Travis, an adventurous/curious young man finds an old yellow dog. Little did he know that that dog could change his life. Fred Gipson also taught the modern day people what pioneers had to go through and how they lived in the real world. When Papa leaves on a cattle drive, he tells Travis to "be the man of the family. His jobs are to take care of the family and do his work. As Travis soon discovers that taking care of a family is hard; he also has a little brother who makes it worse, but luckily for him he has Old Yeller to help. The book is dry in the beginning but later gets a bit interesting everytime something exciting happens and it ends so quickly. I recommend this book to people who like a less action kind of book.