The book
The moving story of a life-changing relationship between a boy and a dog
When 18-year-old Benjamin Glass goes to look at a dead whale that has washed up on the beach, he meets an unfamiliar dog who follows him home to his caravan. Benjamin isn’t equipped to take care of a dog – he has a chronic fear of germs, and is currently living alone while his grandmother is in hospital.
But when a delivery driver recognises the dog as The Mighty Gary, the fastest greyhound in the country, and tells Benjamin about his unsavoury owners, Benjamin is forced to trust the stranger on his doorstep and devise a plan to keep Gary safe.
As Benjamin becomes more attached to the dog, it becomes clear that his trust in the delivery driver may well have been misplaced. He will have to leave his comfort zone, take some unhygienic risks, cross paths with dangerous and powerful men and confront his very worst fears if he has any hope of protecting what he loves the most.
The author
Rob Perry
Rob Perry was born in 1987. He is a graduate of the UEA Creative Writing program. In 2020, his novel Dog was shortlisted and highly commended in the Peggy Chapman Andrews First Novel Award. In 2019 he was selected for the National Centre for Writing’s Escalator programme. He’s been shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Fish Short Story Prize. He won the Nottingham Short Story Prize and was first runner-up in the Moth International Short Story Prize and The Winston Fletcher Memorial Prize. Rob was a copywriter for several years, and has worked as a firefighter and a weightlifting coach. He lives in the Peak District.