The Hidden Life of Dogs. - book reviews

National Review, Sept 20, 1993 by Jeffrey Hart

This short book has been receiving reviews couched in superlatives, and it is a pleasure to report that they are fully deserved. The book is moving, beautifully written, and finely observed. Mrs. Thomas, an anthropologist and novelist, wondered about the thought processes and emotions of animals, and so she did something brilliantly sensible: she spent a great deal of time observing dogs.

She found that though one cannot intuit the full consciousness of an animal, nevertheless its behavior frequently indicates what it is thinking. Her writing is so good not only because of her sense of language but also because of the quality of her observations. Over the centuries some of the best science has come from simply looking at things. Mrs. Thomas found that dogs and cats have characteristic social arrangements and behave accordingly. Dogs establish a hierarchy. Cats arrange themselves around the top cat as if in a wheel pattern, but are otherwise not hierarchical. Cats and dogs have emotions. They experience both sexual feeling and love. Their primary field of reference is other dogs and cats, and their most powerful desire is for animal companionship. They are aware of their dependence upon humans, and have rituals of submission. When you approach a dog and his bone, he growls. He thinks that, like another dog, you want his slimy bone. The author followed a husky named Misha around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he roamed. Was he in pursuit of sex or food? No. He was interested in his territory as it fitted into the local dog hierarchy. He went to great efforts to urinate high on hydrants and poles. Why? Mrs. Thomas infers that he wanted the other dogs to know that there was a big guy around. Humans often have their own ways of doing that. A splendid book.