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auspex

Novel Tease

Random meanderings about the books I love—or don't. 

Interspersed with observations about my hobbies: Beer & Wine, Bridge, Bikes and Bow-wows.

Currently reading

The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Pontypool Changes Everything
Tony Burgess
The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter than You Think - Brian Hare, Vanessa Woods For all that I love dogs and intend to always have at least one (and preferably more) dogs, I don't actually read many books about dogs and their behaviour. I think it comes down to [b:The Intelligence of Dogs|396926|The Intelligence of Dogs A Guide to the Thoughts, Emotions, and Inner Lives of Our Canine Companions|Stanley Coren|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347435296s/396926.jpg|517510], [b:Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution|715516|Dogs A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution|Raymond Coppinger|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348327637s/715516.jpg|701768], [b:Inside of a Dog|6332526|Inside of a Dog What Dogs See, Smell, and Know|Alexandra Horowitz|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347980799s/6332526.jpg|6518250], and now this.

Not terribly surprisingly, Hare references the latter two (quite frequently) and Coren gives this book a glowing review on the cover (I'm a little surprised that he didn't get referenced in the text - though he might be in the bibliography, but [b:The Intelligence of Dogs|396926|The Intelligence of Dogs A Guide to the Thoughts, Emotions, and Inner Lives of Our Canine Companions|Stanley Coren|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347435296s/396926.jpg|517510] is pretty much a pop-science book, short on the real science.

I was a bit dismissive of this book when I first heard of it, because it sounded like he was covering a lot of the stuff from Coppinger, but I got over it because, first, he clearly respects Coppinger, and second because he doesn't come across as a know-it-all scientist at all. One of the things I really loved was that after first telling his faculty advisor (talking about the amazing things that infant humans could do) "I think my dog can do that", and going ahead to show that his dog could do that, proceeded to give us all the dead-end research he did: "so we hypothesized that it was this, and that was wrong..."

The only down side is that, despite the title ... my current dog is not smarter than I think. She's unfortunately been damaged beyond repair by a previous owner. On the positive side, I'm pretty sure the cat isn't as smart as he thinks!