Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition]
Author: | Language: English | ISBN: B002QX7SJU | Format: PDF, EPUB
Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know
Download Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
Books with free ebook downloads available Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know
Download Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
With more than 52 million pet dogs in America today, it's clear we are a nation of unabashed dog lovers. Yet the relationship between dogs and humans remains a fascinating mystery, as no one really knows what goes on in the canine mind.
Now, in Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz fuses her perspectives as both scientist and dog owner to deliver a fresh look at the world of dogs - as seen from the animal's point of view.
Inspired by her years of living with her own dog, Pumpernickel, who was a constant source of delight and mystery, Horowitz's mind became filled with questions and ideas. In crisp, clear prose, she draws on her research in the field of dog cognition to give listeners a sense of a dog's perceptual and cognitive abilities - and paints a picture of what the canine experience is like. Horowitz's own scientific journey, and the insights she uncovered, allowed her to understand her dog better and appreciate her more.
Containing up-to-the-minute research and providing many moments of dog behavior recognition, this lively and absorbing book will help dog owners to see their best friend's behavior in a different and revealing light, allowing them to understand their pets and enjoy their company even more.
Books with free ebook downloads available Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 10 hours and 27 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Tantor Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: September 29, 2009
- Language: English
- ASIN: B002QX7SJU
After having read this book weeks ago (advanced copy), I was left a little unsatisfied. I'd give it 3.5 stars if could.
It's more of a cursory glance at canine cognitive ethology rather than a definitive volume, but if you're looking for a good introductory to canine cognitive ethology, this would be a great starter. The anecdotes are sweet and the science is pretty good, and written in a way that the regular Joe Dog Guardian can read it without breaking his brain.
HOWEVER. There is one VERY glaring "scientific" experiment that I feel she used for a bad conclusion, a conclusion whose inclusion of the flawed scientific experiment betrays the entire premise of the book itself.
In the section on "Hero Dogs" (dogs that have responded to emergencies and saved the lives of their owners and people in general), Horowitz details what she calls a "clever experiment" with dogs where
"owners conspired with the researchers to feign emergencies in the presence of their dogs, in order to see how the dogs responded. In one scenario, owners were trained to fake a heart attack, complete with gasping, a clutch of the chest, and a dramatic collapse. In the second scenario, owners yelped as a bookcase (made of particleboard) descended on them and seemed to pin them on the ground. In both cases, owners' dogs were present, and the dogs had been introduced to a bystander nearby--perhaps a good person to inform if there has been an emergency.
In these contrived setups, the dogs acted with interest and devotion, but not as though there was an emergency...
...In other words, not a single dog did anything that remotely helped their owners out of the predicaments.
Scientifically, we might know a lot more about rats than we do about dogs. There are some experimental labs that have dogs as subjects, but lab rats get a lot of scientific attention. Dogs get a lot of domestic attention, but scientific study of dogs, and the ways they get along with humans and with other dogs, has not been a high concern. That may be because we think we know dogs; they are frank and open, and we live closely with them. Alexandra Horowitz thinks we don't know enough, and some of what we know is wrong, and she is out to change our perception of dogs and to do it scientifically. She has to work at making herself a detached observer; she might be a psychologist who has studied cognition in humans, dogs, bonobos, and rhinoceroses, but among the first sentences of her book _Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know_ (Scribner) is, "I am a dog person." Is she ever. She didn't deliberately make Pumpernickel, her mixed breed live-in friend (she is an advocate for adopting mutts), a subject of scientific study, but Pump was her entrance, for instance, to the dog park where she could film the interactions of other dogs for acute detailed study later. She gives loving anecdotes of the late Pump in every chapter to illustrate her more objective findings, nicely showing how her scientific examination of dogs paid off in her understanding of her own dog. There are people who worry that scientific examination of any phenomenon takes away the mystery and specialness of the phenomenon, and among the fine lessons in this amusing and enlightening book is that this is far from true.
Dogs do not sense the world we do. To take one of Horowitz's examples, a rose for humans is a thing of visual and olfactory beauty, and also has connotations of a love gift.
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