How to Steal a Dog

How to Steal a Dog is a children’s and young adult fiction novel published in 2007 by the American author Barbara O’Connor. Its story concerns an adolescent girl’s efforts to steal a dog and collect the reward money after she and her family are evicted from their apartment.

O’Connor is a children’s book author living in Ashville, North Carolina. Her books draw on her memories of her Southern childhood in South Carolina, and she makes abundant references to the local climate, habits, and dialects. Her book Wish (2016) was a The New York Times bestseller and was named one of the American Booksellers Association Best Books of the Year in 2016. How to Steal a Dog, O’Connor’s fifth book, won the Parents Choice Recommendation of 2007 and was one of The School Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year 2007. In 2014, the book was adapted into a movie of the same name by South Korean director Kim Sung-ho.

Plot Summary

Adolescent Georgina Hayes’ life gets turned upside down after her father leaves, abandoning his family. Georgina, her mother, and younger brother Toby are evicted from their apartment and forced to live in their old Chevrolet car. She experiences the humiliation of having to park in different places around Darby, North Carolina so that the cops do not catch up with them. Georgina goes to school in dirty clothes while classmates, including her best friend Luanne Godfrey, continue their sheltered middle-class existences. When Luanne finds out that Georgina is living in a car, Georgina feels ashamed and desperate. She notices a sign offering a $500 reward for the person who finds a family’s missing dog. This is close to the amount of money needed to secure an apartment for her family. Georgina decides that she will steal a dog and return it to the owner as soon as they put up a reward poster. She also begins to write a how-to guide for stealing a dog in her personal notebook.

Georgina enlists Toby to help her with the mission. In the backyard of a large house, they find a small black and white dog named Willy and decide that he will be their victim. Willy’s owner, Carmella Whitmore, has the same name as the street she lives on, so Georgina believes she is a wealthy landowner willing to dish out a $500 dollar reward for her lost dog.

Still, Georgina is unsure about her plan, putting it on hold when it appears that her mother has obtained a new home for them. When the new house proves creepy and derelict, and the owner eventually tracks them down and evicts them, Georgina loses faith that her mother will be able to fix the problem.

Georgina thinks that she has no choice but to steal the dog and keep him on the porch of the creepy old house. Once she and Toby carry out the theft, Georgina looks out for the reward posters. When they learn that Carmella has not made any, Georgina and Toby go to Whitmore Road and track her down. A devastated Carmella invites them into her surprisingly ramshackle house, causing Georgina to realize that this dog-owner is not as wealthy as she imagined. Carmella balks at the thought that she would have to pay a $500 reward fee to the person who found Willy, insisting that she does not have that kind of money. Georgina encourages Carmella to seek the money from wealthier relatives, all while concealing the fact that she knows Willy’s whereabouts. In the meantime, she puts up missing dog posters for Willy.

Back at the old house, Georgina spots Willy with a stranger. The stranger is a homeless man named Mookie, who rides around on his rusty old bike helping others for free, despite having no money himself. Georgina lies to Mookie, telling him that Willy is her dog and that she is keeping him there until her family finds an apartment where the landlord allows pets. Although Mookie later finds the missing dog posters with Willy’s face on them, he does not directly confront Georgina, only telling her that the trail she leaves behind her is as important as the path ahead of her. He thus implies that he knows she stole the dog. Mookie is also kind enough to repair her mother’s car when it will not start.

As Georgina absorbs Mookie’s lessons, Toby’s doubts, and Carmella’s distress at losing her pet, her sense of remorse grows. However, she still cannot bring herself to return the dog, feeling that the reward will eventually materialize and that she must finish what she started. She is so tense that she snaps at Mookie, accusing him of stealing Willy, when Willy temporarily disappears because he followed Mookie to the mall.

Georgina reaches the point where the moral urgency to return Willy is such that she must cut school to do it. She is tempted to drop Willy off at Carmella’s and leave without a word, but her conscience guides her to confess. In telling Carmella everything, Georgina is surprised by the compassion she receives and by the invitation to return and walk Willy the next day.

There is more good news on the horizon for Georgina, as her mother finds a small house that they will share with another single-parent family. Georgina is grateful for no longer having to live in a car and for having a clean conscience.