John Kozak

Pugs in leis at a birthday party, a dancing poodle named Ivana, a bat-swinging border collie, even a shepherd that shoots its owner in the back with a shotgun—these are just a few of the outrageous details of the reverent homages that Shereen Jerrett has included in the humane and hysterical Dog Stories.

This gripping examination of the empty moral values and mindless violence of three bored preteens is depicted without judgment and without sensationalism. The leader is Marty, a hyperactive boy with a natural talent for violence and destruction. One day he is bored and decides to rob a local house beside the railroad tracks. He enlists the aid of two friends and they end up holding a woman and her wheel-chair bound husband hostage while they callously destroy their home.