Dog's Best Friend: Annals of the Dog-Human Relationship Hardcover - 1997

From the publisher

In Her Hugely Popular bestseller, The Hidden Life of Dogs, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas asks, What do dogs want? Answering for her canine friends, she says, They want each other. A keen observer of dog behavior, Thomas nonetheless got the answer wrong. They want the love of their human masters.In Dog's Best Friend, Mark Derr examines the history and current state of an inextricable bond that began twenty thousand years ago when nomadic humans and the scavenging wolves who followed their camps overcame their competitive predatory natures and adopted one another for good. Today, as we know, dogs of every shape and size occupy every corner of the globe. In the United States alone there are nearly 60 million dogs in 35 million households. As pets, they provide companionship, loyalty, and unstinting love. They serve as eyes for the blind and ears for the deaf, herd everything from sheep to geese, hunt animals, rescue victims of disasters, stop crime, and more. Delightfully rich in anecdote, wide-ranging from both the cultural and historical perspective, and hard-hitting with regard to many current issues, Dog's Best Friend is a fitting tribute to our special love affair with Canis familiaris.