a crostic puzzled based on a book about dogs

When I mentioned to one of my brothers that I had read an interesting book about a dog, he decided to make up a crostic puzzle based on an excerpt from that book. He regularly posts crostic puzzles but I've reproduced the puzzle here because when he changes his puzzles the old ones are lost.

I keep telling him to start a blog, so his puzzles can be archived!

Here it is, for your enjoyment. You would need to print the puzzle grid and the clues if you want to solve it. They are images, so I think it won't be too hard to print them.If you have problems getting them here, you could go to his website and print them. (There are links to clues on his site, if you get desperate.)

Let me know if you enjoy puzzles like this and I'll ask him to make up more (with a dog theme).

Instructions:
This kind of puzzle is called a Crostic.

The diagram is not a crossword. It is an exerpt from a piece of writing. Words end at the shaded squares, not (necessarily) at the end of lines. No punctuation is given.

Answer the clues as best you can, then transpose the letters to the squares with the matching numbers. (The letter in the square tells which clue it is from.) Then you try to recognise words on the diagram, and complete them. Then you transpose those letters back, etc., until the whole thing is finished. Three letter words may be "the", one letter words are usually 'a' or 'I'.

As an extra help, the first letters of the answers usually spell the name of the author, and the work the extract is from. (That's where the name, Crostic, comes from.)

The diagram, and the clues, are pictures, which I hope you can download and print (or it's going to be a very difficult puzzle!)

This one has three clues about dogs, and is based on a book about a dog, but it should be fairly straighforward. One of the dog names is unusual.

Grid (click on the grid to get a bigger image):



Clues (click on the clues to get a bigger image):