Dog Books
All this talk of animals have reminded me of my collection of dog books.
Recommended:
Best "all-breed" book I've found: Dogs: Portraits of over 400 Pedigrees, by Bruce Fogle.
Fogle doesn't stick to the increasingly arbitrary classifications of breeds that are used in dog shows and kennel clubs: he uses less arbitrary groups that have relevance to history. The first chapters are "primitive dogs," "sight hounds," "scent hounds," and "Spitz-type dogs," because these are ancient "types," some representatives of which have not changed much to this day. After "terriers" and "gun dogs," you come to "livestock dogs," including all the "Mastiff" types. Some of these are also quite ancient--going back to the "drovers" that would protect herds from predators, as distinct from "shepherds" that would round up strays. Lovers of Rottweilers and Dobermans may not like finding their dogs in this chapter, but it makes sense to me.
Sometimes I could go through this book for hours--like the vain idiot who kept going through the "Peerage" in Jane Austen's Persuasion. Do I have even less excuse in that I am not personally in this book?
Best "background" book I've found on dogs: Illustrated Dogwatching, by Desmond Morris. Besides the beautiful pictures, Morris asks lots of questions we all want answers to, and gives good brief answers. There are about 50 questions and anwers in all. Some favourites: Do dogs show remorse? Why do dogs eat grass? (Morris doesn't know, but he rejects the usual explanation that there is something lacking in a dog's diet, and they need some salad or juice from same). How well can dogs see/hear? (How do these senses of theirs compare to ours?)
Of course, the winner: how exactly do dogs mate? One interesting wrinkle: most adult male dogs do not get laid. In the wild, only the alpha is permitted to--that's the main thing the males fight to the death over. Domestically, breeders of course control mating, and often resort to artificial insemination. I guess this is what Walt Disney was getting at in Lady and the Tramp: a dog pretty well has to take to the streets to have any chance of getting lucky. At the same time, very few human beings have actually seen the doggy deed, so Morris describes it.
Actual intercourse has three stages. The male gets no pleasure out of the third and last, but it is necessary for pregnancy to occur. So the female's body "locks in" the male. One can apparently actually see the male struggling to escape, while the female calmly hangs on. Sociological, anthropological, moral and political observations of the "Archie Bunker" variety are simply too obvious at this point.
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