Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

oh my.i'm a life-long dog-lover, but over the last year and and a half, i have bonded more fully with two dogs, Molly and Wobbles (Wally is his formal name), to a greater extent than ever before. Naturally, i sought to learn more, about me, about them, about our us-ness.There is popular crap from every conceivable angle about dogs. But I'm an intellectual snob. I require strong writing skills. I require ideas -- trails, leads, implications -- that are above the level of the average 5th-grader. (Nothing against 5th-graders or those who cater to them, it's just not where I'm at.)Horowitz is readily charming, but she takes a little while to build to her full head of steam. Somewhere around the third chapter she emerges properly. Smart, researched (and sometimes researched by her), erudite, and funny, she works rather brilliantly to bring me to my dogs and my dogs to me. This is not a masterwork, not yet. This isn't Konner's _Tangled Wing_ or Hrdy's _Maternal Instincts_. But this is a worker who will make one, and when she does, I will be there.I've queued up the rest of her work, and I await her opus magnum, panting.(For this review, shouts out to Molly and Wobbles, who started me on this path, but, sadly, read very poorly and often focus overmuch on chewability and odor.)

I find this book to be a great eye-opener on seeing things from a dog's perspective; how they take cues from us, and relate to human items as just things that can be sat on, or chewed, or avoided. I was especially thankful for the in depth discussion of dogs sense of smell as it helped me change my behavior to be a lot more patient when out on walks. Time permitting, I'm all for stopping every 10 feet to allow my pooch to stop and sniff and leave some Pmail because now I understand how important this is to her. I've purchased over a dozen copies of this book for friends, family, and coworkers because they, like myself, related to dogs from a human framework. A dogs behavior just didn't make sense. Until now. I have received many a "thank you" for opening their eyes as well. And I always say, don't thank me, thank Mrs. Horowitz for writing such a great book.The beginning chapters can seem a bit technical and dry but read it all the way though, not once, not twice, but several times. Each time you'll probably uncover another gem to help you understand your dog just a little bit better.

The book is informative and entertaining, as far as it goes, but offers little in the way of practical advice. It does offer insights that will promote greater human understanding of dogs and concludes with a strong chapter that suggests ways humans can relate better to the dogs in their households. The book also does an outstanding job of describing dogs' sensory experience of the world, devoting nearly 100 pages to the subject.But in its claim to present the canine perspective, the book falls short. Horowitz does decode some situations according to a canine point of view -- her discussion of doggy raincoats and the way that their tight embrace might make dogs feel "subdued" rather than protected is an amusing example. But an overwhelming anthropomorphic bias comes through. For instance, after lengthy and well-done sections describing dogs' vision and how it differs from humans' and explaining that smell is dogs' primary source of information, Horowitz attributes her dog's hesitance to enter the elevator to age-related deterioration of her vision or difficulty adjusting to low light after being outside. These are both reasons a human might hesitate. But the crevice between the floor and the elevator harbors many strange smells; this is an alternative reason, more in tune with what matters to dogs, that dogs might hesitate to enter elevators. Another (though unlikely in the case of Horowitz's apartment-dwelling dog) is an unpleasant memory of the moving floor.Horowitz also stays loyal to her scientist roots in her reliance on research studies -- even poorly designed and executed studies -- to draw conclusions, even when real-life experience points to different conclusions. A study of dogs' reactions to "emergency" situations is instructive. In this study, humans set up a highly contrived scenario, first having owners introduce their dogs to a "friendly stranger" and then having the owners feign an emergency -- a heart attack, for example. None of the dogs tested did what the humans wanted them to do (seek help from the "stranger"). Calling this a "clever" experiment, Horowitz draws the conclusion that dogs "simply do not naturally recognize or react to an emergency situation." A more obvious conclusion, and one that gives more credit to the dogs' intelligence, is that the dogs could tell that the people were faking -- none of the scents and signals that indicate true alarm or physical dysfunction would have been present in the "actors." Some dogs do, in fact, react to emergency situations, even those that they have not been specifically trained for.Horowitz relies exclusively on some studies that dogs "failed," such as the mirror test for self-awareness and a test of whether dogs felt "guilt" if they "stole" a treat, in arriving at her limited conclusions about doggy consciousness and self-awareness. She fails to acknowledge (or notice?) that the tests cited are anthropocentric in design -- that is, they test things that are relevant to people but not to dogs -- and were conducted in unfamiliar, contrived environments where the dogs' behavior would be far from natural. Other research showing strong evidence of dog self-awareness is not mentioned. Finally, and despite a section at the beginning of the book chiding scientists' tendency to see one animal as representative of a species, she makes many broad statements about dog behavior that are seemingly based on her observations of her one dog.Overall, the book provides a good description of dogs' sensory perceptions of the world, but I think that its conclusions about dog behavior, consciousness, and self-awareness are questionable.