Customer Reviews

Dogs: A Natural History

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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Dogs, A Natural History, by Jake Page is an interesting and fascinating book. The author, who has six dogs, writes about dogs throughout history and how they have evolved over time to become the much loved companions that they are today.

Page writes about many of the ancient dogs that lived around the world, and what they have in common with the dogs that live with us today. He also sheds some light on why dogs don't see colors the same as we do - and according to the experts, dogs do see more than black and white! Laughter is another subject he touches on, writing about the science that shows that dogs do indeed laugh. And, as many dog people will attest, dogs certainly know how to love - and Page gives his views on why he is convinced this is indeed true. These are just a few of the many topics he covers that explain why our dogs are the way they are and why they do some of the things they do. It's a very insightful book (written by someone who obviously loves dogs) for anyone who wants to learn more about the canines they share their life with.

This book is very interesting. Most of the information in it was gleaned from other books. It was almost like someones book report of many other books.
If you want a summary of many books on the history of dogs, than read this book.

It's hard to like a book when you've developed a dislike of the narrator. Let's start with him being patronizing. I was already rubbed the wrong way in the preface when he explains about natural history and taxonomy. He uses a jolly avuncular tone with coy asides that conveys that he will be doling this information out on a need-to-know basis. There doesn't seem to be any expectation that the reader may have heard of say, Linnaeus before (i.e. had biology in high school).

The book claims to be answering in part the question of where dogs came from. Ray and Lorna Coppinger postulated a brilliant insight to the adaptation of wolves into dogs a few years ago, in their book, Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution. Page draws upon the Coppingers' material for his book (and others' - a bibliography would have been useful).

I enjoyed Page's description of his own dogs, and his exposition of dogs through the ages. Then I hit the wall at his chapter on purebred dogs, "Good Breeding". Page makes a specious connection between arranged marriages in Victorian English aristocracy and a new emphasis on dog breeds and breeding. Right.

The book is strong on ancient dogs, but weak on how the dogs that live with us came to be who they are. For example, I live with a standard poodle. Sure, the transformation from wolf to village cur was the biggest step, but the transformation from cur to poodle is an interesting story too.

For example, another big insight I found in the Coppinger book was about how the instinctive skills of modern breeds such as herding, pointing, and retrieving are parts of the predation chain of behaviors, but that each skill is missing an element that a predator would use (such as chasing but not attacking the sheep).

If Page chooses not to train his dogs beyond house manners, that's his choice. But to watch a dog do the work that it was bred to do, to watch the dog light up from the inside in a way that has nothing to do with pleasing the human but all about being in its own groove, is an amazing thing. Page dwells only on the negative of dog breeds. Yes, purebred dogs have issues, but where humans and not nature decide who survives, these issues will always be with us.

Meanwhile, Page refers to his own mutts as "crossbred", and seems to deliberately obscure the fact that while many mixed breeds may be a cross between two known breeds, or one breed and a mix, there still exist many, many dogs that have no purebred ancestors at all. He hints that his two "rez" dogs may be of this type. The discussion would have been more constructive if he had defined his terms better and differentiated between these two or three types of non-purebreds.

Page concludes the chapter with a very annoying speculation on breeds of the future, without using the evidence in front of us. The breeds of the future will not be Frisbee dogs, they will be cute little lap dogs like the puggles and schnoodles and Daisy Dogs that are proliferating. The shelters may be full of Labradoodles, but the cute little dogs get adopted very quickly.

If you want to learn about different species of canids in the past and present, this work is derivative but satisfactory.

Full of interesting facts and dog behavior insights -- and it's entertaining! Mocks the excessively scholarly a little, which is always fun. If you love dogs, or simply want to understand them better, this is a great book.

I really love this book. This book and Wolf In The Parlor are the best dog books I have ever read. Full of information, joy and laughter - the same reasons I love dogs.

I've written a full review of this book on Goodreads. Here, I'll just reiterate that this is a very interesting book not only about the domestic dog, but various wild canids, including wolves, coyotes, and jackals. Page has researched the evolution and cognition of dogs, basing his conclusions on solid research. He writes in an easy style, not overwhelming the reader with his erudition, although he certainly has that.

One thing he mentions that I found interesting is that coyotes team up with badgers so that the badger burrows into a prey's nest and flushes it out. Then the coyote kills the prey as it emerges from hiding, and shares the food with the badger. I have also read of jackals and cheetahs cooperatively hnting the same way. I know of no other cross-species co-opration in the wild. It seems to me that this is pertinent to dog-human cooperation in hunting--and otheer activities. Do canines carry a gene that allows them to team up with other species?

Nice easy read. A good introduction into the origins of dogs. If one wants to better understand the domestication of dogs, read an in depth, well researched and footnoted text. This isn't it. If you want to dip your toe into this topic, and begin to get excited about what you read, this book will do it.

If the first book I picked up was an academic text, I'd gone screaming down the hall, and relegated it to the role of doorstop. Now I'm interested in learning more, because of this book.

The book was excellent - exactly as described at Amazon.

Not heavy on scientific jargon, but clear in explaining how Dogs conneect to the natural Order.