Alexandra Horowitz > Quotes

“Few celebrate a dog who jumps at people as they approach--but start with the premise that it is we who keep ourselves (and our faces) unbearably far away, and we can come to a mutual understanding.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“By standard intelligence texts, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast that they have succeeded magnificently. They have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool. Dogs have learned this--and they see us as fine general-purpose tools, too: useful for protection, acquiring food, providing companionship. We solve the puzzles of closed doors and empty water dishes. In the folk psychology of dogs, we humans are brilliant enough to extract hopelessly tangled leashes from around trees; we can conjure up an endless bounty of foodstuffs and things to chew. How savvy we are in dogs' eyes! It's a clever strategy to turn to us after all. The question of the cognitive abilities of dogs is thereby transformed; dogs are terrific at using humans to solve problems, but not as good at solving problems when we're not around.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“Part of what restricts us seeing things is that we have an expectation about what we will see, and we are actually perceptually restricted by that expectation. In a sense, expectation is the lost cousin of attention: both serve to reduce what we need to process of the world "out there". Attention is the more charismatic member, packaged and sold more effectively, but expectation is also a crucial part of what we see. Together they allow us to be functional, reducing the sensory chaos of the world into unbothersome and understandable units.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes

“Part of seeing what is on an ordinary block is seeing that everything visible has a history. It arrived at the spot where you found it at some time, was crafted or whittled or forged at some time, filled a certain role or existed for a particular function. It was touched by someone (or no one), and touches someone (or no one) now.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: A Walker's Guide to the Art of Observation

“When it comes to describing our potential physical and cognitive capacities, we are individuals first, and members of the human race second.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“A walk is exploring surfaces and textures with finger, toe, and—yuck—tongue; standing still and seeing who or what comes by; trying out different forms of locomotion (among them running, marching, high-kicking, galloping, scooting, projectile falling, spinning, and noisy shuffling). It is archeology: exploring the bit of discarded candy wrapper; collecting a fistful of pebbles and a twig and a torn corner of a paperback; swishing dirt back and forth along the ground. It is stopping to admire the murmuring of the breeze in the trees; locating the source of the bird’s song; pointing. Pointing!— using the arm to extend one’s fallen gaze so someone else can see what you’ve seen. It is a time of sharing. On our block,”
― Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: A Walker's Guide to the Art of Observation

“For me, walking has become less physical transit than mental transportation. It is engaging. I have become, I fear, a difficult walking companion, liable to slow down and point at things. I can turn this off, but I love to have it on: a sense of wonder that I, and we all, have a predisposition to but have forgotten to enjoy.”
― Alexandra Horowitz

“The other part of seeing what is on the block is appreciating how limited our own view is. We are limited by our sensory abilities, by our species membership, by our narrow attention—at least the last of which can be overcome.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: A Walker's Guide to the Art of Observation

“Many people’s expectations, at least in this country, are fairly similar: be friendly, loyal, pettable; find me charming and lovable—but know that I am in charge; do not pee in the house; do not jump on guests; do not chew my dress shoes; do not get into the trash. Somehow, word hasn’t gotten to the dogs.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“in training a dog you must reward only those behaviors you desire the dog to repeat endlessly.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“To the child, as to the artist, everything is relevant, little is unseen. The artist seems to retain something of the child's visual strategy: how to look at the world before knowing (or without thinking about) the name or function of everything that catches the eye.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes

“Do not sag with exhaustion. There is no mandate; only opportunity. Our culture fosters inattention; we are all creatures of that culture. But by making your way through this book—by merely picking it up, perhaps—you, reader, are in a new culture, one that values looking. The unbelievable strata of trifling, tremendous things to observe are there for the observing. Look!”
― Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: A Walker's Guide to the Art of Observation

“For any anthropomorphism we use to describe our dogs, we can ask two questions: One, is there a natural behavior this action might have evolved from? And two, what would that anthropomorphic claim amount to if we deconstructed it?”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“I am I because my little dog knows me. —GERTRUDE STEIN”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“Dogs smell time. The past is underfoot; the odors of yesterday have come to rest on the ground.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell

“If we want to understand the life of any animal, we need to know what things are meaningful to it. The first way to discover this is to determine what the animal can perceive: what it can see, hear, smell, or otherwise sense. Only objects that are perceived can have meaning to the animal; the rest are not even noticed, or all look the same. The”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“Dogs are losing their noses. Other research has supported the odd and disturbing result that companion dogs are not only not using their smelling abilities to their capacity; they are forgetting how to be sniffers. In a human-defined, visual world, it seems that it does not pay to notice all the smells around the house, to sort their way through the world by smell. Instead, the typical owned dog gets a mound of food in a bowl once or twice a day whether he sniffs it out or not. He may be discouraged from sniffing the sidewalk, the lamppost, and even other dogs' rear ends as his owner walks with him—out of the person's disinterest, press for time, or horror. We talk to the dog in words and point at him with hands, but rarely give him smells to learn and live by. The sad result has been that pet dogs are letting their noses go dormant.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell

“Over the hours that we are gone, our home begins to smell less of us. We could test this, I suggested, by bringing in a “fresh” smell of the owner. If the dog then assumes that the owner has just left, he will be surprised if the owner then returns.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell

“The air was already drunk with humidity when I stepped outside on that first morning.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes

“Wasser’s (conservation detection) dogs are young mixed-breeds from shelters because that's where dogs with excessive energy and borderline-obsessive personalities wind up. A dog with what he calls, gently, "fixation with the ball," a strong play drive, and high energy is that classically motivated dog that all programs love.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell

“We get distracted, have bad days, and grow sleepy; a working dog does, too. The dogs are being only human here.”
― Alexandra Horowitz

“Every dog that you name and bring home will also die.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“To be nudged by a dog’s nose is a pleasure unmatched.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“The complement of remembering so thoroughly can be the strange inability to forget anything at all.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“how we act defines who we are.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“There is no such thing as "fresh air" to a dog. Air is rich: an olfactory tangle that the dog's nose will diligently unknot.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell

“Even the objects in a room are not, in some sense, the same objects to another animal. A dog looking around a room does not think he is surrounded by human things; he sees dog things. What we think an object is for, or what it makes us think of, may or may not match the dog’s idea of the object’s function or meaning. Objects are defined by how you can act upon them: what von Uexküll calls their functional tones—as though an object’s use rings bell-like when you set eyes on it. A”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“So, how can your pup know when you are returning from work, given that the sun sets at a different time each day? Well, it might be that the odors that we leave around the house when we leave lessen in a consistent amount each day.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell

“We see, but we do not see: we use our eyes, but our gaze is glancing, frivolously considering its object. We see the signs, but not their meanings. We are not blinded, but we have blinders.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: A Walker's Guide to the Art of Observation

“12What is considered aggressive is culturally and generationally relative. German shepherds were on the top of the list after World War II; in the 1990s Rottweilers and Dobermans were scorned; the American Staffordshire terrier (also known as the pit bull) is the current bête noire. Their classification has more to do with recent events and public perception than with their intrinsic nature. Recent research found that of all breeds, dachshunds were the most aggressive to both their own owners and to strangers. Perhaps this is underreported because a snarling dachshund can be picked up and stashed away in a tote bag. 13”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know