Timbuktu

by Paul Auster

Novels and memoirs featuring dogs are a dime a dozen; some are tragic, some comic, and others are filled with maudlin clichés.  When my children were in elementary school, one of their favorite books was No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman, about a boy who finds it upsetting that dogs in literature usually die.  Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller are two fine examples of this phenomenon.  The sad fact is, however, that dogs only live about ten years in the best of circumstances so even if Old Dan, Little Ann, and Old Yeller had survived their travails, their owners’ hearts would have been broken anyway.  For those of us who are fortunate enough to share our lives with dogs, the end always comes too soon, because no matter how much trouble they cause dogs have a way of wrapping themselves around our hearts, and without them our lives and homes feel empty.  Of course, not every dog is loved and wanted and not every person loves dogs; but when a dog and a person bond, it is a mysterious and beautiful connection.

Timbuktu,  by Paul Auster, invites the reader into the world of a homeless man, Willy G. Christmas, and his canine companion, Mr. Bones.  Unlike the typical dog story, Timbuktu is about a dog who loses his person and not the other way around.  Mr. Bones, with his keen olfactory, recognizes that it’s the end of the line for Willy G.; and as the two make their way to Baltimore, Maryland, we learn bits and pieces of their individual and joint life stories, just enough to paint a picture of two good souls who live their lives on the fringes of society.   While Mr. Bones cannot engage in a dialog with Willy G., he listens carefully and patiently to his partner’s constant and rambling monologue, paying close attention to the unspoken messages and the magnificent “symphony of smells” that greet his miraculous senses at every turn.  

In Willie G.’s mythology, “Timbuktu” is the afterlife.  (In reality, Timbuktu is an ancient city in the African nation of Mali, which was once a major crossroads on the Trans-Saharan caravan routes.  It was long a place shrouded in mystery because no westerner who ventured there had come out alive until 1828, when a Frenchman named René Caillié, disguised as a Muslim, visited the city and returned to France to collect his 10,000 franc prize.)  Mr. Bones worries that Timbuktu is not a place for dogs and he fears that he will never see Willy G. again.  For all of Willy G.’s love of and devotion to Mr. Bones, he never speaks of seeing his dog in the afterlife.  Instead, Willy G. provides Mr. Bones with plenty of warnings about the dangers lurking everywhere a stray dog might find himself.  His most dire warning is about Chinese restaurants.  “The chefs round up strays and slaughter them in the alley right behind the kitchen – ten, twenty, thirty dogs a week…  Unless you want to wind up in a platter of moo goo gai pan, you’ll think twice before you wag your tail in front of one of those [Chinese] beaneries. ..  Know thine enemy – and then keep a wide berth.”

A theme Paul Auster often explores in his works of fiction is that of the social misfit who writes endlessly in notebooks which pile up over a period of years.  We learn that Willy’s reason for walking from Brooklyn, New York, to Baltimore, Maryland, is to deliver his manuscripts and his dog to Miss Bea Swanson.  Willy G. explains to Mr. Bones the urgency of finding his English teacher because without her to safeguard his manuscripts, it will be as if he had never existed.  When the hour of Willy G.’s death is at hand, Mr. Bones dreams a clairvoyant dream in which he becomes a fly and is able to watch as Willy G. is taken to a hospital by ambulance and reunited with his high school English teacher, the one person who ever believed in him. 

When the police officers from Mr. Bones’ dream appear in reality and call an ambulance, rather than wait for them to start chasing him he runs, confident in the knowledge of Willy G.’s fate.  During the seven years that he accompanied Willy G. Christmas on his ramblings across America, often hungry, but never lonely, Mr. Bones’ world was narrated, annotated, and footnoted.  Willy’s monologue continues to play in Mr. Bones’ head and in this way we learn how it is that Willy Gurevitch, a gifted Columbia University student, lost his way in life and ended up homeless; why he overcame a lifelong indifference to dogs in order to adopt Mr. Bones; and how the the long arm of history distorted his parents’, and therefore his own, life.

After several days on the street avoiding capture, Mr. Bones surrenders to hunger and allows a young Chinese boy to befriend him.  The boy, whose parents own a Chinese restaurant, suffers from loneliness and harsh discipline at his father’s hands.  He and Mr. Bones bond immediately, in the way that dogs and children will, and a surreptitious feeding program begins.  Because dogs live in the moment, Mr. Bones temporarily forgets about Willy G. Christmas and adapts to life hidden in a box in a blighted vacant lot behind the restaurant.  When the inevitable happens and Mr. Bones finds himself once again homeless, he remembers Willy G.’s warnings and runs as far and as fast as he can until he collapses in a thicket behind a suburban home many miles away from Baltimore.

At one point in Mr. Bones’ remembering of Willy G.’s surreal and poetic monologue, he reminds us that “dog” is used as a metaphor for everything from sickness to happiness.  We have the dog in the manger (greed), junkyard dog (violent bully), sick puppy (head case), and bitch (mean lady).  On the other hand, the big dog (leader) often has his (or her) lucky day.   Paul Auster obliquely refers to the differences in human relationships with dogs:  some cultures revile them, some eat them.   Why many of us in the Western World live with them and treat them as family probably has much to do with our conception of the soul as the essence that departs the body upon death.  We look at them and they look into us.  When they leave us, we mourn, sometimes for years; and yet they remain in our hearts to remind us that goodness exists.

Understanding the nature of existence is the essence of Timbuktu.  Existentialism is a branch of philosophy concerned with the notion that each human is an individual adrift in a sea of other individuals.  For many, living a social life seems easy and natural, but for others every interaction is a challenge.  Life in primitive societies was about surviving day by day: hunting, gathering, and protecting the young.   As societies moved away from clan-based subsistence and evolved into complex social hierarchies in an industrialized world, people began questioning the purpose of life and a few, who did not have to toil in order to eat, became consumed with finding reasons for their own existence.   As monarchies fell to democracy, fascism, and communism  -- and news of cruel and hateful acts, committed on an epic scale, spread far and wide -- the absurdity of human existence became the primary focus of writers and philosophers such as Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others.  Paul Auster studied the existentialists as well as Freudian psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan in his own attempt to make sense of a perplexing world.

The great beauty of dogs is that they don’t care about things like mental illness and physical attributes.  They love us no matter what we look like, who are parents are, how nice our home is, or the number of friends we have.  The nature of this love is unknowable, however.  Some scientists posit that domestic dogs evolved over time as a matter of survival:  becoming appealing to their human hosts in order to secure regular meals.  They theorize that the love is one-sided, that dogs are mirrors reflecting what we want to see.  Paul Auster’s book suggests something else; that dogs are spiritual creatures who connect with us to help us see that there is an afterlife where hope never dies.

Copyright 2013 Teresa Friedlander all rights reserved

Rin Tin Tin - The Life and The Legend

By Susan Orlean

What makes a legend?  That question is the subtext of Susan Orlean’s new book Rin Tin Tin – The Life and The Legend.  Legends and myths both require good stories that get better with each telling; but what differentiates a legend is that it is based in fact.  Rin Tin Tin, the orphaned German shepherd puppy rescued from a World War I battlefield who then went on to become a movie star, is a perfect example of a legendary hero.  He was famous in his day and his fame lived on long after his death.  The legend was beginning fade away with the Baby Boom generation and might have disappeared completely had the dog not caught Orlean’s fancy.  In the abstract, this biography of the famous dog is a study of how legends come to be, but it is even more interesting than that.  What happened to Orlean while she was writing the book is that she became part of the legend herself in a way that respects and even enhances the story of Rin Tin Tin, adding yet another dimension to the life of one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars.

Rin Tin Tin, the dog, was a purebred German shepherd whose intelligence and talents were obsessively documented by his owner, Lee Duncan.   However, the “Rin Tin Tin” of television and movie fame was a larger-than-life hero played by not one but by many dogs and who was the subject of fanciful press releases.  Rin Tin Tin is as a much a story of the dog as it is of his owner, his agent, and a handful of other true believers.   Duncan, was an odd young man who had been scarred by a sad and lonely childhood in Los Angeles, California, and never quite learned the social skills necessary to form meaningful human relationships.  Rinty and his littermate, Nanette, gave Duncan a sense of belonging and connection which he did not have with people.  When the war ended, he could not face leaving the dogs behind, so he waged an intense lobbying campaign up and down the military chain of command which ultimately succeeded.  Nanette did not survive the trans-Atlantic crossing, but Rinty did and returned with Duncan to California. The horrors of war had taken a toll on Duncan, who retreated into his own private world with Rinty and Nanette II (also a German Shepherd).  Instead of finding a girl and settling down to family life, Duncan lived in his parents’ home and spent hours every day training the dogs.  Duncan was convinced that Rinty was a genius among canines and set out to prove it.

During the 1920s and ‘30s silent films created legends out of actresses and actors, and Lee Duncan decided that Rinty belonged in the Hollywood pantheon of movie stars.  He created screenplays with the majestic dog as the leading man and, surprisingly after knocking on hundreds of doors, Rinty got a break playing a wolf in the 1922 film, “The Man From Hell’s River”.  Rin Tin Tin starred in more than 20 films across ten years of working and was such a superstar that his name appeared before his human co-stars’ on movie billings.  Perhaps it was because Rinty never came across as phony or overly dramatic.  He was a dog being a dog, on screen and off.  Actors and actresses, on the other hand, had to use outsized gestures and extreme facial expressions in order to communicate without words.  This plus the dichotomy between their real lives and their on-screen personae also made them less appealing than the always faithful, always constant canine.

In the course of researching Rin Tin Tin, Susan Orlean traveled to the French battlefield where Rinty was born, hoping for some kind of epiphany about the dog’s life.  What she came to understand, instead, was that she was losing her ability to be objective about  Rin Tin Tin:  he had stopped being a dog and had become the object of her obsession.  This is the point at which an undisciplined writer becomes irrevocably bogged down.   Another trap that Orlean narrowly avoided was making the book about herself even though she wrote herself into the book by necessity.   Obsessiveness characterized almost everyone in Rinty’s inner circle.  This ability to inspire a passionate following seems to be another hallmark of a legend, and with Orlean, Rinty had one more true believer to keep his story alive.

The story of the legendary dog is also that of Hollywood and the ever-evolving entertainment business.  Before Hollywood became associated with film making, it was largely undeveloped, with a smattering of ranches and orange groves.  By the end of the 1930s, it was a bustling part of Los Angeles, a Mecca for aspiring movie stars, directors, and producers.  The original Rin Tin Tin lived 13 years, but Lee Duncan kept him alive by continually promoting the dog’s pedigreed offspring with limited success.  The canine hero was reincarnated in the 1950s by ABC in “Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” starring Jim Brown and Lee Acker alongside Rin Tin Tin IV (or reasonable facsimile thereof).  The show ran for four years and Duncan, nearing the end of his life, was only marginally involved.  He would have been shut out altogether had it not been for Bert Leonard, an executive with Columbia Pictures whose story is inextricably linked with Duncan’s.  Orlean’s discovery of Leonard’s involvement with Duncan and Rinty is a fine example of investigative journalism.  She had heard the name, Bert Leonard, but had been unable to learn much about him until reading his obituary.  This piece of luck led her to a treasure trove of documents about Rin Tin Tin, “Rin Tin Tin”, Lee Duncan, and others, including plaintiffs and defendants in the tangle of litigation which left Leonard penniless and homeless while he slowly died from cancer. 

According to legend, the original Rinty could clear an 11 foot hurdle and follow Duncan’s complicated voice commands.  Sadly, most of his silent films are lost forever because no one thought to preserve them.  What we know of these films  is what can be pieced together from existing historical records.  As talented as the original Rin Tin Tin was, his progeny were not the stuff of legends, however, and so a number of stand-ins played the part of “Rin Tin Tin” while Lee Duncan, took Rin Tin Tin’s offspring on publicity tours and visits to schools and orphanages.  It was Leonard’s job to work the studio deals and find the sponsors.  He was a man of vision and enthusiasm who was never able to hang onto success due to numerous character weaknesses.  Leonard could easily have taken advantage of Duncan, but protected him and his interest in the Hollywood phenomenon instead, probably to his own detriment. 

After Lee Duncan’s death, ownership of the rights to “Rin Tin Tin” as well as the pedigreed progeny and fan club became the objects of lengthy and expensive lawsuits.  Lee Duncan famously said, “There will always be a Rin Tin Tin.”  Susan Orlean, in writing this book has rekindled interest in “the greatest dog ever”.  If Rin Tin Tin the book is made into a movie, there is an excellent chance that the many-headed litigation monster will reawaken, and the legend will become a myth.

Copyright 2012, Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved

The Emotional Lives of Animals

The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander, copyright 2009

After reading The Emotional Lives of Animals, a small minority of people will become vegans and leave their estates to PETA. A few others (assuming they can read) will throw the book at the cat and kick the dog to express how they really feel about it. Most readers, however, will find this to be a very thought-provoking book, equal parts anecdote, philosophy, and science. The author, Marc Bekoff, is a distinguished science professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and has won awards for his work studying the social interactions of many species. This book is the product of his research and draws a number of conclusions about how we humans could and should improve our interactions with the animals in our world.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with him, Professor Bekoff raises a number of questions which deserve consideration. First, do animals have feelings, and if so how do we know? Second, what would be the ethical implications of animals having feelings similar to ours? Third, how do we avoid anthropomorphism? Professor Bekoff helps the reader work through these questions and many others by sharing his scientific findings. In the end, however, the author reaches some conclusions that are somewhat colored by his beliefs about human-animal relations which some may find a bit extreme, and a very small minority will find not extreme enough.

Most of us would agree that dogs (as well as other animals) display a range of emotional behaviors, but does this mean that they have an emotional life similar to ours? Some would argue that as dogs have evolved away from their wolf ancestors, they learned to behave in ways that appeal to humans simply as a means of survival. Cognitive ethology, a relatively new branch of science, addresses this question with the study of how animal minds work and whether or not animals are aware of themselves as separate beings. It further seeks to understand if animals are capable of emotions as we experience them and, if so, to what extent. Finally, cognitive ethology examines the ability of species to make decisions based on unexpected events, to solve problems as a way of increasing their chances for survival, and to pass learned information on to successive generations.

In reading The Emotional Lives of Animals, I kept wishing that Mr. Spock (the emotionless Vulcan of “Star Trek” fame) had been doing the research, because it is hard to believe that cognitive ethologists can be perfectly objective in their observations of animals at play or in stressful situations. When studying animals, human scientists cannot help but respond emotionally, and so the challenge for them is to find ways to quantify behavior from anecdotal evidence and field studies. The greater challenge, however, is to be willing accept data which refute what minds and hearts believe to be true. Unfortunately, while Mr. Spock could be completely objective, he would likely fail to recognize emotional responses to stimuli, and therefore would be unable to differentiate between, say, playing and fighting. In other words, to study emotions one must have them.

Cognitive ethology has its roots in the work of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Darwin was educated to become a doctor but preferred the natural sciences and philosophical pursuits. Extremely intelligent and hard-working, he finished tenth out of a class of 178 at Cambridge, studying theology and nature. Upon graduation from Cambridge, Darwin accompanied Captain Robert FitzRoy, aboard the HMS Beagle, for a five year exploration of planet earth. During this voyage, Darwin made detailed notes on geology, ecosystems, plants, and animals. These data fleshed out his knowledge of the animal kingdom which had been earlier informed by the work of Carl Linnaeus (the father of taxonomy) and other prominent naturalists such as John Gould, the ornithologist, and James Francis Stevens, founder of the Royal Entomological Society of London. Darwin’s seminal work, The Origin of Species laid out his theories of evolution and natural selection. While initially met with some skepticism by religious fundamentalists, Darwin’s theories have been largely validated by the scientific community through research and field studies across the ensuing decades.

Mr. Bekoff and other animal behavioral scientists use Darwin’s work as a starting point because it was Darwin, himself, who first posited that animals have emotions. If we assume that all chordates (animals with spines, including homo sapiens) have similar nervous systems, then it should follow that instinctive responses to stimuli will be similar. All chordates, for example, recoil from pain and experience the “fight or flight” response to threats. These primitive responses originate in the limbic system of the brain: there is no thought involved. Happiness, sadness, anger, and jealousy indicate a higher level of consciousness, in other words, we have to know we are happy, sad, mad, or jealous and that requires a sense of self as part of a community. Each of these higher emotions originate in distinct areas of the brain and can be measured by functional MRI studies. The brain research that Mr. Bekoff and others have performed show that dogs, elephants, pigs, horses, and other animals experience emotions in much the same way that humans do. This is where the author begins to wade into deep water.

Mr. Bekoff presents a strong argument that the factory farms and slaughterhouses which put food on most of our tables are filled with terror and suffering, and that is morally wrong. Technological innovation and factory farming provide the means to feed many more people per acre of farmland than would be possible if we all had to raise our own animals and till our own soil. This efficiency, unfortunately, comes at a high price: environmental degradation, unsanitary conditions in food processing facilities, and other practices which are harmful to human health. On the other hand, without this degree of productivity, perhaps millions of people would die of starvation every year. It is Mr. Bekoff’s hope that his work and that of his colleagues will lead to more humane practices in the farming and slaughter of animals for food.

As living organisms, according to biology, our first job is to sustain our species.  As sentient beings, on the other hand, we understand the suffering of others. The idea of herding our fellow humans into a slaughterhouse – where they would watch as those ahead in line were eviscerated before being processed into plastic-wrapped cuts of meat, sausages, and “by-products” – is unthinkable. It would be morally wrong to subject members of our own species to that treatment for our own consumption. So, the question is whether it is wrong to send other sentient animals – the ones we eat – to slaughter. If we assume that humans evolved along with every other species living on earth, and further that we have bodies which require animal protein in order to thrive, then it is hard to advocate vegetarianism. While it is possible to eat a nutritionally balanced diet without eating animal products, it is difficult and, on a deep level, unsatisfying. Hunting and fishing for food could be, therefore, a more ethical choice than purchasing mass produced meat and poultry.

Another issue Mr. Bekoff indirectly raises in The Emotional Lives of Animals concerns human moral and ethical development. As creatures evolved from single-celled organisms to the kaleidoscopic variety we have thus far discovered, survival often meant collaboration within species. A school of fish, a flock of birds, a pod of whales, a tribe, a family are all examples of structures which enhance the ability of a species to “be fruitful and multiply”. Behavioral studies of dogs and primates reveal that these animals have hierarchies and rules which govern their behavior, enabling a dog pack to work as a team to take down prey, and requiring primates to divide labor and share food for the benefit of the clan. Once a species develops an ego, however, things get more complicated. Chimpanzees, like humans, are capable of deceit, jealousy, and murder. Unlike humans, however, chimps do not appear concerned with the meaning of good and evil. Some chimpanzees are simply mean or psychopathic, but most go along to get along, celebrating births and mourning deaths. We humans, on the other hand, seem to struggle mightily with ourselves on questions of good or evil, right or wrong, and caring for others over self interest. As individuals, most of us are pretty decent people, but these moral questions are often lost in political and policy decisions. If providing life-saving care to sick people means a tax increase, a surprising number of us will be opposed to it.

It struck me, after reading The Emotional Lives of Animals, that perhaps humans are still evolving, that in many ways we have not yet outgrown our tribal origins. Deep within each of us is a hunter, a warrior, a member of an exclusive tribe. Civilization – art, science, religion, law, knowledge – is what moved us out of savagery and, some would say, closer to God. In order keep our species on this trajectory of progress, especially as the planet becomes more crowded, we need to focus our political discourse on ethical questions such as how we acknowledge and respect the emotional lives of our fellow creatures, be they human or animal, and what our collective responsibility to other beings is.

Marc Bekoff sums up his book nicely: “What do we do with what we know? …We each must make our own choices.” The most important thing is to understand the systems and processes by which we live. No single person can right every wrong in the world, nor should he or she try. What we can do is make choices: we can choose to eat free-range and organic meat, poultry, and eggs. We can learn to appreciate or, at least tolerate, vegetarians. We can adopt pets from animal shelters and spay and neuter them. Most important, however, is to do what we can as individuals to reduce the suffering in the world. As the Dalai Lama says, “The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes.” Amen.

Copyright 2009 all rights reserved, Teresa Friedlander

"The Truth About Dogs"

The Truth About Dogs by Stephen Budiansky

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander (copyright 2008)

“Man’s best friend,” according to popular cliché, is devoted, faithful, and downright useful. He waits by the door for us to return home, greets us joyfully, defends us from intruders, and fetches our newspapers and slippers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that prehistoric humans “created” dogs by taming wolves and raising them to be companions and hunting assistants. How else can you explain the nearly constant presence of canines in the human ecological niche? Some of us who keep dogs for pets will insist that they have a deep emotional life, that they suffer from separation anxiety when we go to work, that our dogs know when we are coming home even if our schedule is inconsistent, and that they love us the same way we love them. To all of this, Stephen Budiansky says, “nonsense!” His “Truth About Dogs” is that they are the greatest con artists, optimists, and opportunists in creation.

Mr. Budiansky, according to his biographical statement, is “[a] scientists, author, journalist, and dog lover”. He is also a “correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly [and is] the author of seven highly acclaimed books about animals, nature, science, and history.” In other words, he is well qualified to share his theory of how dogs came to be. In The Truth About Dogs he makes a strong case that most of our dearly held beliefs about our canine companions are false because we think of dogs in human terms. (One of his favorite words is “anthropomorphize” which means to assign human characteristics to things.) Mr. Budiansky supported his thesis by researching archaeological and anthropological studies of human societies over time and across continents. He also studied the evolution of dogs going back to the common wolf ancestor of dogs, foxes, and hyenas. After reading this book, you will most likely look at dogs a little differently than before. And that is not a bad thing.

Mr. Budiansky offers an alternative explanation for how dogs came to be. Wolves – isolated from their packs by accident or circumstance – learned to coexist with early humans and adopted new behaviors. Scavenging, instead of hunting with a pack, led to genetic mutations, giving rise to canis familiaris. This new species lost the wildness of its wolf ancestors and became almost totally dependent on humans for survival. To demonstrate this, Mr. Budiansky examines cultures which revile dogs as well as those which pamper them. In parts of Africa, dogs are considered filthy and are banished to the outskirts of society, where they pick over what humans discard, excrete, or leave unattended. If people disappeared, many African dogs would have to re-learn how to take down live prey but a good number would figure it out before too long. Domestic dogs, having been reared on kibble and canned food, would have a more difficult time adapting to life without us. Many, if not most, would starve if left to fend for themselves.

In another writer’s hands, this book could have been a dry scholarly text. Mr. Budiansky is graced with a wonderful sense of humor and pokes fun at almost everyone: kennel club snobs, politicians, racists, and so-called dog “experts”. I have never learned as much while laughing so hard. Under the veneer of humor, however, this book is quite serious about what people have done to the domesticated descendents of wolves. Kennel clubs bear huge responsibility for propagating unhealthy and unsound dogs all the while convincing breed enthusiasts of the superiority of closed breed registries.

If you took basic biology in high school, you learned about dominant and recessive genes. Recessive genes are not in themselves bad, for example blue eyes in humans is a recessive trait. If, however, two dogs with a recessive tendency toward hip dysplasia produce offspring, chances are one out of four puppies will have it, two in four will have no symptoms but will pass the recessive gene on to their descendents. The fourth dog is the one with good genes. Dog breeders, however, can be fairly unscrupulous (or careless) and crank out plenty of pretty purebred puppies with lots of hidden health and genetic problems. Sadly, the market for pedigreed dogs is very strong which leads to more in-breeding and results in weaker animals, in the same way that making copies of copies eventually yields an unreadable document.

In their early evolution, dogs joined different groups of people with different means of survival. As humans figured out how to train dogs to be useful as herding, guard, and hunting dogs, they also figured out how to breed them for specific traits such as size, temperament, and ability. This early form of genetic engineering is why there is such great variety within the species. As societies became wealthy and more hierarchical, many dogs were bred for status, rather than work. Kennel clubs were formed as a way of authenticating individual dogs as having the most desirable bloodlines. Once established, kennel clubs typically close the book on a breed to prevent the influx of new blood, thereby creating more valuable puppies. As elite as many humans believe their dogs to be, Mr. Budiansky’s research reveals that there is virtually no genetic difference between a champion and a mongrel.

In addition to weakening dogs through successive inbreeding, dog breed enthusiasts also contribute to the problem of dog bites. Mr. Budiansky examines the various schools of thought surrounding what to do about “problem breeds” such as pit bull terriers. Are certain dogs more likely to attack humans than others? Yes, but in his opinion it is a complicated tangle of nature and nurture. According to The Truth About Dogs, every year in the United States there are more than 1 million dog bites requiring medical attention, with “a total cost to society estimated at greater than $1 billion.” The dog breed most associated with these bites is neither the pit bull terrier nor the Rottweiler. Hint: it looks more like a mop than a wolf.

Before reading this book, I was concerned that The Truth About Dogs would make me love my dog less, and while it did make me look at him differently it also made me appreciate him more. What I found most surprising, is how little I care that dogs are opportunists and con artists (not to mention thieves). I was also gratified to know that fancy purebred dogs are not genetically superior to my shelter dog (of questionable parentage). As Mr. Budiansky puts it, when it comes to loving dogs, he “had no choice in the matter.” I feel the same way. Dogs are so successfully adapted to living with humans that they have learned to make us love them against our better judgment. Those of us who share our lives with dogs feel lucky to have such good-natured and comforting companions.