Dog scientist, Alexandra Horowitz, provides background on the relationship between dogs and humans. Basically A. Horowitz tells us people like to have dogs around them and people often thrust their own feelings and wants into thinking that is what their dog is feeling/ thinking. “As a scientist, I don’t yet have a way to test what a dog is feeling. Instead, I can observe what a dog does.” (138) Scientific method is outlined with an example from one of her studies. No amazing results revealed. I understand that science is slow, too slow though for what I would have liked to have learned from spending my time reading this book. There are a few themes repeated several times through the course of this book: breeding pure bred dogs more often than not is harmful to the dogs’ health and well-being. A second one, being as much as we like to think of our dog as a member of our family, under the law, a dog is a piece of property having no rights. The first time through these themes are thought provoking, but then become redundant.

I can only hope the adult version of this book has more weight to it.

“We must figure out if some of our ideas about dogs are out-of-date or simply wrong.” (165) I felt the time I spent on this book was simply wrong for the amount of wishful thinking for new information I hoped would be revealed.