Rating: 
Summary: Startling? A Starling Mixed Bag
Review: My recommendation is to read this book with a highlighter in each hand -- one color for illogical personal conclusions, and the other for valid observations (often made by others). It is fun to read -- but a truly mixed bag full of potential pitfalls for the novice that accepts as proven truth the comments made by the authors. This book undertakes a topic of tremendous interest to almost every dog owner -- no matter what breed! It is written in a readable fashion while seeming to be based on the years of experience that the Coppingers have had. Thus, while I own Ray Coppinger's non-serious book on "fishing dogs," I was hoping that this book would be as insightful as "The Domestic Dog," edited by James Serpell (which includes a chapter by Ray Coppinger and Richard Schneider -- carefully edited I now suspect) or as informative as "Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals" edited by Grandin or even the small volume "A Concise Survey of Animal Behavior" by Honore and Klopfer. It isn't. The Coppingers have evidently spent years with dogs; they are often cited in work with livestock guard dogs and have a confessed love of sled dogs. Interesting topic - some real experience -- all that is lacking is an editor or someone to point out the serious lacks in logic that the Coppingers blythely sprinkle throughout this book. Because the authors knew a border collie ("with papers" p. 174) that they describe as a "superb sled dog," they make the leap that "any dog will do for any job if raised and trained properly" (p. 154). In fact, attempts to support this theory have failed miserably. A prime example that I am familiar with as a livestock producer and one that is within the Coppingers area of expertise was the attempt to use retrievers (Chesapeake?) as livestock guardians in western sheep flocks. That unsuccessful endeavor has been deleted from memory -- and the pages of this text. Instead, this text published in 2001 quotes 1985 initial observations about training and guard dogs and omits almost two more decades of real study on that topic -- some by the same source -- research which does not support the authors' premise. How many other topics in this book are as slanted in coverage? A readable, fun book which must be read much like any work of fiction -- it's up to the reader to pick out the eternal truths and to simply puzzle over the rest.
Rating: 
Summary: a wolf is not a dog, a dog is not a wolf
Review: Right on! I've never quite accepted the whole 'treat your dog like a wolf' theory of dog training. If you have ever worked with a submissive dog (both of mine are submissive) you will immediately find that growling, scruffing and rolling them over will get you no where but ankle deep in a puddle of urine. However, working directly with your dog and being social with your dog is the way to train them. Dogs have evolved and been transformed by us to work (and play) - the ultimate reward for many dogs is the act of work itself - a herding dog gets its kudos from chasing livestock, my dog gets hers from being with me and accompanying me everywhere - the motivation is social and no food or operant conditioning is needed. This book gives you a new appreciation of the dog as a species and as part of human culture - for they are ultimately a product of mankind and like us are brilliant and flawed, trapped in their instincts as much as we are in our presuppositions about the dog. My only negative feedback for the book is that the authors did not go very deeply into their central theory of dog evolution and some of the chapters on learning and comparisons of dog types (herders vs village dog vs sled dogs) were shallow - I would have enjoyed reading more! Regardless, this book will remove some of the sentimentality and restore the reality of the dog in your mind. I certainly appreciate my dog that much more for reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: A blunt scientific treatise
Review: Scientists use a cold and objective eye when they approach their subjects, and the Coppingers are scientists par excellence. Much of this book is difficult to read for a dog-lover. The authors strip away all the isn't-that-a-cute-puppy feelings and leave one wondering if any dog-human relationships, other than working dogs like sled-dogs and sheep-dogs, are justified. The authors carefully build a scientific and convincing case that dogs did not evolve from the oft-thought-of cave-man-tamed wolf pup, but rather that they evolved to fit the niche of village dump-scavenger. That's easy enough to accept. Then they take it one step further to conclude that modern junk yard dogs are happier and healthier (at least genetically) than a pampered family pet. Believe it? Here's the scientific argument: family pets are really worse than parasites-their relationship to people hurts the dog (in-bred purebreds that can not breath properly or even procreate naturally, are miserable and die young), and hurts the people (dogs spread disease, bite children, and take money and time more properly spent on children). Believe it now? Read the book and see if the authors can convince you. Most disturbing is the Coppinger's analysis of service dogs, which suffer only slightly less than house dogs in the scientific analysis. Service dogs, they conclude, have a relationship to humans defined as dulosis: slavery. The reasoning is that the dogs are "captured" into work their breeds are not evolved for, "mutilated" (altered) so they cannot reproduce randomly, and "forced" to work. Well, unlike house pets, at least the service dogs benefit their human partners! The Coppingers go on to suggest that we need to examine the way service dogs are trained and used in order to improve the dog's end of the equasion. So in the end, they give a more reasoned, less evocative analysis of service dogs than the emotionally loaded term "slavery" might suggest. I pray that militant animal welfare groups do not take the term "slavery" as a rallying cry to accost the thousands of responsible people helped by service dogs in a frightening and dangerously misguided attempt to free "enslaved" animals! At one point, the authors take Stanley Coren's "The Intelligence of Dogs" to task, partly because it is unfair to dogs of various breeds to be rated via standardized tests, but mostly because the press and public did not read it carefully and a whole new mythology of dog breeds was born. I sincerely hope the press and public will read this book more carefully-if for no other reason than for the sake of all the service dogs and their people. There is a lot of truth, bluntly stated, in "Dogs: a Startling New Understanding..." We need voices to kick our complacency in the butt and challenge our warm and fuzzy ideas. Here's hoping that people read this book thoughtfully and carefully, for the scientific treatise that it is.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing hypocrisy in a promising book
Review: The alarms went off on page one, when the authors state "within four decades, we had owned, named, and worked with on the order of three thousand dogs." In my profession as a veterinarian, we call such people 'collectors.' Collectors have no appreciation of the value of animal companionship. They view animals as replaceable commodities rather than the unique individuals they are. The authors believe that pet dogs are a waste of resources: "If we took the fifteen thousand square miles of prime farmland and turned it into national park, we could have the greatest wildlife sanctuary in the world. Imagine the number of wild things and wild habitat that are displaced by the necessity of growing dog food." This is how they think of animal companionship for the elderly:
"Old people living longer in a nursing home may perhaps be competing for their grandchildren's funds and their children's time. Spending time taking care of an aging parent past reproductive age at the expense of children at the beginning of theirs may not be to the species' biological benefit." And finally "...the modern household dog is bred to satisfy human psychological needs, with little or no consideration of the consequences for the dog. These dogs fill the court-jester model of pet ownership." This is value-laden, pseudoscience at it's worse.
Rating: 
Summary: A totally stupid book
Review: The alarms went off on page one, when the authors state "within four decades, we had owned, named, and worked with on the order of three thousand dogs." In my profession as a veterinarian, we call such people 'collectors.' Collectors have no appreciation of the value of animal companionship. They view animals as replaceable commodities rather than the unique individuals they are. The authors believe that pet dogs are a waste of resources: "If we took the fifteen thousand square miles of prime farmland and turned it into national park, we could have the greatest wildlife sanctuary in the world. Imagine the number of wild things and wild habitat that are displaced by the necessity of growing dog food." This is how they think of animal companionship for the elderly:
"Old people living longer in a nursing home may perhaps be competing for their grandchildren's funds and their children's time. Spending time taking care of an aging parent past reproductive age at the expense of children at the beginning of theirs may not be to the species' biological benefit." And finally "...the modern household dog is bred to satisfy human psychological needs, with little or no consideration of the consequences for the dog. These dogs fill the court-jester model of pet ownership." This is value-laden, pseudoscience at it's worse.
Rating: 
Summary: A jewel -- with a few flaws
Review: The authors are trained ethologists with a life-long interest in dogs. Their views are also shaped by visiting and studying dogs in many parts of the world. That's further enriched by their experience in training and working with many different types of dogs -- in particular, herding dogs and herd guard dogs, sled dogs, and village dogs. Ethology is a branch of biology that studies animal behavior. It emphasizes evolutionary principles in behavior, often identifying continuity and change in patterns from studying closely related species. It also emphasizes studying the behavior in the natural context or setting. (Comparative psychology, by contrast, had grown to primarily favor the laboratory method and setting -- until the revolution of ethology and Eckhard Hess's work shook it up.) This book is a work for the serious student of canine behavior but written in a style that's readable by anyone with an interest in a scientific approach to and understanding of dogs. It greatly expands (and makes far more readable) the material in the Coppinger & Schneider chapter in "The Domestic Dog", James Serpell (Ed.) published six years earlier, but it also extends it into other areas. Its most important thesis is that dogs probably derived from wolf-like animals which hung around mesolithic villages and were scavengers, quite similar to "village dogs" in many parts of the world. They were not wolves, captured as puppies and then tamed. Wolves do NOT ever become tame or trainable. I found their argument on these point to be extremely convincing. The serious student of dogs will also find their ethological observations and comparisons of dogs valuable. Despite its great worth and contribution, the book is not without some petty flaws. I'd have liked more discussion on how the sequence of actions, like beads on a string, of orient/ eye-stalk/ chase/ grab-bite/ kill-bite/ dissect/ consume becomes fragmented so that some elements disappear while others remain. And how the differences arise for different dog "types". As ethologists, they know that there are many different behavior sequences in a species of which the predatory game killing pattern is only one. What about various social behaviors? Play behavior? Reproductive behavior? Adult attitude toward puppies? I became frustrated at the authors' lapses in consideration for their readers in their word usage, "transhumance" being one example. They used it several times before it was ever defined. It means the shepherds or drovers making seasonal migrations with their flocks in the Mediterranean region. Either explain it sooner or, even better, use terms familiar to English speaking readers. (On a websearch for "transhumance," the first 30 hits were all French except one, translated into English, from a Swedish university. The authors' descriptions of genetic processes are neither models of exposition or of clarity. E.g., I think once a claim was made that a behavior cannot be genetically controlled because there are alleles at the same locus. (An allele is a gene's partner at the same locus on the companion chromosome.) In a single gene model, one can, for example, have a dominant or recessive gene as an allele. That makes it not genetic? The reader interested in genetics should not look to this book for understanding. Use a basic college biology text. Another example is discussing how experience "shapes" the developing neurological "wiring". But "shape" then becomes so often used as a noun, and such a big deal is made about it altering the shape of the brain, that I found myself writing in the margin, "Are they reintroducing phrenology??!!" (Phrenology was the pseudo-science popular in the early 1800s; it purported that the abilities, characters, and deficits of a person could be ascertained from the bumps and valleys on the skull since the skull would reflect the underlying volume of the brain.) Basic introductory tests in psychology will cover this relation between early experience and brain function far more clearly. The authors rile some sacred cows, possibly deliberately, perhaps to provoke discussion (and maybe controversy and publicity?). They take aim at restricting the gene pool in AKC registered breeds. This gradually develops more genetic abnormalities and health problems -- eyes, hips, skin conditions, etc. Also, they
suggest that AKC breed clubs, by presenting a picture of the ideal dog with little or no behavioral measures of excellence, inevitably tend to accentuate some characteristics more and more. This leads working dogs to lose their superior abilities in some areas and become unhealthy caricatures of their ancestors. The bulldog, with continual respiratory problems and unable to breed on its own, is given as an extreme example. This is a worthwhile topic to discuss, IMO. They also question whether people are dogs' best friends or are dogs being used as robots or slaves. While they raise some interesting questions in this area they give no answers. (I found myself wondering, would they include or exclude themselves -- and their history of dog ownership and use -- from such an indictment?) But also a worthwhile topic for discussion.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting book - worth a read
Review: The authors challenge the common theory that dogs are essentially domesticated wolves; they also challenge the theory that our dogs remain pack animals who respond well to 'alpha' type training methods ... The authors suggest that in the first place not all wolves exhibit pack behaviour and in any event, dogs are not domesticated wolves ... but a quite separate sub-species that evolved together with the appearance of early human settlements, which provided a new food source worthy of exploitation ... The authors also present their view on how dogs evolved into the various breeds we know today ' they explain why there are big and small breeds and why certain breeds perform certain functions better than others ' All in all, the book is a good read ... and may provide sufficient incentive to re-think training methods; especially if trying to establish an 'alpha' position with roll-overs, scruff shakes and making sure we go through doors first - isn't quite producing the results we were hoping for from our dog ... But if you are looking for a book that emphasises training methods then this is not the book ... this book will prove most interesting to those wishing to delve more into the dog from an evolutionary point of view.
Rating:
Summary: It's a dog's life
Review: The Coppinger's revelations: (1) dogs are not wolves (refer to other reviews for more); (2) dog behavior is based on pre-wired motor sequences; (3) breed differentiation is based on elevating or suppressing portions of the basic dog motor sequence; (4) there is a critical, early, period of training, after which even a young dog learns no new tricks. This book rattles the cages of some time-worn preconceptions about dogs and how they learn. Their arguments are persuasive. But they are more controversial in alleging that dogs have minor emotional responses and powers of inference. One of their objectives is to assure happier lives for dogs. The key is to know a breed's built-in motor sequences and triggers, and work with them, not against them. Their bias is clearly towards feral and working dogs -- one may deduce that they regard house pets as somber prisoners.
Rating: 
Summary: Fails to Acknowledge the Heart and Soul of the Dog
Review: The Coppingers close their book with what they consider to be "great advice": "Don't forget, they are only dogs." Those words sum up this book. Looking at the dog from a narrowly Darwinian perspective, the authors propose that the dog (and, apparently, we ourselves) are nothing but a bundle of biological needs which evolutionary forces are compelling us to fulfill. Dogs use us, we use them--and that's OK, the authors say, as long as this using is mutual (i.e., there's a semblance of "consent"). Of course, there's truth to this argument; dogs DO need us, and that has a lot to do with why they bond with us. But is that ALL there is to the relationship? The authors seem convinced that IS all. Only a thoroughgoing Darwinian evolutionist could buy this argument--and I don't, but not just because of wishful thinking. Not only do I wish there would be more to relationships in this life, but I have HOPE that because a Creator God put us on this earth, he's instilled people with a capacity for altruistic love and given us intrinsic (not just instrumental) value--and just maybe dogs, whose social interactions and emotions are in some ways like our own, are capable of some altruistic love, too. This book is full of moral and cultural relativism that condemns judgment ("No culture is more advanced that another; they're just different") yet at the same time, the authors lapse into some pretty strong moral prescriptions of their own about what they consider ethically binding in a dog-human relationship. Why should we care about any idea of ethics in a world that's driven by nothing more than the "selfish gene"? I love dogs and did learn some things about them from this book, but all in all, the book was disappointingly reductionistic.
Rating:
Summary: the most annoying dog book in the world, but useful
Review: The Coppingers couldn't have written anything that would have bothered me more! I read a chapter, steamed gently for a couple of days . . . then went back to read again. That said, I think this book is a must for any serious student of dog behavior. Even if you don't agree with some of the ideas thrown out here, they make sense once you get over being indignant about them. I suspect that in 10 years, we will have incorporated many of them into our world view of dogs! The Assistance Dog Chapter is particularly interesting. He makes the point I've though all along: if you want a good service dog, quit looking at purebreds exclusively and look for a young adult with the abilities you need -- you'll have a higher success rate. This book blows "The Secret Life of Dogs" out of the water. As bugged as I was by it, it makes a lot more sense than stalking a dog through the alleys of some city. To balance Coppinger, I'd suggest "Understanding 'Dog Mind' : Bonnie Bergin's Guide to Bringing Out the Best in Your Dog". Much more hospitable read and lots of good info! Coppingers, I am annoyed with you -- but I will listen to what you say, because it mostly hangs together. Sigh.
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