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Summary: What do dogs want?
Review: That is the question the author is trying to answer with 30 years of observation. Thomas makes it clear from the beginning that this is not a scientific study but simply observations that she has made over the many years of owning dogs. The majority of which are huskies, but there are a few pugs and even dingoes in the group.It is quite clear that hierarchy is what rules the group and that dogs simply want to be with, or part of, the group. This book is touching at times because the love of her animals is so evident and their deaths are so sad. I have to admit that her ability to let them run in the city was not acceptable to my sensibility but the book as a whole was very informative and interesting. Kelsana 9/24/01
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Summary: I hate it, hate it, hate it!
Review: I agree with every negative comment that has been made about this book. Does anyone know if there is a website somewhere debunking her phony science and attacking her irresponsiblity? She makes me so angry!
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Summary: Penetrating Look Into A Dog's Behavior
Review: Astutely observing the behavior of her dogs by letting them be dogs, not in the laboratory but in her own environment, Thomas takes a novel approach here which is captivating to read. Whether one can apply this approaoch to your own dog or not, Thomas provides us dog lovers with a truly wild romp with Misha and Bingo and others. So refreshing that she makes these dogs come out as the individual personallties they are, not as some scientific category under the experimental methodology. Classic to enjoy and be motivated to observe and rejoice in the individual traits and behavior of our own canines.
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Summary: well written, but hard to read
Review: While this book is well written I found it hard to read. I found it incredible that anyone would let a dog loose on the streets to "follow" it around and that she watched one of her dogs get raped. Her words not mine. I also noted that she mentioned problems with her neighbors due to the dogs. I am a dog lover and found some of this hard to swallow. I detest irresponsible dog ownership. She seemed to be so single focused on studying the dogs that common sense went out the window in the interest of "science" and one could argue there isn't much science involved in her methods.
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Summary: My favorite
Review: well it may help someone, if I say that I read his book some years ago and forgot the title and the author. When my dog was growing, I kept reffering his behavior to the bits and pieces which I remembered from this book. It took me almost 3 years to figure out which book was it and this is IT. Awsome!
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Summary: A painful work
Review: I am struck by the widely differing views of this book by other reviewers. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas reminds me of someone who goes through life with more feeling than thought. If you are of like mind, you will find her book charming. If, however, you bring any intelligence to your own existence, you may find this book interesting, but you will surely find Ms. Thomas, reprehensible. This book is a beautiful & touching account of incompetence & irresponsibility. The author may well be correct in her assumptions of dog behavior, but reading her 'road to discovery' is quite simply, painful. For those who argue that the book is not about how to raise a good pet, I totally agree. This book is about how to conduct life and assume responsibility for it. We can indeed learn from the author's failure.
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Summary: What do dogs want?
Review: What do dogs want? After 30 years of observing more than a dozen dogs who lived with her family, the author hopes to answer this question. She states that this book is not a scientific study, and it is not. Her observations are extraordinary, such as her tracking of the dog Misha roaming the streets of Cambridge at night to the discomfort of the citizens or her discovery of the construction of a secret den by a group of dogs, among other observations. But she crosses the line in her interpretation of the meaning of these observations. Try as she will to assure us of their supernatural powers of observation, she reports that the dogs get lost time and again, parking themselves on the stoops of citizens who will phone her to come get them. As with many anthropologists -- Fossey, Goodall, Schaller - she falls in love with her charges and loses her objectivity. The book is poetically written. Her empathy, a scientific minus, is a literary plus. Her description of days in the country serenely watching a leaf fall transports us to dogdom on a lazy afternoon. The freedom from responsibility is liberating. There are charming drawings by Jared Williams from photographs by Peter Schweitzer. What do dogs want? The author says they want each other. It is doubtful she has justified this conclusion in any way that doesn't project human consciousness on their actions. If she means that they have a will or design about the external world, she has shown us that, if not in a scientific, at least in a delightful way.
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Summary: Dog Heaven
Review: What a fabulous book--talk about some serious insight into the inner dog! I always wondered what she was up to...
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Summary: The animal truth
Review: Humans have always looked at dogs like a pet, and not as a creature with feelings and emotions. Ms.Thomas does an wonderful job, and yet keeps the story in a realistic form.When I first started reading it, I thought I would be assulted by "guesses" about the modern dog. Instead I embarked on a journey about how dogs love and want to be loved by a person. I never thought about how closly related a dog and a wolf really were until I read this book. I encourage young readers, as well as old, to read this book and prepare to see your furry friend in a new light.
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Summary: Best Non-Fiction I've Ever Read!
Review: Ms. Thomas has done, in this book, what no one to my knowledge has done before. Countless millions have been spent on the study of various animals in the wild, yet this woman for years studied (along with their wild cousins) an animal which most of us don't observe closely--domestic dogs--and wrote the most poignant account of "four-legged people" I've experienced in years. She plucks the heartstrings and jerks the reader to tears, without the slightest intention of doing so. Like a classic movie to be savored for generations, this book is the kind one wishes to read over and over again!
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