Our narrating dog finds something out about himself when he defends the neighbourhood cat from a new dog, even if the cat and he have never once even begun to get along. Another thing the dog dislikes with a vengeance is chickens, cockerels especially, but when a lot of them arrive at his home, and then find themselves under threat – why, the charitable heroism isn't going to come back, surely?

That's the core of this short read, that comes with a lot of useful stuff about canine body language at the end, and a lot of much less useful preamble beforehand about life in Africa before this story even starts. This is the third in this series, and you'd have thought by now all the preamble and scene-setting would have been done and dusted. But no. If anything it seems to be the formula. It's proof that spending time with this dog and its humorous observations about humans and its wordplay is really quite amenable, if repetitive, but it's a long time here before we get to anything like the proper story. It's not dreadful, but it's a book where you need more patience than some young readers would be willing to provide.