Our Dogs, Ourselves: How We Live with Dogs Now by Alexandra Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Horowitz is a respected researcher in dog cognition, and has published other good, readable books on what we know about how dogs learn, think, and maybe even feel. This one focuses more on how we humans relate to dogs, and how they relate to us – the human-dog bond. It’s a bit less scientific, a bit less scholarly, with lots of stories about her own beloved dogs.
There is a depressing account of how the law has regarded dogs through history: as property, not individuals, or even sentient beings, and while this is changing a little in some places, they are still deemed equivalent to butterknives in some divorce courts. The chapter on how we converse aloud with our dogs is charming and funny, with the light it sheds on how we see them: as children? friends? lovers? peers? royalty? Other chapters are less successful, such as the data-driven description of her professional work (she’s not quite as witty as she thinks she is).
Where I struggled the most is with her takedown of all purebred dogs (as the devoted guardian to a border collie/Lab mix AND a healthy, sound, wonderful purebred Italian greyhound). While I am in complete agreement about the terrible, extreme deformities humans have inflicted on dogs in the name of fashion (flat-faced dogs that cannot breathe or give birth normally, giant dogs who are dead by the age of 8 because their bodies simply cannot sustain their own weight, dogs whose ears are bloodily cut to look perky and sharp), I know breeders who scrupulously research health issues, breed for soundness, health and sanity, and then only rarely, support rescue, and provide us with true types of dogs to fit our lives and loves and admiration. I don’t want those dogs to all disappear. She also casts often-justified doubt on the near-universal practice of spay/neuter – too much, too early, and with health implications that should be considered (hormone levels can influence bone strength, vulnerability to some cancers in some breeds, etc.). She is rather harsh on the shelters and vets who push for widespread spay/neuter, blaming them for self-interest in money and convenience, which does not seem fair. They want there to be fewer unwanted dogs, and this is one way to get there. Other ways: better behavior by pet OWNERS, better education, or alternative surgical techniques should also be in the mix, which she suggests and encourages. Still, her rather blanket disparagement of spay/neuter as a violation of a dog’s right to live a full life as a dog seems a bit extreme.
Dog people will find this book amusing, interesting, and possibly annoying – or not. Not bad, but not her best. However, if anyone knows where I can find the 19th-century knitting patterns she mentions for Italian greyhound sweaters, I’d love to see them.
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