Stolen. Imprisoned. But Never Broken.

On an ordinary October afternoon, Poppy the Lhasa Apso is lounging in the front garden while her dad mows the lawn out back. She doesn’t see the battered transit van creeping up the lane. She doesn’t see the two men until it’s too late.

In seconds, she’s grabbed, injected with a tranquilliser, and thrown into the back of the van. When she wakes, she’s chained to the floor in darkness, sharing the space with an enormous, unconscious animal she can’t identify. Her kidnappers, Bernie French and the volatile Dave Dixon, are delivering her to a criminal dog-theft operation run by Charles and Joan Grey deep in the countryside.

What Poppy finds at the compound is bleak: dozens of stolen dogs, a regime built on fear and cruelty, and no obvious way out. But Poppy is a Lhasa Apso, and Lhasas don’t quit. With the help of unexpected allies, including a mysterious black dog named Milo who’s been waiting five years for this moment, a kind-hearted woman called Jean Sparrow, and a loyal companion named Oscar, Poppy begins the long, dangerous journey home.

Through fields and forests, past threats both human and animal, across an English countryside that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving, this is a story about what it means to be brave when the world has turned hostile, and what it costs to keep going when everything says stop.

The real Poppy, in her garden. Yes, she really is that stubborn.