In Defence of Dogs

"This book isn’t really about nutrition, it’s about the evolution of dogs and their relationship with humans. He begins by telling a lovely story about how when he was growing up, his grandfather had a dog who used to have a routine. Every day it used to walk into town and see people. They used to stop the traffic so the dog could cross the road, and later it would come home. And it’s true, when I was growing up, our dog was off the lead all the time. It used to have its own routine and used to go and visit people. There was much greater freedom for dogs. That’s his starting point: He suddenly realized that nowadays dogs always have to be on the lead and there are all these rather strict rules about them. This got him interested in the relationship between dogs and humans. It’s a fantastic book and really explores all sorts of things, like how dogs became domesticated and what happens within wolf packs, which is what everybody looks at because dogs and wolves are so closely connected. In particular, in training, you’ll hear a lot of people say, “Oh the dog views the family as a pack and you need to be the alpha male, you need to dominate your dog. You mustn’t let it get on the furniture, you mustn’t let it go ahead of you through the door.” In fact all that research was based on wolves that were being observed in zoos and wildlife parks. And of course those packs were not actually the same sort of pack that would exist in the wild. They were a made-up pack. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter It’s a bit like taking a human being from a slum in the East End and putting him with someone from Knightsbridge and giving them two children from somewhere else. They wouldn’t act like a real human family. Once they started researching what wolves did in the wild, they discovered that the whole alpha male and alpha female thing is a complete misnomer. You’ve got a Mum and Dad and the next generation down are the previous year’s cubs who stay with the pack to help bring up the third generation. It’s a pass-through system. Then the new cubs stay on, and the teenagers go off and form their own packs and the wolves, far from fighting each other, are all very cooperative, because it’s all about survival. There is a very little fighting between wolves. It’s a really, really interesting book."