Dogs : A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution

Rating:
Summary: they aren't only dogs
Review: Let's see now--a dozen dogs eating their heads off so that you can run them in sled races for sport is mutualistic while one pet dog eating its head off in your home is parasitism. A shepherd culling all non-white puppies or a sportsman breeding sled dogs to be faster and faster is beneficial, but the AKC doing the same kind of selection is evil. If you like this kind of logic, you will love this book. I am always amused by the sanctimony of the "working dog" enthusiasts who fail to see that inbreeding is inbreeding, whether for working behavior or looks. Anybody who thinks that the working dog people aren't just as fanatical as the AKC is invited to surf puppy-for-sale websites where we see the same emphasis on pedigree that we see among the AKC purists. The only difference is that one group is selecting for behavioral characteristics and the other for aesthetic ones. You will note that although the authors condemn inbreeding, it appears that most of the dogs they have owned belong to a breed, as we hear about Border Collies, Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, Alaskan Huskies, Marammano-Abruzzese, etc. Indeed, they consider themselves to be quite daring in having crossed a couple of exotic herding breeds. So, if mongrels are so great, why aren't they talking about their black-and-white dogs, or their shepherd mixes?
Speaking of behavior, the discussion of the genetics of behavior in this book is nearly incomprehensible, and I'm still not sure what the point was. That behavior has a genetic component cannot be denied. Their examples of why certain breeds aren't good for particular jobs continually confuse physical limitations with behavioral ones. Thus, a Newfoundland likes water because it is big, never mind that water spaniels and border collies are about the same size and guess which one is most likely to go jump in the lake? Their view of behavior is quite mechanistic, relying on a very simplistic idea that underlying physical characteristics determine behavior, e.g. a Newfie is more comfortable in the water therefore is more likely to go in. However, the most completely discussed model of behavior in the book, the predatory motor pattern, has no inherent physical component, and presumably physical limitations have not played a part in selecting the behaviors derived from it.
This is not to say that there aren't a few good things about the book. The untestable hypothesis that dogs evolved as commensals isn't a bad one, although I'd be surprised to learn that anyone took the suckling of wolves hypothesis very seriously to begin with. They were also right on in poking a hole in the hot-air balloon sent up by the mtDNA biologists who wanted to get a paper in Science by inflating their data. And I completely agree with them about the evils of inbreeding--I just think it applies to working dogs as well as pets.
Overall, I think the main weakness of this book is that it doesn't consider the human component of the equation at all. This is no doubt an attempt to counteract the many sentimental and sometimes silly books that have been written about dogs, but they miss the point on a couple of occasions because they don't consider the interaction between dogs and people. For example, they didn't like the "mean" dogs in the Tijuana dump, whose meaness they attribute to interbreeding with the local fighting pet dogs. I've spent time in Mexico where I saw a grandmother kick a 4-week old puppy across a yard and a starving mongrel whose mouth had been tied shut, to mention only a couple of the more egregious cases of cruelty. This contrasts with many other countries I've visited in which dogs are treated with the same benign neglect as the dogs of Pemba. It seems to me that the human perception of "meanness" might have something to do with the different interactions between humans and dogs in these cultures.
Several other reviewers mentioned the last sentence of the book--"they are only dogs". But the fact is a dog ISN'T just a dog in our society and we don't treat them like livestock (even the authors admit to letting Jane into the house when she got old--did they do the same for their old ewes? Have they ever eaten any of their dogs?). In its way, this book, with its idealization of dogs as workers and demonization of dogs as pets, serves as a perfect example of the bias and emotional baggage most of us bring to our relationships with dogs. And for the record, the feelings I have for my black-and-white mongrel are nothing like those I felt for the tapeworms I got last year.

Rating:
Summary: Good in its main parts
Review: The Coppingers in "Dogs" try to say a few different things. The main topics are how wolves became selected as dogs, what this implies for their behavior and training, and the ethics of pure-breeding and using working dogs as pets. In these core topics, this book is generally well argued and supported in the main, but suffers from hiccups of poor reasoning. In one example, when arguing why bigger dogs are better for the transhumance, the authors state "to cover the distance with half the steps means a longer lasting dog." Well, the bigger dog also takes heavier steps and big dogs are notorious for structural problems. However, these hiccups are minor distractions.

The first core topic that dogs evolved first as scavengers of human waste dumps is interesting. While still largely a speculative hypothesis, this idea is shown fairly well in the book to be more reasonable than the idea that humans got a hold of enough wolves to domesticate them by selecting the tamest ones and tossing the others. This has implications for training in that essentially sedentary dogs foraging at a dump are not going to have wolf behaviors, particularly the widely assumed pack hierarchy.

Another major topic is the discussion on why working dogs, with strongly ingrained motor patterns of behavior, are not going to be well suited for living in a house - unless you like being herded by your border collie. This too is well done and promoting the option of a more "generic" dog as a better household companion will do much good. There is also a section on how assistance dogs suffer by being bred and developed in manners inconstant with what makes for a good working dog. While this has been criticized as an argument against assistance dogs, a careful reading will show that it is a valid critique of how the system can be improved.

The Coppingers' critique of the profound wrong that is breeding for show will upset the most people. But it is also the best and most important argument in the book. And no, breeding for work, for behavior, which doesn't involve closing a stud book, is not just as bad or the same thing as breeding for appearance from a closed stud book.

Throughout the book, the Coppingers also try to discuss what canine evolution implies for Darwinian theories of evolution, but do so in a confused manner by misunderstanding gradualism in the modern sense as being slow, constant changes in morphology (they also use the word "saltation" in a broad and confused way) rather than the actual meaning of continuous, though possibly quite fast, change at the genetic level. They themselves argue that canids have not changed much genetically and that their diversity of form is due to developmental reasons with the needed genetic variation provided by hybridization within the species. Fortunately, these discussions are not central to enjoying the book.

The Coppingers write with a bit of wit, which I enjoyed. But most importantly, this book is unique to my knowledge in trying to be rational, rather than sentimentally anthropomorphic, towards dogs. As such should be read by anyone with an interest in them and their true well-being.

Rating:
Summary: Good in its main parts
Review: The Coppingers in "Dogs" try to say a few different things. The main topics are how wolves became selected as dogs, what this implies for their behavior and training, and the ethics of pure-breeding and using working dogs as pets. In these core topics, this book is generally well argued and supported in the main, but suffers from hiccups of poor reasoning. In one example, when arguing why bigger dogs are better for the transhumance, the authors state "to cover the distance with half the steps means a longer lasting dog." Well, the bigger dog also takes heavier steps and big dogs are notorious for structural problems. However, these hiccups are minor distractions.

The first core topic that dogs evolved first as scavengers of human waste dumps is interesting. While still largely a speculative hypothesis, this idea is shown fairly well in the book to be more reasonable than the idea that humans got a hold of enough wolves to domesticate them by selecting the tamest ones and tossing the others. This has implications for training in that essentially sedentary dogs foraging at a dump are not going to have wolf behaviors, particularly the widely assumed pack hierarchy.

Another major topic is the discussion on why working dogs, with strongly ingrained motor patterns of behavior, are not going to be well suited for living in a house - unless you like being herded by your border collie. This too is well done and promoting the option of a more "generic" dog as a better household companion will do much good. There is also a section on how assistance dogs suffer by being bred and developed in manners inconstant with what makes for a good working dog. While this has been criticized as an argument against assistance dogs, a careful reading will show that it is a valid critique of how the system can be improved.

The Coppingers' critique of the profound wrong that is breeding for show will upset the most people. But it is also the best and most important argument in the book. And no, breeding for work, for behavior, which doesn't involve closing a stud book, is not just as bad or the same thing as breeding for appearance from a closed stud book.

Throughout the book, the Coppingers also try to discuss what canine evolution implies for Darwinian theories of evolution, but do so in a confused manner by misunderstanding gradualism in the modern sense as being slow, constant changes in morphology (they also use the word "saltation" in a broad and confused way) rather than the actual meaning of continuous, though possibly quite fast, change at the genetic level. They themselves argue that canids have not changed much genetically and that their diversity of form is due to developmental reasons with the needed genetic variation provided by hybridization within the species. Fortunately, these discussions are not central to enjoying the book.

The Coppingers write with a bit of wit, which I enjoyed. But most importantly, this book is unique to my knowledge in trying to be rational, rather than sentimentally anthropomorphic, towards dogs. As such should be read by anyone with an interest in them and their true well-being.

Rating:
Summary: Opens the mind to Ethology
Review: This is a great book that has opened my mind to the study of Ethology! Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior. You don't have to be an Ethologist to like this book. If you have a dog, work in the veterinary field or are just interested in dogs you'll find this book hard to put down. It's full of facinating facts and information that will draw you in. It's well worth your time to pick up a copy and start reading it today.