Man's best friend, domesticated since prehistoric times, a travelling
companion for explorers and artists, thinkers and walkers, equally happy
curled up by the fire and bounding through the great outdoors--dogs
matter to us because we love them. But is that all there is to the
canine's good-natured voracity and affectionate dependency?
Mark Alizart dispenses with the well-worn clichés concerning dogs and
their masters, seeing them not as submissive pets but rather as
unexpected life coaches, ready to teach us the elusive recipes for
contentment and joy. Dogs have faced their fate in life with a certain
detachment that is not easy to understand. Unlike other animals in a
similar situation, they have not become hardened, nor have they let
themselves die a little inside. On the contrary, they seem to have
softened. This book is devoted to understanding this miracle, the
miracle of the joy of dogs - to understanding it and, if at all
possible, to learning how it's done.
Weaving elegantly and eruditely between historical myth and pop-culture
anecdote, between the peculiar views of philosophers and the even more
bizarre findings of science, Alizart offers us a surprising new portrait
of the dog as thinker--a thinker who may perhaps know the true secret of
our humanity.
