Everything you need to understand or teach My Life in Dog Years by Gary Paulsen.
My Life in Dog Years contains stories about several of Paulsen's dogs. A few are sad, but even the sad ones can be funny. For instance, in "Dirk," Paulsen lives in a basement, surviving on what he can earn from setting pins at the bowling alley and selling newspapers in bars and trying to avoid having his money stolen by teenage thugs.
This is a bleak background, but Paulsen tells the story with...