Boy the Wandering Dog by Marshall Saunders

So much for the Bonstones -- now for my own dear family. We are not as high up among the hills as they are. My master bought, not a regular farm like the Bonstones, but what they call a gentleman's estate. It has eighty acres of ground, some woodland, some meadow, a big old-fashioned flower garden, a fine strip of land for vegetables, and a stately old colonial mansion.

The house is situated on a bit of rising ground overlooking the Pleasant River Valley -- just a tiny, baby valley with a slender thread of a river picking its way among meadows of the greenest grass I ever saw.