In Defence of Dogs by John Bradshaw

I’ve always wondered whenever a new scientific study crops up in the news about dogs whether the scientists involved just spend their working days just playing with dogs. Then I rethink my life choices.

The conclusion after reading In Defence of Dogs by John Bradshaw, is yes the scientists who conduct such studies entitled “Can dogs read human emotions?” do spend their waking hours with man’s (or woman’s) best friend. In Chapter Seven alone Bradshaw describes at least twenty separate case studies, a couple including litters of puppies.

While the scientists have to remain objective watching collies, springers and spaniels work out contraptions with levers and pullies and quantifying how tug-of-war games occur, my brain would explode with the urge to cuddle them all. Then I conclude that my life is better spent watching funny dog videos and walking my Labrador.

In Defence of Dogs succeeds in what it aims to do: dispel the myths surrounding the origins of our favourite companions and dismiss harmful training methods which are grounded in those myths.

The domestic dog is not…not, Bradshaw repeats, the ancestor of the modern day wolf. This assumption has led to the prevalent theory of the “top dog” and that your pet dog seeks to take control of your household. The training principles that follow this premise can cause anxiety and hinder Bradshaw’s own hypothesis, that your dog sees you, its owner, as its family.

There were parts of the book which had me nodding in heavy agreement. In particular, the sentence that dogs are “expected to be simultaneously better behaved than the average human child and as self-reliant as an adult”. The idea of punishment as a method of training is done away with as well as my own personal favourite, “shock-collars”.

The letter I have included at the beginning of this review mentions “devices on the market that can be used to silence a dog.”  I acquired this letter from a previous job at a newspaper. It is a Letter to the Editor from one reader who did not want to have their name published in the paper. As a consequence his vent about his neighbour’s “pampered brutes” could not be published. Instead it has served as a suitable bookmark for this book.

On page 118 Bradshaw refers to one such device arguing that it will result in aggressive behaviour which could lead to euthanasia. The noisy neighbour’s dog is suffering from ‘separation anxiety’, a condition which is explained in the case of Bruno, an emotionally dependent Labrador on page 164.

As a dog lover I was promised I would love this book and I do, mainly because it allows me to have an informed opinion when defending the honour of my pampered brute and it is written by a scientist who I can tell was fighting the urge to play with his furry workmates.