just as much as if she'd just died yesterday," he writes (2.42). This dog was a friend for the ages—a special pal, but also a guardian and a protector.
Snowball's Story
It was 1946, and Paulsen and his parents were living in the Philippines, which was in pretty bad shape after World War II. Little Snowball was a pup being raised for food. Paulsen was just seven years old when he and his mother rescued her from the village headman, who had just strangled another dog for his dinner.
(Don't worry, folks. We promise no dogs were harmed in the making of this learning guide.)
It wasn't long before Snowball returned the favor; she saved Paulsen's life when he got too close to a "pretty colored ribbon" that was actually a poisonous snake (2.37). When she and Paulsen weren't exploring the great outdoors, they lived with his parents on a military base.
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. (2.40)
Two weeks before the family moved back to the U.S., the dog was hit by a car and died.
Snowball's Legacy
Snowball was the first in Paulsen's long line of canine companions. She set the stage for what would become his lifelong love affair with dogs. Like Cookie, the dog that Paulsen dedicated his book to, Snowball was a hero. From early on, Paulsen understood that dogs were more than just pets. They're also family.
This dog probably also inspired Paulsen's lifelong love of adventure. Most days, Snowball and Paulsen explored their "playground" (2.26), which was the ravaged landscape of the Philippines after the war.
I would see things…but Snowball would know things. She would see the obvious outside way a thing looked, but then she would move to it and smell it and perhaps lick it and dig at it and look under it, and I took to doing the same things. I would try to look inside what we were doing, follow Snowball's lead, and in doing this I found more and saw more than I ever could alone. (2.30-2.31)
Together, Paulsen and Snowball found caves filled with corpses and money and swords; met a poverty-stricken family that was living in an overturned jeep; watched cockfights; and visited farmers on the outskirts of the city.
That same sense of adventure and curiosity follows Paulsen through the rest of his life.