Book Review: Teacher's Pet by Jenny Dale (Puppy Patrol #1)

 

Ah, the Puppy Patrol books. Massive nostalgia for me. The Dutch translations of these are some of the earliest books I remember devouring as a kid. 

Last week I visited a secondhand book store and to my surprise, they had a small selection of Puppy Patrol books available. So I bought them with the purpose of reading and reviewing them, and of course just enjoying them and reliving some nostalgia. Spoilers ahead.

Neil is a boy who loves dogs and whose father is a professional dog trainer. One day he discovers that his new teacher is the owner of Dotty, a loose cannon of a Dalmatian who seems untrainable. The teacher threatens to rehome Dotty if she cannot learn to behave. Neil takes it upon himself to prove to his teacher that Dotty can be trained and is a great dog, in hopes of his teacher keeping the dog in the end.

Nothing much to say here, it's a fine book. Simple but effective. Honestly I remember most of the Puppy Patrol stories being this way. They're not the most complex or grand stories out there, but if you want some feel-good and pretty good dog stories, here you go. 

I do think that maybe the ending is a bit too perfect, but at the same time this is book one in the series and I get not wanting to end things on a dour note in literally book one. I also do like the characters, Neil being a relatable dog-lover, and Dotty and Sam being good dogs. I also like how the teacher wasn't villainized for wanting to rehome his dog. Sure, it would've sucked if Dotty had to find her home elsewhere, but at the same time it makes sense because clearly the teacher wasn't (at that point in the story) a very capable dog owner, and his wife was pregnant, so it makes sense not to want to have a loose canon of a dog roaming around the house who might accidentally harm the baby. So the teacher character, while not perfect, is thankfully kept very human and never really shown as a bad guy or anything.

If I do have a complaint, it's that this uses outdated dog training methods "you have to be the alpha/leader"-type of nonsense, but I guess these were accurate for the time when this was written. 

Overall a pretty solid first entry. 

Rating: 3.5/5