The Dog Master: A Novel of the First Dog by W. Bruce Cameron

Set against the most dramatic time in our species' history, The Dog Master tells the story of one tribe's struggle for survival and one extraordinary man's bond with a wolf--a friendship that changed mankind forever

Thirty thousand years ago, ice was storming the planet. Among the species forced out of the trees and onto the steppes by the advancing cold was modern man, who was both predator and prey.

No stranger to the experiences that make us human--a mother's love and a father's betrayal, tribal war and increasing famine, political intrigue and forbidden love, joy and hope and devastating loss--our ancestors competed for scant resources in a brutal landscape.

Mankind stood on the cold brink of extinction...but they had a unique advantage over other species, a new technology--domesticated wolves.

Only a set of extraordinary circumstances could have transformed one of these fierce creatures into a hunting companion, a bodyguard, a soldier, and a friend. The Dog Master by W. Bruce Cameron is an evocative glimpse of prehistory, an emotional coming-of-age saga, a thrilling tale of survival against all odds, and the exciting, imaginative story of the first dog.

How could I not love a book about the beginnings of the dog? Well, I suppose I could have not loved it, but Cameron made sure that I did. With an exciting, yet realistic plot, a cast of characters you can’t help but come to love, (well, most of them,) and an explanation as to how a wolf would become a dog that makes sense, the book is easy to love.

It’s a novel, so there’s no need for actual proof as to how this all came about. But since we can never really know, the author doesn’t have to provide proof, he only has to make the scenario plausible. And that he does.

I’ve read nonfiction books which posit that man’s success was, in a large part, possible because of his relationship with the dog. That the dog gave us the upper hand over the other hominids, as well as other large predators. As a dog lover, I cannot but agree. Man and dog have a long, and close relationship. Here is how their story could have begun.




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