An old man living alone, Earl’s days are taken up with fighting kidney disease, and his daughter’s attempts to put him in a home. When a small stray puppy invades his life, Earl finds things are beginning to turn around, but quickly learns that miracles can come at a very high price.

How much is that Doggy? has a very unusual taken on the pet therapy premise, and a few remarkably touching moments. On the flip side, there are some definitely disturbing elements for animal lovers, and it is a rather dark story.

The problem is that I never really felt engaged with it. The set up was well done, but once the stray appeared the story started to run through events very quickly. There was a lot of telling rather than showing, and weeks were skipped in one sentence. This is the rare situation where a slightly longer story with more fleshing out might have worked better.

As it is this isn’t a bad story, but for me it just lacked a certain spark.