See Spot Read: Unleashing Your Dog: A Field Guide to Giving Your Canine Companion the Best Life Possible

Unleashing Your Dog: A Field Guide to Giving Your Canine Companion the Best Life Possible

By Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, New World Library, 2019

In an ultimately uplifting guide, professors and co-authors Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce open with a sobering reality: we expect dogs to live in a human-made world. The arrangement mostly benefits both species, however “Evidence from trainers, dog psychologists, and veterinarians clearly shows that far too many dogs are not getting what they need and suffer from varying degrees of stress . . . boredom, frustration, and anxiety.”

The authors introduce human caretakers to life from a dog’s perspective, helping readers become “fluent in dog.” Dogs’ highly-tuned senses of hearing and scent are easily overwhelmed in our human world, for example. It’s a surprisingly quick read packed with valuable insight into the inner workings of our best friends and real-world advice for letting them live their best possible lives.

Spot’s takeaway: this should be required reading for everyone who hopes to enjoy a trusting, humane, experience-rich relationship with their dog.