There is both conflict and cooperation among the dogs. Barkonauts complete their missions, and their mission is to get to Stepping Stone.
They are good dogs, and they are Barkonauts. They manage to redirect the communication antenna, and send a call for help to Earth. They're on the outskirts of their destination star system, but with with the ship's drives not working, too far from their destination planet, Stepping Stone. When the dogs wake up, the humans are gone, having taken the lifepod, and the ship is badly damaged. There are four human crew as well, and we only meet two of them before one, Roro, helps the dogs into hibernation for the FTL portion of their travels.
Lopside, Bug, Daisy, and their pack leader, Golden retriever Champion, are Barkonauts, dogs specially trained and equipped to be part of the crew of Laika, the first Earth ship to head out to start a colony on an alien world in a distant solar system. We do get the story of Laika*, told by one of the dogs to the others so that, at a critical point, they can make an informed choice, but Greg Van Eekhout kills none of his fictional dogs in the course of this story. I'll just say this up front, because I'm one of the people for whom this is important: No dogs die in this book.
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