In the late 17th Century, successful teenage pirate Emer Morrissey has finally been reunited with her long lost love, and is about to leave the pirate life behind forever with two chests full of incredible treasures, when she is slain on a beach, and cursed with the dust of a hundred dogs. Over the next three hundred years, she lives through the lives of one hundred dogs, before coming back as a human, with all her memories of the one hundred and one lifetimes intact.
Cannonball Read V 
I read this one a few years ago and enjoyed it as well. I really only picked it up because the author lives in my general vicinity. Like you, I thought the Saffron parts were the least interesting but the rest of the book made up for it.