WHY WE LOVE THE DOGS WE DO: How to Find the Dog That Matches Your Personality (Hardcover)

by Stanley Coren (Author) "It was a hot day..." (more)
Key Phrases: personality primer, other animal books, breed groupings, White House, New York, Cocker Spaniel (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"Why is it that some people form lasting and warm relationships with their dogs, while others get no joy at all from their pets?" Dr. Stanley Coren, author of The Intelligence of Dogs, asks this question in Why We Love the Dogs We Do: How to Find the Dog That Matches Your Personality. Coren sets out not only to answer this question--an extremely worthy one considering that 4 out of 10 dogs fail to last the first year with their adoptive owners--but to revolutionize the way people think about prospective pets.

Relying on his background in psychology and dog intelligence--as well as the input of several animal experts--Coren created seven new groups of dogs based on canine characteristics that "had the most influence on people's satisfaction and lifestyle": friendly, protective, independent, self-assured, consistent, steady, and clever. Coren then asks that you calculate your personality using a pared-down version of the Interpersonal Adjective Scales--a personality test that measures in terms of extroverted/introverted, trusting/controlling, dominant/no-so-dominant, and warm/cool. The findings of this test, when coupled with Coren's new canine classification system, pinpoint the dog/dogs perfect for your personality.

Sprinkled throughout Coren's fascinating scientific discussion are a multitude of entertaining tales--which serve to further illustrate Coren's findings--including Sigmund Freud and his well-suited chow chow, Jo-Fi, who attended Freud's therapy sessions; playwright Eugene O'Neill and his beloved dalmatian, Blemie, for whom O'Neill bought a four-poster bed; and novelist John Steinbeck's poodle, Charlie, who accompanied the Nobel Prize-winning novelist on his travels across the United States. Both informative and highly entertaining, Why We Love the Dogs We Do paves the way for a mutually beneficial owner/dog relationship.

From Publishers Weekly
Charles Darwin so loved his little West Highland white terrier, Coren reports, that he often wrote of his dog adventures around the house. Yet, the same man so loathed a big hound he had been given (he called it "graceless, noisy and drooling") that he ultimately had the dog shot. Dog expert Coren (What Do Dogs Know?) offers a scheme that describes why different types of people favor certain species of dogs. Entertaining the reader with historical anecdotes and odd facts, the author describes case after case of dogs who fitAor, disastrously, don't fitAan owner's temperament and lifestyle. Coren includes a conversation he had with Picasso about the many dogs the painter lived with, and reveals that Richard Nixon, who was greatly distrusted by the American public, liked dogs. Actor Jimmy Stewart was apparently as nice a man as the characters he played, and he, too, loved (and spoiled) dogs. Coren categorizes according to their basic temperaments some of the more than 400 breeds of dogs recognized by international kennel clubs. Golden retrievers and Labradors are warm and friendly, he explains, while dalmatians are independent and strong-willed. Coren supplies a personality inventory, "the interpersonal adjective scale," to enable readers to rate how well they are described by various adjectives that run the gamut from dominant to submissive, gregarious to cold, thus helping them to pick the appropriate dog for their personality. This is an engaging, edifying work, but the author's academic background does manifest in his prose from time to time. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (June 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684839016
• ISBN-13: 978-0684839011
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,798,039 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice anecdotes, but hardly unbiased science, June 5, 2002

By	Shelley Mckibbon (Halifax, NS) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Why We Love the Dogs We Do: How to Find the Dog That Matches Your Personality (Paperback)

I really did enjoy the little anecdotes in this book -- the ones about James Stewart and his dogs were especially sweet. It's worth browsing for some of those little gems, although frankly I don't think there's much here that hasn't been reported elsewhere. I can't answer for the structure of the "find your breed" quizzes, although I thought it weird that different breeds were recommended for men and women of the same personality "type." ...[I]t seems odd that no breed falls into two categories -- surely some are *both* "friendly" and "clever"?

Where Coren drops the ball and then trips over it is when he discusses people who dislike dogs, and people who like cats. ...I think it's worth taking a closer look at exactly what he does in these two chapters. Apparently, people who dislike dogs have no other redeeming features. It's interesting to see Harry Truman discussed solely in light of his failure to enjoy the company of dogs. Apparently, Napoleon grew up a dictator because he lacked the love of a good dog. This is superficially convincing, until you remember that Adolf Hitler was apparently capable of being fond of at least ONE dog in his misbegotten life. What Coren is doing here is playing to the prejudices of animal lovers, who sometimes believe we're superior to people who don't like animals. Specifically, though, it's to any inherent feelings of superiority experienced by dog lovers.

The chapter about cats and cat people is even worse -- and again, it's worse for an interesting reason. In his far superior book, *The Intelligence of Dogs,* Coren is at great pains to point out that "obedience intelligence" is only one kind of intelligence, that dogs bred for different purposes think in different ways, and just because a terrier is not as biddable as a goldenn retriever, it does not make the terrier "dumb."

Then he uses the word "dumb" to characterize cats -- repeatedly. It never occurs to Coren that an animal which is not a dog might legitimately behave in a way different from dogs. And it's obvious he doesn't know much about cats, because he mouths all the stereotypes (aloof, unfriendly, doesn't socialize with its humans) in a manner to make anyone who knows a well-socialized cat howl with laughter. ("You rarely see cats during the day." Sure, you rarely see mine, unless you happen to be near me and looking down -- they're almost always underfoot!)

Coren then quotes from a "study" he did of cat and dog owners. He doesn't reproduce his survey instrument, so there is no way of knowing whether it's reliable, but he uses it to characterize cat owners as cold, aloof, unloving people -- far inferior to the nice warm dog people! Then, just in case we haven't already lost all faith in his scientific impartiality, he proceeds to relate an anecdote from his past, in which a single, neurotic woman with obvious attachment issues is made to represent all cat people. (And yes, he says she is the quintessential cat person.) Now, if half of what he says about this poor woman is true, she was a mess -- but I know dog owners who treat their unfortunate pets in the very same ways. Turn them into picky eaters and then feed them an unbalanced diet of people food? Some dog owners do it all the time. Fail to socialize their pets and then make excuses when Fluffy bites someone? Again, plenty of dog owners do this. Let your pet run loose and then shrug when it comes to a tragic end, because "that's the natural way"? I've known several dog owners who did that, with a series of dogs. Coren's attempt to characterize these flaws as "typical" of cat people make it clear that he is unable to overcome his own dislike of cats, and either lacks the insight to realize it, or hopes to foist his agenda off on his readers.

Me, I like dogs. I like cats. And I enjoyed his earlier book. But after he's exposed his own unacknowledged prejudices to this extent, how am I supposed to believe his discussions of different breeds of dogs carry any less bias? If the only criteria he has for dismissing cats as pets is his own opinion (and he does, in fact, offer his unsupported opinion that owning a cat is just slightly better than coming home to an empty house), what if he doesn't care for a particular breed of dog? Will that influence the groupings he creates?

This is pop psychology of the most shallow, facile sort. Read this book for the anecdotess about Jimmy Stewart, but for heaven's sake don't hope for any insights into animals or people!

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Atrociously ill-meant and foolish, October 31, 2001

By	I. Westray (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Why We Love the Dogs We Do: How to Find the Dog That Matches Your Personality (Paperback)

This book might be okay if you hadn't read any other dog breed references, and if your primary interests were in a) celebrities and their dogs, and b) the psyche of the book's author. Okay, I take it back: if you haven't read any other breed references, this book will actually be counterproductive, now that I think of it...

Where to start?

First off, at least half of the text in this thing is taken up with the rich and famous and their preferred breeds. Um, who cares? Jimmy Stewart was a "warm" guy, so he liked Golden Retrievers. Hoop-de-doo. Wading through this junk takes up a lot of reading time.

Once you fight past your indifference to all the eagerly-related inside celebrity scoops, you realize Mr. Coren is attempting to use a personality inventory approach to dog selection. He has you take a little set of personality exams -- a quite rudimentary example of this sort of test, about on the level of an article in Cosmo or Women's Day -- and then use the results to choose a breed. As I said, the test is irritatingly incomplete. As another reviewer here has mentioned, the results you get are ridiculously biased against certain groups of dogs, too. It's impossible to score well for certain groups, and almost inevitable that you'll score well for others. A comparable test is included in Daniel Tortora's "The Right Dog for You," only that one's more well-rounded.

Did I mention the way the dogs are grouped? Other books -- "Paws to Consider" by Kilcommins and Wilson, for example -- use interesting systems to group dogs. "Paws" uses groups like Nine-to-Five dogs, or non-shedding dogs, as a counter to the AKC's "Working Breeds" and "Terriers." Why We Love... tries the same thing, but it's trying to group dog personalities in a really reductionistic way. Believe me, if you love a particular breed, you'll feel vaguely insulted at the way this book tries to stomp that breed's personality flat. The most thorough personality descriptions of the different breeds are probably in "The Right Dog for You," which uses 16-some personality traits for each dog. This book describes one. "Steady." "Warm." Gee, does that mean it's territorial? Dog-aggressive? What DOES it mean?

Finally, don't even get me started on this author's strangely compulsive revelations about his own personality. The cats chapter, which amounts to a really insulting, embarrassing tirade against cats AND their owners, is probably the worst example. I can honestly say I learned much more about the author's romantic life from the chapter than I learned about cats. He phrases a fair chunk of the chapter in anecdotes about a former girlfriend, whom he is plainly misquoting and insulting throughout. No, I'm not pulling your leg. This girlfriend supposedly tells him at one point that cats are good for older people because they won't care when their owners die. Does that sound plausible to you?

If what you want is excellent, carefully written, well-rounded descriptions of different breeds, my personal recommendation is "Paws to Consider" by Brian Kilcommins and Sarah Wilson. They get to a breed's essence without writing like a ponderous encyclopedia. If you're really into the personality test approach, you'd want a copy of "The Right Dog for You" by Daniel Tortora. The tests in that book are sort of half-put-together, but they'll actually help you think about dogs, which this title doesn't do.

If, on the other hand, you want to learn about this author's internal life and whether Zsa Zsa Gabor prefers Great Danes to Yorkies, well, here's your title. I wouldn't use it to choose a dog, though.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A definite must for the would-be dog owner & dog lover, September 30, 1999

By	Kim ([e-mail]) "icyp" (Honolulu, Hawaii) - See all my reviews

This book gives a good alternative insight into the perception of people and their dogs. Not only are the anecdotes from various famous people entertaining and enlightning, the book really gives a good picture of how humans build their relationships with others (not just limited to those of the same species!) I found the test very accurate in terms of what I was ACTUALLY looking for in a pet and learned not to be fooled by a pair of sad puppy eyes! For couples, this is important - just because you and your mate picked each other, doesn't mean you'd enjoy the same type of dog!