Inside of a Dog

Alexandra Horowitz gives us a detailed look at what dogs see, smell, and know in her book Inside of a Dog.  Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, keeps her examination of dogs tied to what we can really know --- scientifically.  Don’t worry, though, this is no purely dispassionate work, she keeps her own love of dogs front and center throughout the book.  

Horowitz takes us on a sense by sense tour of the umwelt (to quote the dictionary for those unfamiliar with this word: the world as it is experienced by a particular organism) of a dog. She then moves on to consider the mind of a dog, the social world of a dog, and tries to paint a picture of what the experience of just being a dog is like.  She attempts through all of this to only reference things that have resulted from studies of dogs, or where there have been no specific dog studies, studies of other animals.

The book is quite interesting and I would recommend it for anyone with a love of dogs or an interest in considering what the experience of being another creature might be like.