Making Sense of Dogs

As many of you know I’m an avid reader and can’t resist a new dog book when I see it. Recently, I finished reading Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet and thought I would give you my quick review of the book.

Dog Sense is book based on the scientific study of the domestic dog and enlightens the reader by separating fact from fiction. Since the world of dog training has so many differing training styles and ideas on how we should relate and train our poochy pals, it’s nice to have a book look into the actual facts that are backed up by real research. There’s way too much speculation and assumptions being made by many dog trainers who are stuck in outdated and ineffective training methods (many of which are harmful both mentally and physically to our dogs), so I for one was very happy to see a book with so much detail and rock-solid research to enlighten the masses.

The book is packed with so much information I almost don’t know where to begin telling you about it. One thing that I found most interesting was the history of how the dog was domesticated from the wolf. Bradshaw lays out the evolution of how the wolves of yesterday became the dogs of today. I also appreciated his discussion on pure bred dogs and how they are so genetically unhealthy. The general public has long been disillusioned thinking that a pure bred dog is genetically superior to a mutt. I love how Bradshaw compares breeding pure bred dogs to having kids with your cousin. I think that really puts it into perspective.

The book goes on to set the record straight on why using wolf behavior as the basis of how we understand our dogs is inaccurate.

"The main [myth] ... is that wolves are essentially an intrinsically aggressive animal that is continuously trying to take over whatever group they find themselves in and dominate it. And the new wolf biology really exposed that as an artifact — that particular view of wolves came from wolves in zoos and in wildlife parks, where a bunch of unrelated wolves were basically put together and told to get on with it and, not surprisingly, they got on with it by being aggressive toward one another. The new picture of wolf society is that wolves are harmonious animals. They live in family groups. They get along really well together, and they're almost never aggressive to one another. The aggression comes out when two families meet, so they have very strong family ties."

The big downside of the book is that it is written by a scientist and can sometimes read like a textbook, which makes it a bit of a hard read (I got the audio book which makes it much easier to handle), and may have too much info and go into too much scientific detail for the average dog owner. He does discuss some actually ways to train your dog, but I found them a little superficial (which is fine because this is not a dog training book).

All in all I found this book very educational and enlightening. For those looking for a light, quick read about dogs, you will probably be a bit frustrated and disappointed. However, if you’re looking for a very detailed, scientific look into the world of the domestic dog and its ancestry than this is the book for you.