In Defense of Dogs

A seemingly timely find in a charity shop late last year. I really wanted to like this work (as it had been ranked as a “top ten bestseller”), but I found it a marked letdown. The observations/conclusions are valid (nurture matters more than nature for dogs; they are not humans and don't expect them to be), but are expressed in a very laborious and non-succinct fashion. Bradshaw draws heavily on academic papers — which is no bad thing per se — but fails to simplify them. I may well appreciate this work in hindsight, use as a reference book and pull the occasional vignette from it, but there are undoubtedly more accessible texts on the behavioural traits of dogs available.

By John Bradshaw