The well-meaning among us who adopt a dog from a shelter have, at one point or another, all experienced the nagging doubt that we can actually take full responsibility for that beast in the cage. We question our ability to care for something that seems in such desperate need, and consider ourselves unworthy to undertake such a monumental task, especially given our incapacity to care for ourselves.

Facing seemingly insurmountable loss, physical exhaustion, and economic hardship, Barry Grills – a struggling newspaper owner in Kingston, Ontario – has all these doubts when he rescues Lupus, a wolf–
German Shepard cross, from his local shelter. His new canine is both defiant and crippled by destructive separation anxiety, and as a result becomes Grills’ constant, if rebellious, companion.

What appears at first to be an inconvenience instead lends structure to Grills’ life in unexpected ways, and creates a conduit for examining a difficult and deeply meaningful period of upheaval. “What exists between us is more than mere friendship,” he says of his companion. “Lupus has accompanied me through a couple of years of drastic change, and now he keeps me from going back to where I was during those years, a time when I viewed the future with a mixture of uncertainty and dread.”

Every Wolf’s Howl departs from the typical tear-jerk structure of man-and-dog memoir by presenting us with the inevitable up front. “Lupus is dead,” Grills writes in the first chapter. “Unquestionably, unequivocally, definitely, undeniably … a long list of adverbs, each one finite, each one connoting a state beyond the limitations of my futile grasp.” What could be a standard narrative becomes instead an innovative story told backward, a memoir that defies the cheap trick of provoking a reader’s investment only to give us death in the final act.

In removing this hackneyed device entirely, Every Wolf’s Howl proves a successful literary endeavour: it makes room for the broader themes of human struggle and triumph over loss, and testifies to our capacity to find solace in those we initially feel unequipped to care for.