A novel that proves the exception to the rule is Iain Lawrence’s The Winter Pony, an account of the 1910–1913 Scott expedition to the South Pole as related by a small grey pony (one of nineteen) purchased to haul supplies and equipment. The formerly neglected pony James Pigg warms to the kind and gentle treatment he receives at the expedition-goers’ hands. Limited (by being a horse) to a mostly observational role, he narrates, in engrossing prose, the crew’s and his own life-or-death struggles in the frozen arctic. Unfortunately, as anyone familiar with the history knows, the expedition is doomed. The explorers are forced to kill the ponies, one after another, for meat, after which the five men who reach the pole (five weeks too late; Amundsen’s team beat them there) perish from cold and hunger. For horse-loving readers invested in the narrator, this turn of events is devastating, especially since Lawrence deepens the pathos by exploring the regrets of the ponies’ handlers. As a result, The Winter Pony is not a book for all readers, but those dog lovers who nonetheless enjoyed Old Yeller will probably appreciate it.