Publishers Weekly
★ 07/11/2022
Horowitz (Our Dogs, Ourselves), head of Barnard College’s Dog Cognition Lab, charts the first year of a puppy’s life in this splendid dog behavior explainer. Aiming to “keep a lens firmly on the puppy’s point of view,” Horowitz offers a week-by-week milestone breakdown that starts with puppies as just a “splodge of fur” whose hearts beat 220 beats a minute. By one week old, they’re “sweet potatoes with ears, feet, and a tail.” At week three they’re able to “sense” humans’ presence, and by week eight, pups’ personalities have begun to develop. Along the way, Horowitz describes how dogs and humans coevolved to meet each others’ needs (the animals, for instance, “show more attachment to the people who adopt them than the mother who birthed them”), ruminates on what one’s furry friend might be thinking about going outside, and whips up creative ways to socialize Quiddity, a pup she adopted and raised during the pandemic. Animal lovers will eat this up. Agent: Kristine Dahl, Curtis Brown. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Praise for The Year of the Puppy:
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022
"Horowitz’s goal is to think and write about dogs in a way that is distinct from usual pet-related fare about how to teach a puppy not to lunge at children and not to increase your household paper-towel budget. Instead, she aims to try to better understand a young dog, from Day One to day three hundred and sixty-five, as a being in transformation."
—Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker
"What Mr. Rogers was to children, Alexandra Horowitz is to dogs: a wise and patient observer who seeks to intimately know a creature who is fundamentally different from us adult humans. . . . Horowitz's writing is as simultaneously buoyant and precise as Quid's zest for catching tennis balls — over, and over, and over again. Her chapters, packed with close observations about canine cognition and behavior, are mini-mood lifters."
—NPR, Maureen Corrigan on Fresh Air
“Horowitz takes science writing to the next level in this stunning exploration of what the world looks like through the eyes of man’s best friend. It’s a blast to join her as she tracks a puppy’s development week by week for a year. Come for the heartwarming anecdotes about her pandemic pup Quiddity, stay for the constantly surprising takeaways.”
—Publishers Weekly, "Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of 2022"
"Equal parts science and doggy diary, this new charmer from the author of Inside of a Dog charts how our irresistible fur babies develop personality."
—People
"Horowitz (Our Dogs, Ourselves), head of Barnard College’s Dog Cognition Lab, charts the first year of a puppy’s life in this splendid dog behavior explainer. . . . Animal lovers will eat this up."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Keenly observed. . . . With her characteristic sharp eye for detail and vast knowledge of canine-related scientific research, the author expertly guides us through Quid’s critical early development. . . . This book provides a science-based, honest look at the ups and downs of raising a puppy. . . . A detailed, highly illuminating portrait of puppies and our relationships with them."
—Kirkus Reviews
"A fascinating beauty of a book that will add immensely to the world of dog research and will thrill dog owners."
—Library Journal
Library Journal
08/01/2022
Well-known animal behaviorist Horowitz (Dog Cognition Lab, Barnard Coll.; Our Dogs, Ourselves) felt that the world of dog research was largely missing a vital piece: the first year of a dog's life, its puppyhood. Since most owners first meet their dog when it is past infancy, they often miss the important events that are the basis of its personality and behavior. Accordingly, Horowitz and her family adopted another dog. In doing so, they went to a local dog farm and first chose the mother, who was among several being fostered there. They were allowed to observe the birth and the growth of the puppies at weekly intervals for eight weeks, after which they took one of the pups home to become another member of their family. This book is a personal and heartwarming retelling of these initial experiences and the observations made at home during the first year of the puppy's life. The result is a fascinating beauty of a book that will add immensely to the world of dog research and will thrill dog owners. VERDICT Recommended for all libraries, especially those serving dog lovers.—Steve Dixon
Kirkus Reviews
2022-07-09
The bestselling author of Being a Dog and Inside a Dog chronicles the cognitive development of her new puppy.
Horowitz, who runs the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, presents a keenly observed record of the development of Quid through the first year of his life while also exploring our complex relationship with our animal companions. With her characteristic sharp eye for detail and vast knowledge of canine-related scientific research, the author expertly guides us through Quid’s critical early development, from newborn pup to teenager. “The quick development of the dog…happens while their person is simply trying to both acclimate the dog and be acclimated to them,” she writes. “We get caught up in the housetraining, walk training, bite training, don’t-chew-everything training that is the typical contemporary approach to a dog’s first months of life with a new family. In focusing on training a dog to behave, though, we mostly miss the radical development of puppies into themselves—through the equivalent of infancy, childhood, young adolescence, and teenagerhood—until it’s already happened.” Both pet owners and animal enthusiasts will discover a wide variety of compelling information, whether the author is discussing the hidden meaning conveyed through the movement of a dog's ears, chronicling the process of artificially inseminating a wolf, or describing how dogs are trained to be rescue animals. One of the author’s primary points of emphasis is that dogs, just like humans, possess unique individual characteristics that make them stand out from one other. Unlike dog-training manuals, which often give unrealistic and/or obvious advice about canine behavior, this book provides a science-based, honest look at the ups and downs of raising a puppy. Significantly, the author reminds readers about the importance of treating your dog as an individual and not just a member of a specific breed. “Expect that your puppy will not be who you think,” writes Horowitz, wisely, “nor act as you hope.”
A detailed, highly illuminating portrait of puppies and our relationships with them.
