How Dogs Think : Understanding the Canine Mind

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Summary: educational and insightful
Review: I have just heard an hour-long interview with the author by ethologist Scott Shalloway, Ph.D. Dr. Stanley Coren gave readily understood and illuminating answers to queries about canine pack and individual behavior. His discussions pertain to both canine-human interactions and canine-canine situations. I highly recommend that all who have an interest in dogs or share their lives with dogs purchase and peruse this informative and instructive volume. My canine companions concur.

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Summary: Thinking About Dogs Thinking Like Dogs Think
Review: In titling his book _How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind_ (The Free Press), Stanley Coren has already answered the big question. Dogs do think, or at least Coren thinks they think, and so do most of us who love and keep dogs. They don't think like humans all the time, but Coren, a professor of psychology, shows that they can often be tested like humans are tested (especially the young humans), and they are certainly doing some sort of thinking. They are not, any more than we are, automata made of biochemicals. In coming down on this point, Coren is entering a longstanding philosophical dispute, with the first shot fired by the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes. While Plato had thought of the dog as a "lover of learning," Descartes refused to grant that dogs had any sort of intelligence. His refusal was an outgrowth of the strict religious doctrines of the time; anything that had consciousness had to have a soul, and those with souls could get to heaven, and Descartes and the Catholic Church found it unacceptable that dogs might get to heaven. (In the possibly unlikely event that I will wind up in that vicinity someday, and find no dogs, you can count on me to start an intense letter-writing campaign to have the management change its position on the issue.) To Descartes, dogs were no more thinkers than the clockwork dolls that were in fashion at the time; dogs were but clockwork, too, but their works were flesh and bone. And they could be taken apart like clocks; distressingly, Descartes and many others did experiments on helpless and unanaesthetized dogs, and didn't have to worry that the poor creatures actually felt anything more than a clock did.

That was the view for two centuries, and though it might be a minority view now, it is still held by some philosophers. Dog lovers will never accept such reasoning, of course, and Coren tells about experiments that help clear up the issue in a practical sphere. It has been shown that dogs who have to have surgery recover from the surgery better if they have pain management afterwards; they start eating and drinking sooner than those whose vets have skimped on the postoperative analgesics. Coren's book gives lots of experimental data, starting with the basics of senses, showing that dogs count less on vision and more on smell than we do, and exactly how well they can smell and see. It is no surprise that dogs can hear more frequencies than we can, but puppies have a sensory input unlike any of our own. Their noses have special infrared sensors, and they use them to find that reliable heat source, mother, during the time when they cannot see her. As they grow up, their noses lose this capacity.

There are many wonderful examples of testing being done on dogs that is similar to that being done on infants, tests that show comparable thinking to human two years olds. Coren considers the stories about how dogs are supposed to have some sort of ESP ability, and finds the stories just that, without scientific replicablility. In the final chapter, he gives the answer to the question of whether dogs really have conscious and rational minds, and though he has not in all the previous chapters answered it directly, his affirmation will come as no surprise. Dogs can remember objects, and do primitive counting, and remember sequences. They have an ability to empathize and to predict how other creatures will act. Despite previous studies that have shown the contrary, they can watch what another dog (or human) does and learn from it. They have a sense of fun. They can deliberately trick others. Coren obviously loves dogs, and loves his dogs, of whom he tells many anecdotes, but he has been careful to avoid "the scientific sin of anthropomorphism." When he tells you, say, that dogs have an ability to know what humans are thinking, it isn't just a besotted dog-lover talking, but one who can produce the research that demonstrates the truth of the proposition. He has performed a real service for the humans who will read his book and come away with new reasons to appreciate their dogs, and in clearly showing how dogs can think, he has paid a lasting compliment to our canine friends.


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Summary: Analysis of dog interpretations of their world
Review: It's been said dogs personify all virtues of humans without vices, and many a book has been written on the topic of canine attributes; but none come so close to analyzing the canine thought process as Stanley Coren's How Dogs Think: Understanding The Canine Mind, written by a dog psychologist who is one of the modern discoverers of dog psychology. Dr. Coren provides entertaining and observational works to back scholarly analysis of dog interpretations of their world: any pet owner will find his analysis astute and entertaining as well.


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Summary: So much stuff you don't know about your dog!
Review: This book is amazing. Stanley Coren has deep love for dogs and thorough knowledge of them. While reading this book I was running from person to person calling out "Did you know that ...". I have read two other of his books and I love them all. I also love his TV show "Good Dog".
When talking about dogs I start all my sentences with "Stanley says ..." If you want to know more about your best friend, Stanley's books are where you will learn it.