Tuesday, October 1, 2013

What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs by Cat Warren

I just learned about an intriguing new book title, What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs by Cat Warren, from an article I read  NC State professor writes book about the science of working dogs by Andrea Weigl.

In her article, Andrea Weigl writes about Cat Warren's book and Cat Warren's work with Solo, her 9 year old German Sheperd dog, who Cat Warren trained to be a cadaver dog. The following is a quote from Weigl's article:
Warren, 57, of Durham, has been teaching women’s studies and science journalism at N.C. State since 1995. Warren admits it was a sentimental moment after a successful search with Solo three years ago that lead her to research the book. Regardless, her book offers a meaty, fascinating tour of not only what led humans to train dogs to sniff drugs, bombs and dead bodies, but also the science behind why dogs can be good at these tasks.
“It’s not a book about dogs,” Warren explained. “It’s a book about dogs, history, science and sociology.” 

I'm really excited about obtaining a copy of this book and reading it. I've always been amazed how dogs can be trained by humans to identify particular smells and the science behind a dog's ability to do so. 

I'm also curious as to how humans are able to teach dogs to work with us in identifying the particular smells we want them to find... What's a dog's motivation in helping us in our quest in finding a particular scent? I'm not sure if this question is covered in Cat Warren's book though.

Click on the above link to read the entire article Andrea Weigl has written. Also, there is an opportunity to win a copy of 'What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs' by Cat Warren. The details are as follows and were found in the lower, right margin of Andrea Weigl's article from the link above:
Win a copy of the book : Enter to win a copy of “What the Dog Knows,” by Cat Warren, by sending an email to aweigl@newsobserver.com by noon Friday with “book giveaway” in the subject line.
 Until, my next post, happy reading!
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2 comments:

  1. Captivated reader. Cat Warren here. I saw your great post and wanted to answer the question that's so important: What's a dog's motivation? It's pretty clear that dogs need a paycheck just like people. So you have to make the job more fun and more intriguing than anything else in their lives. Toys work great for many good working dogs. Solo loves to play tug, and will work for long periods under poor conditions with the promise that we will play if he finds what we're looking for.

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    1. Wow, thank you so much for the compliment! I also appreciate you posting a comment to my blog and answering my question about what motivates dogs to help us humans!

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