What better choice can we make for 2024 summer reading than learning how to better understand our canine friends and family.
Dogs have been a subject of increased study and research for the last few decades. They continue to capture our attention and affection as we try to understand how they think, how much they understand us humans and how much we understand their behavior toward us and other canines.
A new book by Jennifer S. Holland, a former National Geographic journalist, captures readers attention on a journey to unlock the secrets of dog cognition, based on evidence from trainers, owners, behaviorists, and the animals themselves. She focuses on the extraordinary abilities of “working dogs,” and explains that guide dogs must exercise keen judgment in deciding when to follow or disobey their owners. For example, she recounts accompanying trainers as they taught dogs to refuse dangerous commands by praising them for resisting orders to walk off the edge of a subway platform. Dogs’ excellent sense of smell lies at the heart of their intelligence, according to Holland, who cites studies that show canines can “sense some substances at concentrations as low as parts per trillion” and describes how Auburn University’s Canine Performance Science Center trains explosives detection dogs in a mock airport terminal.