Country of final manufacture:

US

Excerpt from book:

Chapter One
 
The tiny puppy wiggled her nose a little further under the wire.
 
Blessed with a gundog’s excellent peripheral vision she was keeping one eye on those to her rear – her fellow siblings, plus the kennel staff who would little appreciate yet another escape attempt. Ahead of her, just a breath away, lay the outside world – the teeming hustle and bustle of life that lay all about, but which she and her fellow pups were seemingly forever forbidden from experiencing.
 
It was all just so tantalizingly close.
 
The English-run Shanghai Dog Kennels had bred the beautiful liver-and-white English Pointer puppies to serve as gundogs for various English gentlemen then resident in Shanghai. But this one pup, it seemed, had other ideas. The Kennels were like an island of calm amid the sea of chaos that was 1936 Shanghai – chaos to which the puppy poised halfway under the wire felt irresistibly drawn.
 
Before her very nose rickshaws – ancient-looking wooden carts pulled by human bearers – tore back and forth as they weaved through the dusty streets, carrying the better-off Shanghai residents trussed up in formal-looking top hats and dress-coats. Those rickety carriages fought for space with trams and buses, chugging their ponderous way past roadside stalls selling freshly fried and spiced delicacies. And everywhere bright red cloth banners hung from the shopfronts, advertising their wares in exotic-looking Mandarin and Wu calligraphy.
 
Why it was only she of her siblings who felt this insatiable urge to see, to smell and to taste the wider world – to escape – she didn’t know. But ever since birth, curiosity had seemed to get the better of this, still nameless puppy. And now here she was, glistening nose thrust under the wire and twitching at the bewitching smells that assaulted it, round and chubby backside still within the safe confines of the kennel, but with only a few more wriggles and a final squeeze required to break free.
 
Doubtless, one voice inside the pup’s head was telling her: don’t do it! But another, equally strident voice was urging – go for it, girl! In that moment of indecision as she peered beneath the wire the little puppy heard a yell of alarm from behind. She’d been spotted! It was the cry of Lee Ming, the local Chinese girl whose mother lived and worked at the kennels, raising the alarm. Lee Ming was quick and nimble and would be on her like a flash unless she got a move on.
 
Tiny forepaws thrashed and scrabbled at the dirt, as she fought to squeeze her way under the wire. The wrinkly folds of puppy fat rolled and gave beneath her, as she got her belly down even lower and wriggled like a fat fish stuck on an angler’s hook. The bare stub of a tail, sticking out behind her like a long and rigid finger, twitched to and fro as she strove with all her might to break free.
 
Behind her Lee Ming came to a sudden halt and reached to grab the disobedient puppy, but as she did so the tiny ball of irrepressible energy gave one last Herculean effort and she was through. An instant and a scamper later and – pouf! – the diminutive four-legged figure was gone, paws flying as she was swallowed up into the noise and dust and utter disorder of downtown Shanghai.
 
For a horrible moment Lee Ming stared after the puppy that had disappeared, in complete dismay. There were so many dangers stalking those city streets that she didn’t have the heart to imagine the half of them. If there was one thing the little puppy wasn’t, it was streetwise. In her headlong confusion she might be run over by a rickshaw. In her fright she might tumble into one of the city’s myriad open sewers. But worst of all, a roly-pBritish bestselling author Damien Lewis is an award-winning journalist who has spent twenty years reporting from war, disaster, and conflict zones. Now Lewis brings his first-rate narrative skills to bear on the inspiriting tale of Judy—an English pointer who perhaps was the only canine prisoner of war.
 
After being bombed and shipwrecked repeatedly while serving for several wild and war-torn years as a mascot of the World War II Royal Navy Yangtze river gunboats the Gnat and the Grasshopper, Judy ended up in Japanese prisoner of war camps in North Sumatra. Along with locals as slave labor, the American, Australian, and British POWs were forced to build a 1,200-mile single-track railroad through the most horrifying jungles and treacherous mountain passes. Like the one immortalized in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai, this was the other death-railroad building project where POWs slaved under subhuman conditions.
 
In the midst of this living hell was a beautiful and regal-looking liver and white English pointer named Judy. Whether she was scavenging food to help feed the starving inmates of a hellish Japanese POW camp, or by her presence alone bringing inspiration and hope to men, she was cherished and adored by the Allied servicemen who fought to survive alongside her.
 
Judy’s uncanny ability to sense danger, matched with her quick thinking and impossible daring saved countless lives. More than a close companion she shared in both the men’s tragedies and joys. It was in recognition of the extraordinary friendship and protection she offered amidst the unforgiving and savage environment of a Japanese prison camp in Indonesia that she gained her formal status as a POW. From the author of The Dog Who Could Fly and the co-author of Sergeant Rex and It's All About Treo comes one of the most heartwarming and inspiring tales you will ever read.