Alexandra Horowitz | Inside of a Dog

Inside of a Dog
What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

By Alexander Horowitz
353 pp. Scribner. $27

It seems to me, until dogs open their mouths and communicate with humans in a language we can understand, much of what is written about the dog's mind is theoretical. Can we ever really know what a dog is thinking or why they do the things they do? That being said I still enjoy reading books about dog behavior and cognition and Alexandra Horowitz's book is interesting because she asks the reader to step away from the all too common practice of anthropomorphizing dogs, and instead, experience the world as a dog might by understanding their umwelt, or "self-world." In order to do this we have to recognize that dog's have vastly different sensory organs (eyes, nose, ears) than our own. These differences mean dogs perceive, and therefore experience, the world in a very different way. 

Horowitz attempts to weave hard physical science into her theories of canine cognition and it makes for some interesting reading, though in some instances she doesn't seem to successfully bridge the two. I found the chapter "Dog-Eyed," in which she lays out the physical differences between the human and canine eye, particularly interesting. Horowitz writes,

In all mammalian eyes, rods and cones make electrical activity out of light waves by means of a change in the pigment in the cells. The change takes time--a very small amount of time. But in that time, a cell processing light from the world cannot receive more light to process. The rate at which the cells do this leads to what is called the "flicker-fusion" rate: the number of snapshots of the world that the eyes take in every second (130).

If you're a film nerd like me you can appreciate why it's interesting then that dogs have a higher flicker-fusion rates than humans. The principle of "moving pictures" is based on the flicker-fusion rate of the human eye. In film, images have to be projected at a slightly higher rate than the flicker-fusion rate of the human eye in order for us to perceive it as a moving image and not a static one. Dog's having a higher flicker-fusion rate than humans means that not only do they see individual frames when they look at the television, they also see the dark space between the frames. According to Horowitz, "one could say that dogs see the world faster than we do, but what they really do is see just a bit more world in every second (131). This accounts for why some dogs are so good at catching balls; their higher flicker-fusion rate allows them to see the ball's "new location a fraction of a second before we do" (132).

For the most part I found the information on dog physiology in the book more interesting than what Horowitz has to say about canine cognition. Many of her observations seem superficial, things most dog owners already know, and she doesn't really provide any new insights to the field (not that I'm an expert by any means...just a well-read dog lover). I do enjoy reading about people's personal experiences with dogs and appreciate the anecdotes she includes about her dog Pumpernickel. For the most part the book may be worthwhile for those who don't know much about dogs but I'm not sure if the few interesting tidbits of information I was able to glean from it were worth the time it took me to get through all 353 pages.