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Being a Dog
Alexandra Horowitz, the author of the lively, highly informative New York Times bestselling blockbuster Inside of a Dog, explains how dogs perceive the world through their most spectacular organ—the nose—and how we humans can put our under-used sense of smell to work in surprising ways.
What the dog sees and knows comes mostly through his nose, and the information that every dog takes in about the world just based on smell is unthinkably rich. To a dog, there is no such thing as “fresh air.” Every gulp of air is full of information.
In Being a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz, an eminent research scientist in the field of dog cognition, explores what the nose knows by taking an imaginative leap into what it is like to be a dog. Inspired by her own family dogs, Finnegan and Upton, Horowitz sets off on a quest to make sense of scents. In addition to speaking to experts across the country, Horowitz visits the California Narcotic Canine Association Training Institute and the Stapleton Group’s “Vapor wake” explosives dog training team; she meets vets and researchers working with dogs to detect cancerous cells and anticipate epileptic seizure or diabetic shock; she travels with Finnegan to the west coast where he learns how to find truffles; Horowitz even attempts to smell-train her own nose.
Featuring more of the fetching and whimsical drawings by the author that charmed fans of Inside of a Dog, Being a Dog is a scientifically rigorous book that presents cutting-edge research with literary flair. Revealing such surprising facts such as panting dogs cannot smell to explaining how dogs tell time by detecting lingering smells, Horowitz covers the topic of noses—both canine and human—from curious and always fascinating angles. As we come to understand how rich, complex, and exciting the world around us appears to a dog’s sense of smell, we can begin to better appreciate it through our own.
What the dog sees and knows comes mostly through his nose, and the information that every dog takes in about the world just based on smell is unthinkably rich. To a dog, there is no such thing as “fresh air.” Every gulp of air is full of information.
In Being a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz, an eminent research scientist in the field of dog cognition, explores what the nose knows by taking an imaginative leap into what it is like to be a dog. Inspired by her own family dogs, Finnegan and Upton, Horowitz sets off on a quest to make sense of scents. In addition to speaking to experts across the country, Horowitz visits the California Narcotic Canine Association Training Institute and the Stapleton Group’s “Vapor wake” explosives dog training team; she meets vets and researchers working with dogs to detect cancerous cells and anticipate epileptic seizure or diabetic shock; she travels with Finnegan to the west coast where he learns how to find truffles; Horowitz even attempts to smell-train her own nose.
Featuring more of the fetching and whimsical drawings by the author that charmed fans of Inside of a Dog, Being a Dog is a scientifically rigorous book that presents cutting-edge research with literary flair. Revealing such surprising facts such as panting dogs cannot smell to explaining how dogs tell time by detecting lingering smells, Horowitz covers the topic of noses—both canine and human—from curious and always fascinating angles. As we come to understand how rich, complex, and exciting the world around us appears to a dog’s sense of smell, we can begin to better appreciate it through our own.
336 pages, Paperback
First published October 4, 2016
378 people are currently reading
3610 people want to read
About the author
Alexandra Horowitz
14 books449 followersAlexandra Horowitz is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Barnard College in New York, where she teaches courses on psychology and animal behavior. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know.” Her studies on dogs have explored their ‘guilty look,’ sense of fairness, play signaling, and olfactory abilities, among other topics. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.
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April 9, 2023
Review Smell. It is of major importance to dogs, and the sort we find disgusting are their favourite smells. But not everyone in the world thinks like that. Friends, members of the New Guinea Kanum-Irebe tribe, when saying goodbye will reach into the armpit of the other, "sniffs at his hand and rubs the smell on himself." I can't see it catching on here!
I am learning a great deal about how and what a dog smells, mostly dog butts, dog urine, and anything related to faeces and urine, hanging around the streets. It isn't very interesting, except for when the author describes her experience of trying to mimic the way dogs smell. She crawls around on all fours, sniffing the ground and trying to identify different scents. As she explains, this is not only a fun experiment, but also a great way to gain insight into how dogs use their sense of smell to navigate the world. It didn't sound fun to me, but disgusting.
I thought it would be interesting to see how dogs are trained to pick up the scents of drugs, cancer, poisons etc and how to get them to water ski. It's all the same. Reward the desired action, more reward and praise when it is repeated, get the dog to do a little more - two feet on the ski rather than one, more rewards etc. It is less about dog cognition than it is about Pavlovian training.
Back in my sailing days, anchored off in Sint Maarten, our next door neighbour boat was very small and didn't have a dinghy to get to shore. They had surfboards instead and their dog would happily sit on one. I don't think he was trained in any way. But he had to swim back to the yacht as his place had the groceries on!
The book is not living up to the blurb,
It isn't a bad book but it doesn't tell me how dogs see the world, only that smell is their most important sense. It's also too long, some anecdotes and chapters become tedious reading and I have to admit to not exactly skimming, but like you read and then you can't remember what you read but you can't be bothered to go back and reread it either. 3 stars, I liked it, but didn't love it.
A better book for understanding 'the cognition' of dogs and how they see the world is The Hidden Life Of Dogs by one of my favourite authors, the anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas who also wrote The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture.
I am learning a great deal about how and what a dog smells, mostly dog butts, dog urine, and anything related to faeces and urine, hanging around the streets. It isn't very interesting, except for when the author describes her experience of trying to mimic the way dogs smell. She crawls around on all fours, sniffing the ground and trying to identify different scents. As she explains, this is not only a fun experiment, but also a great way to gain insight into how dogs use their sense of smell to navigate the world. It didn't sound fun to me, but disgusting.
I thought it would be interesting to see how dogs are trained to pick up the scents of drugs, cancer, poisons etc and how to get them to water ski. It's all the same. Reward the desired action, more reward and praise when it is repeated, get the dog to do a little more - two feet on the ski rather than one, more rewards etc. It is less about dog cognition than it is about Pavlovian training.
Back in my sailing days, anchored off in Sint Maarten, our next door neighbour boat was very small and didn't have a dinghy to get to shore. They had surfboards instead and their dog would happily sit on one. I don't think he was trained in any way. But he had to swim back to the yacht as his place had the groceries on!
The book is not living up to the blurb,
As we come to understand how complex the world around us appears to the canine nose, Horowitz changes our perspective on dogs forever. Readers will finish this book feeling that they have smelled into a fourth dimension—breaking free of human constraints and understanding smell as never before; that they have, however fleetingly, been a dog.I am not seeing the world as a dog, I'm just seeing that smells are more important than any other sense (except for eating), and my cats are like that too, forever sniffing butts.
It isn't a bad book but it doesn't tell me how dogs see the world, only that smell is their most important sense. It's also too long, some anecdotes and chapters become tedious reading and I have to admit to not exactly skimming, but like you read and then you can't remember what you read but you can't be bothered to go back and reread it either. 3 stars, I liked it, but didn't love it.
A better book for understanding 'the cognition' of dogs and how they see the world is The Hidden Life Of Dogs by one of my favourite authors, the anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas who also wrote The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture.
July 25, 2021
Alexandra Horowitz teaches at Barnard College and runs the 'Dog Cognition Lab' there. Horowitz has penned many books about dogs, and - in this informative volume - writes about the sense of smell in dogs and humans.
Alexandra Horowitz
Alexandra Horowitz with her dogs, Finnegan and Upton
Horowitz begins with a brief introduction to her own canine snufflers, Finnegan and Upton, and goes on to describe the dog olfactory system in some detail. In short, odor molecules are sniffed into the dog's nostrils and follow a hurley burley journey back to the nasal tissue, which sends signals to the brain. There the message is interpreted: poop? biscuit? the annoying cat next door? The human olfaction system is somewhat similar to that of a dog, but less complex and less sensitive.
Dog olfaction system
There are innumerable kinds of smells, but most people - except for sommeliers and perfumers - don't have the vocabulary to describe them. We know we like bakery smells and don't like sewage smells. We may even be able to say one is buttery and caramelly and the other is urinous and fecal, but that's about the extent of our descriptors. Be that as it may, smell - a form of 'chemosensation' - is an important evolved strategy. It tells organisms to avoid things that are toxic and to move toward things that are beneficial.
Animal 'smell organs' come in many varieties: molluscs smell with their tentacles; male silk moths with their feathery antennae; nematode worms with an opening near their front tips; elephants with their trunks; and so on.
Humans, of course, have noses, but we use them very little compared to other animals. In fact, smell is the sense most people say they would be willing to lose. This would be a huge mistake, however, because taste is 80% smell. The flavor of delicious food APPEARS to come from the mouth, but REALLY comes from the nose. You can test this by holding your nose while eating.
In additon, smells can be incredibly informative. Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, was "exquisitely sensitive to smell." From a sniff, Keller could tell the work a person was engaged in, because the odors of wood, iron, paint, and drugs cling to the clothes of those that work with them. Thus Helen could distinguish a carpenter from an iron worker, and an artist from a mason or a chemist. Even when a person passed by quickly, Helen knew whether she/he had been in the kitchen, garden, sickroom, etc.
Presumably, anyone could do this with practice, because approximately 1% of our genome codes for olfactory receptors (this is a lot, considering how complex we are). Experiments have shown that mothers can pick out the smell of their newborn's shirt from a mass of baby shirts; kids can pick out the smell of their siblings, even after not seeing them for two years; dog owners can tell which of two blankets THEIR pooch has used; people can detect which of their friends/family has handled a book by its aroma; etc.
To test and improve her sense of smell, Horowitz participated in an olfaction study at Rockefeller University, consisting of 10 two-hour sessions. During each session, Horowitz sat in front of a computer with a bin of 100 or so small bottles by her side. The procedure was to open a bottle, take a sniff, and key in a response.
The odor was evaluated for strength; pleasantness; and familiarity as well as specific characteristics: fruity; fishy; grassy; urinous; edible....etc. (there are 17 options). Horowitz acknowledges that she found almost all the aromas unnamable, though she recognized coconut, bubble gum, pencil shavings, almond extract, wheat grass, and Smarties candy. Some of the smells were horrible....but she had to smell them all.
Horowitz made additional efforts to improve her sensory acuity, including:
- An organized 'walking and smelling tour' of a New York City neighborhood, to sniff and identify odors she'd been missing or ignoring.
- A tracking exercise near the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts, where she saw signs of bears; flying squirrels; cottontail rabbits; deer; etc. Horowitz was instructed to look for claw marks; shed hairs; paths foraged through undergrowth; depressions in grass; fur where an animal lay/nested; and excretions - droppings; secretions; pellets; and so on. The scientist was told to "get down on your knees and stick your nose right in."
- A wine tasting class in Napa Valley, California.
- A consultation with a perfumer.
- Sniffing practice with a 'smell testing kit' gifted by her husband.
Smell testing kit
Of course a dog's nose is exponentially better than a human nose. If you walk into a house and smell a tray of cinnamon buns baking, it will smell like a trillion cinnamon buns to your dog. Thus dogs make excellent detectors and trackers.
Horowitz visited the University of Pennsylvania's 'Working Dog Center', located in an abandoned Dupont Chemical Plant.....where sniffer dogs are trained. Canines can be taught to detect anything that has a smell, such as: a lost person; a specific drug; an explosive; an invasive plant; a cancerous cell; a destructive insect; animal scat; and so on.
At the Working Dog Center, a successful 'detection' is rewarded with a vigorous game of tug.....and this is how the dogs are trained. In an old building, a trainer and a dog play tug with a towel that has a particular scent (like cocaine, for example). The trainer then throws the towel, and the dog retrieves it. The trainer then hides the towel, and the dog finds it. Little by little, the towel is replaced with the scent alone, and the dog learns to 'alert' on that aroma. This type of training goes on for the pooch's entire working life, to keep her/him up to snuff.
Sniffer dogs at work
After watching the indoor training session at the Working Dog Center, Horowitz observed dogs in the field, searching for a person hiding in a barrel. Dog 1 took 42 seconds; Dog 2 - who stopped to poop - took 92 seconds; Dog 3 took 34 seconds....and so on. The author noted that each dog had its own style, and each was a model of efficiency.
Lastly, Horowitz returned inside to watch dogs participate in an exercise for 'Human Remains Detection' (HRD). To the scientist, the training substance smelled sweet and vominous, like a carnation rotting in water. However, dogs are attracted to this type of 'death odor' - which is produced by cells breaking down. Canines who do well in HRD become cadaver dogs.
Cadaver dogs at work
Other dogs may be trained to do medical diagnoses. For example:
- A 44-year-old woman's collie-doberman mix became focused on her left thigh, constantly sniffing at a mole there, and even nipping at it - as if to bite it off.
- A 66-year-old man's labrador began to obsessively sniff his thigh, which seemed to have a patch of itchy eczema.
- A 44-year-old woman's dachshund puppy started showing undue interest in her left armpit.
In each case, the dog had discovered a malignant tumor! 😞 It's not yet known what smell attracted the dogs' interest, but it might be aberrant protein synthesis by cancer cells. Could sniffer dogs be trained to be 'diagnosticians?' This is currently being studied at Penn's Working Dog Center.
One area with a "perfect convergence of dogs' desires and our own" is truffle detection. Truffles - which are underground mushrooms - smell wonderful to dogs and are very valuable to people. A golf ball size Perigord truffle from France sells for over 100 dollars, and enormous 2 ½ pound truffles have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thus, some sniffer dogs have been trained to locate truffles.
Dog being shown a truffle
Truffle dogs at work
Pile of truffles
Unlike sniffer dogs, our pet pooches - who get fed at home and discouraged from dallying on walks - have let their noses go dormant. The good news is, their snufflers can be reactivated. Horowitz's dog Finnegan was taken to a Long Island Obedience school, where the 'smelling classes' were "his favorite place on Earth." (Maybe he'll learn to find a million dollar truffle. 😍)
The book is interesting and informative, but a bit dry and repetitive. Still, well worth reading for people interested in the subject.
You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot....
March 7, 2017
Me, non-fiction and the Kindle--we're a match made in heaven. For naps. Understand, therefore, that the fact that it took me so long to finish the book actually doesn't reflect on how interesting it was, only the fact that my eyelids are quite heavy, and my bed quite comfortable.
Engagingly written, it still feels like a work that could benefit from a non-professional pass-through. At times, Horowitz seems more in love with her prose and concepts rather than actual, you know, facts. Rather that just say how a molecule fits like lock and keys a memory, she says, "It is the brain that knows (or doesn't), and that swoons with the rush of a memory of hot chocolate after a long winter's day playing outside, or balks at a urine smell in the subway, source unseen." While I'm often one to appreciate such vivid description in my fictional prose, I prefer my non-fiction to be more exact. Giving into this kind of artistic temptation often results in losing the information or sense of a sentence. Unfortunately, that is not an infrequent occurrence.
More significantly to potential readers, there is a great deal of material here that has nothing at all to do with canines and everything to do with smells and humans in general and Dr. Horowitz in particular. The first few chapters are about the physiology and the psychology of smells. She then gets down to the experience, enrolling in a scent study and talking to researchers. She joins a group lead by a professional 'multisensory artist' leading a group in New York City trying to teach themselves the smell of the cityscape (clearly, this was not during any garbage collector strikes). This is used as a springboard to talk about smells in relation to our environments. According to my e-reader, 'Chapter 7: Nose to Grindstone' is at 40% (including references) is where it begins a more in depth discussion of dogs and smell, specifically at a training facility for working dogs.
It's followed by a chapter on dogs' scenting used in medicine, examining some intriguing and interesting studies on cancer and diabetic crisis detection. Sadly, she then segues into history of medical smelling, going back to the Greeks and their foul 'humors,' and following it up with a visit to a person specializing in the "Five Element strain of Chinese medicine' which uses smelling the patient as part of the diagnostic process. This represents the pattern of much of a book; alas, dogs generally serve as a springboard for more discussion of humans. Ethnocentrism at its best.
The most interesting is the last chapter where she takes one of her dogs to scent class, helping these poor city dogs discover their ability to use their nose. It was both interesting and a little sad, I thought; I recognized most of the behaviors the 'successful' dogs were learning from my pit mix's Charlie's own scent explorations. Patricia McConnell talks about the importance of scent in stimulating the canine mind in The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs--I've since come to vary our walk pattern so that my dog can encounter new smells.
Overall, a very interesting book about humans and our relationship with the sense of smell, with some discussion about smell and dogs. Read for the information on people, not for the information on dogs.
***************************************
Here's the sciency details of some of the stuff I found interesting:
It begins talking about the sense of smell, really the psychology of smell, one of the reportedly least favorite senses of most humans. "The invisibility of odors accounts for some of this reaction. We rarely search them out; we more often experience them happening to us, catching us unawares. " That's a fascinating point, although somewhat arguable. Because scent is so personal, it is actually possible for us to mitigate it, somewhat, compared to hearing. We can close our eyes to things we don't want to see (literally), but I tell you, there are times when I've heard sounds that were almost a physical assault. At any rate, fascinating psychological premise. As opposed to hearing, vision and feeling, "when we smell something, we are really ingesting it, after a fashion: the molecule is being absorbed by the mucus layer of the nose." She goes on to talk somewhat about how our concept of smells is connected with judgement, that "sights are information; smells are judged. Smelly never means anything but 'stinking.'"
I enjoyed the section on how human nose works and its comparison with dogs. Deep inside the nose, "about the point where the outer nose flattens into the forehead... is a postage stamp-sized plot of epithelial tissue." This is the olfactory epithelium where scent touches down and is sent to the brain. Dogs, on the other hand, have hundreds of millions more receptors and more kinds of receptors. Even more importantly, they have a recess in the back of their nasal passages where the air can recirculate, allowing them to parse more of each sniff. Also interestingly, olfactory neurons apparently replace themselves every thirty days or so. Perhaps this helps explain why smells are so good at triggering memory, while our eyesight dims and our hearing fades. It's also suggested that it works so well because it is literally two synapses to get from the scented molecule to the cortex. "Olfaction is the quickest route into the amygdala, considered the emotional center of the brain. 'The memories you get from olfaction are always emotional memories.'" Lest we think we aren't normally smelling, data supports the thought that we are processing odors all the time and that we change our sniffing style to reflect processing on whether faint odors are good or bad.
Most interesting line: "While smells now appear to me more public--they are out there to be detected by a nose--I am evermore appreciative of the privacy of smells."
Three and a half stars, rounding up. I love it when a book makes mesleep think.
My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC
Engagingly written, it still feels like a work that could benefit from a non-professional pass-through. At times, Horowitz seems more in love with her prose and concepts rather than actual, you know, facts. Rather that just say how a molecule fits like lock and keys a memory, she says, "It is the brain that knows (or doesn't), and that swoons with the rush of a memory of hot chocolate after a long winter's day playing outside, or balks at a urine smell in the subway, source unseen." While I'm often one to appreciate such vivid description in my fictional prose, I prefer my non-fiction to be more exact. Giving into this kind of artistic temptation often results in losing the information or sense of a sentence. Unfortunately, that is not an infrequent occurrence.
More significantly to potential readers, there is a great deal of material here that has nothing at all to do with canines and everything to do with smells and humans in general and Dr. Horowitz in particular. The first few chapters are about the physiology and the psychology of smells. She then gets down to the experience, enrolling in a scent study and talking to researchers. She joins a group lead by a professional 'multisensory artist' leading a group in New York City trying to teach themselves the smell of the cityscape (clearly, this was not during any garbage collector strikes). This is used as a springboard to talk about smells in relation to our environments. According to my e-reader, 'Chapter 7: Nose to Grindstone' is at 40% (including references) is where it begins a more in depth discussion of dogs and smell, specifically at a training facility for working dogs.
It's followed by a chapter on dogs' scenting used in medicine, examining some intriguing and interesting studies on cancer and diabetic crisis detection. Sadly, she then segues into history of medical smelling, going back to the Greeks and their foul 'humors,' and following it up with a visit to a person specializing in the "Five Element strain of Chinese medicine' which uses smelling the patient as part of the diagnostic process. This represents the pattern of much of a book; alas, dogs generally serve as a springboard for more discussion of humans. Ethnocentrism at its best.
The most interesting is the last chapter where she takes one of her dogs to scent class, helping these poor city dogs discover their ability to use their nose. It was both interesting and a little sad, I thought; I recognized most of the behaviors the 'successful' dogs were learning from my pit mix's Charlie's own scent explorations. Patricia McConnell talks about the importance of scent in stimulating the canine mind in The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs--I've since come to vary our walk pattern so that my dog can encounter new smells.
Overall, a very interesting book about humans and our relationship with the sense of smell, with some discussion about smell and dogs. Read for the information on people, not for the information on dogs.
***************************************
Here's the sciency details of some of the stuff I found interesting:
It begins talking about the sense of smell, really the psychology of smell, one of the reportedly least favorite senses of most humans. "The invisibility of odors accounts for some of this reaction. We rarely search them out; we more often experience them happening to us, catching us unawares. " That's a fascinating point, although somewhat arguable. Because scent is so personal, it is actually possible for us to mitigate it, somewhat, compared to hearing. We can close our eyes to things we don't want to see (literally), but I tell you, there are times when I've heard sounds that were almost a physical assault. At any rate, fascinating psychological premise. As opposed to hearing, vision and feeling, "when we smell something, we are really ingesting it, after a fashion: the molecule is being absorbed by the mucus layer of the nose." She goes on to talk somewhat about how our concept of smells is connected with judgement, that "sights are information; smells are judged. Smelly never means anything but 'stinking.'"
I enjoyed the section on how human nose works and its comparison with dogs. Deep inside the nose, "about the point where the outer nose flattens into the forehead... is a postage stamp-sized plot of epithelial tissue." This is the olfactory epithelium where scent touches down and is sent to the brain. Dogs, on the other hand, have hundreds of millions more receptors and more kinds of receptors. Even more importantly, they have a recess in the back of their nasal passages where the air can recirculate, allowing them to parse more of each sniff. Also interestingly, olfactory neurons apparently replace themselves every thirty days or so. Perhaps this helps explain why smells are so good at triggering memory, while our eyesight dims and our hearing fades. It's also suggested that it works so well because it is literally two synapses to get from the scented molecule to the cortex. "Olfaction is the quickest route into the amygdala, considered the emotional center of the brain. 'The memories you get from olfaction are always emotional memories.'" Lest we think we aren't normally smelling, data supports the thought that we are processing odors all the time and that we change our sniffing style to reflect processing on whether faint odors are good or bad.
Most interesting line: "While smells now appear to me more public--they are out there to be detected by a nose--I am evermore appreciative of the privacy of smells."
Three and a half stars, rounding up. I love it when a book makes me
My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC
October 13, 2016
While this book is essentially a book about dogs, how they smell, sense, know the things they seem to know, it is that and more. How and why they are used to track people, things, more than I ever knew or thought about. It includes a significant amount of detail about a dog’s nose vs. a human nose. And it’s all fascinating. If you’ve ever contemplated why canines are used to sniff out anything and everything, or what your dog is smelling that you can’t, then this book will not only answer your questions, but you’ll be entertained.
“Working dogs, trained to tell us what they naturally know, detect the presence of illegal substances and unwanted pests. But the dog also knows about the upcoming weather, the way the afternoon smells, and whether you are sick or upset.”
She weaves in lines from children’s storybooks about the smells, how cherished some are, how they certain smells bring with them wonderful memories.
“The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped up on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries."--Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.”
There are many different stories, paths she took in her quest for more knowledge on this topic. The most memorable for me, is the group that Horowitz joins in order to sniff out New York City. Now, I found it humorous that there would be sufficient numbers of people wanting to go about Williamsburg to sniff out the whatnots of the streets, but it was not the first time. In fact, she mentions talks about the earlier years of scents in the area:
“Conditions were sufficiently bad that a governmental ‘smelling committee’ was officially called together, talked with seeking out sources of ill smells by nose(s).”
And, then again, as she mentions, some sailors have been known to navigate using smell. Sniffing out fog, rain, wind and snow. But, we humans are losing what we’re not using. We all know of people whose jobs revolve around their sense of smell, winemakers, people who design or work with perfumes, companies whose business it is to make your home, your laundry, your hair, your car smell more like fresh air by chemicals meant to reproduce the scent of natural odors. There are dogs trained for sniffing out drugs, bombs, and truffles. There’s even a breed of dog I’d never heard of who is bred in Italy specifically for truffle hunting, the Lagotto Romagnolo. Not every human, or every dog qualifies for scent seeking work.
I certainly know a lot more about the scents of different animals than I did before, and I probably thought more about scents and was more aware of the smells of autumn as I walked around my neighborhood with my dogs smelling the air, the ground, the leaves, the grass… not me, my dogs. I definitely pay attention to the snuffling.
I haven’t read any books by Mary Roach, but based on descriptions from my goodreads friends who read and enjoy her books, I’d say that this read, to me, a bit as if Mary Roach had written it. Occasionally amusing, especially picturing Horowitz sniffing the railing around the trees in Williamsburg, she leads you in with a few giggles, but surprises you with how much she manages to make this other life fascinating, and that’s what Horowitz does, she makes a dog’s world come to life for the reader.
Pub Date 04 Oct 2016
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Scribner, NetGalley and Alexandra Horowitz.
“Working dogs, trained to tell us what they naturally know, detect the presence of illegal substances and unwanted pests. But the dog also knows about the upcoming weather, the way the afternoon smells, and whether you are sick or upset.”
She weaves in lines from children’s storybooks about the smells, how cherished some are, how they certain smells bring with them wonderful memories.
“The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped up on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries."--Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.”
There are many different stories, paths she took in her quest for more knowledge on this topic. The most memorable for me, is the group that Horowitz joins in order to sniff out New York City. Now, I found it humorous that there would be sufficient numbers of people wanting to go about Williamsburg to sniff out the whatnots of the streets, but it was not the first time. In fact, she mentions talks about the earlier years of scents in the area:
“Conditions were sufficiently bad that a governmental ‘smelling committee’ was officially called together, talked with seeking out sources of ill smells by nose(s).”
And, then again, as she mentions, some sailors have been known to navigate using smell. Sniffing out fog, rain, wind and snow. But, we humans are losing what we’re not using. We all know of people whose jobs revolve around their sense of smell, winemakers, people who design or work with perfumes, companies whose business it is to make your home, your laundry, your hair, your car smell more like fresh air by chemicals meant to reproduce the scent of natural odors. There are dogs trained for sniffing out drugs, bombs, and truffles. There’s even a breed of dog I’d never heard of who is bred in Italy specifically for truffle hunting, the Lagotto Romagnolo. Not every human, or every dog qualifies for scent seeking work.
I certainly know a lot more about the scents of different animals than I did before, and I probably thought more about scents and was more aware of the smells of autumn as I walked around my neighborhood with my dogs smelling the air, the ground, the leaves, the grass… not me, my dogs. I definitely pay attention to the snuffling.
I haven’t read any books by Mary Roach, but based on descriptions from my goodreads friends who read and enjoy her books, I’d say that this read, to me, a bit as if Mary Roach had written it. Occasionally amusing, especially picturing Horowitz sniffing the railing around the trees in Williamsburg, she leads you in with a few giggles, but surprises you with how much she manages to make this other life fascinating, and that’s what Horowitz does, she makes a dog’s world come to life for the reader.
Pub Date 04 Oct 2016
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Scribner, NetGalley and Alexandra Horowitz.
August 21, 2016
As a fan of Alexandra Horowitz's pop-animal-behavior-science book, Inside of a Dog, the contents of Being a Dog were something of a surprise. More reminiscent of Mary Roach's Gulp than its behavioral-science-heavy predecessor, Being a Dog is at least as much about the author's quest to experience the world through a dog's perceptions as it is about dogs themselves. Horowitz puts it best: just as books on animal comparative cognition tend to focus mostly on how the animals stack up against human perception and intelligence, Being a Dog is effectively a book about "Seeing if we can do what dogs do.... [human] comparative cognition, written by the dogs."
As part of Horowitz's quest to experience the world through her nose in order to better understand her dogs, she does everything from taking the dogs on sniff-walks to sniff where they sniff, signing up for descriptive scent studies, visiting schools for detection dogs to see how they learn, and joining excursions to track wildlife by the smells they leave behind. She explores the extent to which humans focus on vision over scent, to the point that our vocabulary is effectively unable to even describe smells past much more than simple good/bad polarities. "Smelly," "odorous," "noisome"... despite their nonjudgemental root words, these adjectives don't just mean a strong smell, but also an unpleasant one.
Dogs, on the other hand, are masters of scent processing. They have hundreds of millions of receptor cells, compared to our six million. If spread out flat, their olfactory epithelia would completely cover their entire bodies. Ours would cover the surface area of a single mole. Their noses actually create tiny wind currents, called "schlieren," that help bring the smells closer to them. As one might expect, the sense of smell guides doggy behavior in the same way that vision guides our own. While dogs fail the standard animal cognition "mirror mark" test--identifying a change to their image-- they do pass an equivalent "sniff mirror" test. Dog owners are vastly familiar with their companions' tendency to sniff at strangers, but I, at least, was unaware that even behaviors such as tail-wagging and pawing may be about spreading the dog's scents to others. Anyone who has ever walked a dog knows all about marking and can easily distinguish it from "real" peeing. But according to studies that Horowitz cites, dog marking and countermarking seems to be informational rather than territorial. When doggy walk behavior is analyzed, it turns out that sniffing far outpaces marking: dogs "read" far more "pee-mail" than they compose.
While the opening of the book discusses the mechanics of dog noses, the latter part of the book describes Horowitz's quest to attempt to smell like a dog: she goes to sensory labs, dog training centers for everything from drug-sniffing dogs to dogs trained to detect hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia to joining a truffle hunt. If dogs experience the world primarily through smell, then the task to see the world through a dog's nose is almost incomprehensible to humans. Our world is ruled by vision-- the very expression to "see the world" expresses our dependency on sight. We have dozens of common color words, yet we pretty much only describe odors only in terms of the things that create them--skunky, flowery-- or by their taste--sweet, salty. And there is a good reason for this: our sense of smell may be nothing close to a dog's, but it's actually not that bad. The major distinction is that our sense of smell focuses on the retronasal component, allowing us to experience a much richer taste than is actually available through our tastebuds.
Being a Dog seeks to open the world of smell to our uncomprehending noses. While reading it, I was amazed at how little attention I pay to smell. I started consciously experiencing and trying to describe and categorize the smells I experienced on my daily bike rides and was amazed at how distinctive each location was: the sharp marshiness as I rode particularly close to a slough, the undertones of sunwarmed timber as I rode over a bridge, the tang of exhaust as the wind shifted from the direction of the highway. If you're looking for a guide to doggy behavioral cues, then you're better off checking out Horowitz's earlier book, Inside of a Dog. However, if you're interested in joining Horowitz's quest to experience the world through a dog's nose, then Being a Dog is definitely worth checking out. Through Horowitz's tale of her sensory journey, you may find yourself getting a glimpse of your dog's world.
~~I received this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Scribner, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes are taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe they speak to the spirit of the book as a whole.~~
Cross-posted on BookLikes.
As part of Horowitz's quest to experience the world through her nose in order to better understand her dogs, she does everything from taking the dogs on sniff-walks to sniff where they sniff, signing up for descriptive scent studies, visiting schools for detection dogs to see how they learn, and joining excursions to track wildlife by the smells they leave behind. She explores the extent to which humans focus on vision over scent, to the point that our vocabulary is effectively unable to even describe smells past much more than simple good/bad polarities. "Smelly," "odorous," "noisome"... despite their nonjudgemental root words, these adjectives don't just mean a strong smell, but also an unpleasant one.
Dogs, on the other hand, are masters of scent processing. They have hundreds of millions of receptor cells, compared to our six million. If spread out flat, their olfactory epithelia would completely cover their entire bodies. Ours would cover the surface area of a single mole. Their noses actually create tiny wind currents, called "schlieren," that help bring the smells closer to them. As one might expect, the sense of smell guides doggy behavior in the same way that vision guides our own. While dogs fail the standard animal cognition "mirror mark" test--identifying a change to their image-- they do pass an equivalent "sniff mirror" test. Dog owners are vastly familiar with their companions' tendency to sniff at strangers, but I, at least, was unaware that even behaviors such as tail-wagging and pawing may be about spreading the dog's scents to others. Anyone who has ever walked a dog knows all about marking and can easily distinguish it from "real" peeing. But according to studies that Horowitz cites, dog marking and countermarking seems to be informational rather than territorial. When doggy walk behavior is analyzed, it turns out that sniffing far outpaces marking: dogs "read" far more "pee-mail" than they compose.
While the opening of the book discusses the mechanics of dog noses, the latter part of the book describes Horowitz's quest to attempt to smell like a dog: she goes to sensory labs, dog training centers for everything from drug-sniffing dogs to dogs trained to detect hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia to joining a truffle hunt. If dogs experience the world primarily through smell, then the task to see the world through a dog's nose is almost incomprehensible to humans. Our world is ruled by vision-- the very expression to "see the world" expresses our dependency on sight. We have dozens of common color words, yet we pretty much only describe odors only in terms of the things that create them--skunky, flowery-- or by their taste--sweet, salty. And there is a good reason for this: our sense of smell may be nothing close to a dog's, but it's actually not that bad. The major distinction is that our sense of smell focuses on the retronasal component, allowing us to experience a much richer taste than is actually available through our tastebuds.
Being a Dog seeks to open the world of smell to our uncomprehending noses. While reading it, I was amazed at how little attention I pay to smell. I started consciously experiencing and trying to describe and categorize the smells I experienced on my daily bike rides and was amazed at how distinctive each location was: the sharp marshiness as I rode particularly close to a slough, the undertones of sunwarmed timber as I rode over a bridge, the tang of exhaust as the wind shifted from the direction of the highway. If you're looking for a guide to doggy behavioral cues, then you're better off checking out Horowitz's earlier book, Inside of a Dog. However, if you're interested in joining Horowitz's quest to experience the world through a dog's nose, then Being a Dog is definitely worth checking out. Through Horowitz's tale of her sensory journey, you may find yourself getting a glimpse of your dog's world.
~~I received this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Scribner, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes are taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe they speak to the spirit of the book as a whole.~~
Cross-posted on BookLikes.
November 25, 2016
I think the author has gone off her rocker, but in a nice way and not in a psychopathic killer way.
She was attempting to see the world as a dog does, through her nose. She was smelling all kinds of unpleasant things. Voluntarily. She even got down on her hands and knees and smelled the areas where her dog smelled whilst they were out on a walk.
I can think of so many other things to do on a Sunday afternoon.
She was attempting to see the world as a dog does, through her nose. She was smelling all kinds of unpleasant things. Voluntarily. She even got down on her hands and knees and smelled the areas where her dog smelled whilst they were out on a walk.
I can think of so many other things to do on a Sunday afternoon.
October 8, 2016
Horowitz is the author of Inside of a Dog, and here she follows it up with an examination of the sensory experiences a dog encounters, primarily that of smell. I received my DRC courtesy of Scribner and Net Galley in exchange for this honest review. And though I’ve never been a science maven, Horowitz’s unbridled enthusiasm for dogs had me at hello. It’s a book bound to engage any dog lover.
So, do you have a dog?
I’ve had a dog nearly all of my 58 years, with a brief interim here and there. I’ve never been dogless long, though; either a dog has found me, or I’ve gone looking for one. And so I was glad of the opportunity to read more about what makes my dog—right now it’s Ox, the oversized beagle puppy—work. I’d read a fair amount about dogs, particularly beagles, my favorite breed, and I thought I was well schooled, but I learned a great deal from Horowitz that I hadn’t known before, or in one main instance, in a way I had known intellectually, but not in my gut.
Almost every dog lover has heard at some point that a dog tends to be governed by its smell, and that this is its dominant sense. But until Horowitz took it apart for me and gave me the details, I didn’t grasp the implications. For example, when we throw the ball, the dog pauses before running after it, right? And with our last little dog, my husband and I would note that he wasn’t really looking in the right place, and we concluded that he was as dumb as a box of rocks. We’d yell; we’d point to it. And eventually, after he had sniffed its perimeter, he’d hone in on the ball and bring it back. And this book explains why that is exactly the correct way to do the job, if one is a hound (or other dog) rather than a human.
Sight is so important to us humans; next comes hearing. If we are in a carnival’s haunted house, and if the first room is sightless and soundless, what do we do? Do we sniff? Of course not! We fling out our arms in front of us or to the sides, partly to find out where things are, and partly to protect ourselves from slamming our face into a hard surface. And now when I consider Ox’s sense of scent, after which is hearing, I realize that by the time he has to look at something, he’s probably gained most of the information he needs already. Why would we fling our hands out in an ungainly manner if we can see and hear? And so indeed, why would my beagle do a visual scan if he can find what he wants through the use of sniffed air currents and hearing? After all, he always brings the toy back to us.
Chapters that engaged me less contained miniature chemistry and physics lessons, never my favorite, and some had longer passages having to do with human olfactory sense than I really wanted to read. I confess after the first few times the author moved from dogs’ senses back to those of humans I skimmed until we were back to the dogs.
There was so much here I hadn’t seen. For example, where does one find the best material for search and rescue dogs, or arson, bomb, drug, cadaver dogs, and so forth? I’ll give you a hint: I was crushed to find out that my beloved hound dogs aren’t necessarily the favorites here. But it sure is interesting!
Once I had read this book, I felt that I knew my dog a lot better, and this new information solved many of Ox’s previously puzzling habits. To learn more, check out Horowitz’s new release, which became available to the public yesterday.
Because although I don’t know whether a dog is man’s best friend…I know he’s mine.
So, do you have a dog?
I’ve had a dog nearly all of my 58 years, with a brief interim here and there. I’ve never been dogless long, though; either a dog has found me, or I’ve gone looking for one. And so I was glad of the opportunity to read more about what makes my dog—right now it’s Ox, the oversized beagle puppy—work. I’d read a fair amount about dogs, particularly beagles, my favorite breed, and I thought I was well schooled, but I learned a great deal from Horowitz that I hadn’t known before, or in one main instance, in a way I had known intellectually, but not in my gut.
Almost every dog lover has heard at some point that a dog tends to be governed by its smell, and that this is its dominant sense. But until Horowitz took it apart for me and gave me the details, I didn’t grasp the implications. For example, when we throw the ball, the dog pauses before running after it, right? And with our last little dog, my husband and I would note that he wasn’t really looking in the right place, and we concluded that he was as dumb as a box of rocks. We’d yell; we’d point to it. And eventually, after he had sniffed its perimeter, he’d hone in on the ball and bring it back. And this book explains why that is exactly the correct way to do the job, if one is a hound (or other dog) rather than a human.
Sight is so important to us humans; next comes hearing. If we are in a carnival’s haunted house, and if the first room is sightless and soundless, what do we do? Do we sniff? Of course not! We fling out our arms in front of us or to the sides, partly to find out where things are, and partly to protect ourselves from slamming our face into a hard surface. And now when I consider Ox’s sense of scent, after which is hearing, I realize that by the time he has to look at something, he’s probably gained most of the information he needs already. Why would we fling our hands out in an ungainly manner if we can see and hear? And so indeed, why would my beagle do a visual scan if he can find what he wants through the use of sniffed air currents and hearing? After all, he always brings the toy back to us.
Chapters that engaged me less contained miniature chemistry and physics lessons, never my favorite, and some had longer passages having to do with human olfactory sense than I really wanted to read. I confess after the first few times the author moved from dogs’ senses back to those of humans I skimmed until we were back to the dogs.
There was so much here I hadn’t seen. For example, where does one find the best material for search and rescue dogs, or arson, bomb, drug, cadaver dogs, and so forth? I’ll give you a hint: I was crushed to find out that my beloved hound dogs aren’t necessarily the favorites here. But it sure is interesting!
Once I had read this book, I felt that I knew my dog a lot better, and this new information solved many of Ox’s previously puzzling habits. To learn more, check out Horowitz’s new release, which became available to the public yesterday.
Because although I don’t know whether a dog is man’s best friend…I know he’s mine.
August 17, 2016
I was a little uncertain about reading this book, even when it was sent to me by the publisher as an ARC. I mean, I read Horowitz's last book, Inside of a Dog, which I enjoyed even though I am not particularly a dog person. Particularly, it was helpful in letting me understand what is going on behind doggy eyes and noses a bit more. But from just the title, my question was whether or not this book was going to be very different. Are we just rehashing what I've already read?
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
August 24, 2016
Our fifth sense, smell, has dwindled as we evolved. Domesticating the dog may have contributed to our decreased reliance on our own sniffing skills but the upside of that, I read somewhere, is that this sacrifice freed up our brain capacity and so we became top dog, masters of all other creatures. And yet dog remains at our side, loyal, sniffy, and eager to serve. Alexandra Horowitz captures this magic in her prose.
She also delivers some solid science, and more details on the anatomy of a dog's nose than some readers may care to read. (Hint: skim or skip anything too textbook for your liking.) The laboratory imaging of a molecule sucked up through the air (Dorothy! Toto!) and into the sinuses of a dog are movie-worthy.
It's hardly news that dogs can astound us with their gift of smell. Drug sniffing, tracking a missing person, it's all awesome. But training a dog to detect the odor of orca droppings from a mile away, in a boat on choppy water, which is full of other fishy smells? And to get the dog to alert the humans on board that there's scat, dead ahead, or to the left, or right... how do people learn to communicate like this with animals?
Even more incredible is the way Horowitz experiments with learning to smell what her dogs can smell - hence the title, *being* a dog. She gets down on all fours, sniffing the ground, and taking in aromas most people would prefer never to inhale.
We've heard of perfume sniffers and wine tasters, but Horowitz brings us the incredible good news that with practice, we too can become far more aware of the smells around us.
Some people already can detect more odors than we'd like to. E.g. on a 7-hour flight next to someone exhales onion. (No wonder mosquitoes don't bite garlic- and onion-eaters.) I can smell mildew in hotel rooms when others cannot. Maybe it's time to cultivate my perception of *pleasant* aromas. Hard to do if the man at the movie theater wears so much cologne, it drowns out the heavenly smell of buttery, warm popcorn.
I highlighted dozens (if not hundreds) of lines from this book in my Kindle. Rather than type them out by hand, I may just wait for the ebook to go on sale, then use Kindle Share to get whole sentences stored in the cloud, where I can copy and paste them into book reviews.
So many books. So little time.
"Being a Dog" is a great book, in any case. A little long-ish, at times. If I feel like skimming, I'm more likely to go with four rather than five stars. Also, this book is a little heavy on the people side, a little light on the dog side. Even so, "Being a Dog" is a must-read.
She also delivers some solid science, and more details on the anatomy of a dog's nose than some readers may care to read. (Hint: skim or skip anything too textbook for your liking.) The laboratory imaging of a molecule sucked up through the air (Dorothy! Toto!) and into the sinuses of a dog are movie-worthy.
It's hardly news that dogs can astound us with their gift of smell. Drug sniffing, tracking a missing person, it's all awesome. But training a dog to detect the odor of orca droppings from a mile away, in a boat on choppy water, which is full of other fishy smells? And to get the dog to alert the humans on board that there's scat, dead ahead, or to the left, or right... how do people learn to communicate like this with animals?
Even more incredible is the way Horowitz experiments with learning to smell what her dogs can smell - hence the title, *being* a dog. She gets down on all fours, sniffing the ground, and taking in aromas most people would prefer never to inhale.
We've heard of perfume sniffers and wine tasters, but Horowitz brings us the incredible good news that with practice, we too can become far more aware of the smells around us.
Some people already can detect more odors than we'd like to. E.g. on a 7-hour flight next to someone exhales onion. (No wonder mosquitoes don't bite garlic- and onion-eaters.) I can smell mildew in hotel rooms when others cannot. Maybe it's time to cultivate my perception of *pleasant* aromas. Hard to do if the man at the movie theater wears so much cologne, it drowns out the heavenly smell of buttery, warm popcorn.
I highlighted dozens (if not hundreds) of lines from this book in my Kindle. Rather than type them out by hand, I may just wait for the ebook to go on sale, then use Kindle Share to get whole sentences stored in the cloud, where I can copy and paste them into book reviews.
So many books. So little time.
"Being a Dog" is a great book, in any case. A little long-ish, at times. If I feel like skimming, I'm more likely to go with four rather than five stars. Also, this book is a little heavy on the people side, a little light on the dog side. Even so, "Being a Dog" is a must-read.
October 22, 2018
Being a Dog, following the dog into the world of smell. It was interesting enough the world of smell, I'm learning to take a greater interest in what I can smell, we seem to not appreciate our noses very much, unless it's something really bad, or good. Last section on smelling wines was appreciated haha, time to impress some friends, anyway overall it was ok, didn't mind at all though it had some waffling going on in the middle parts, but on the whole mainly enjoyed it.
May 7, 2016
Um, was this more about humans than dogs? I think so. I really wanted to learn about dogs, so I was slightly disappointed.
But as always Horowitz is a wonderful writer, so this is pretty compelling.
But as always Horowitz is a wonderful writer, so this is pretty compelling.
April 17, 2017
This is more than just a dog book, it's a science book. Alexandra Horowitz is a great author and I love reading as she discovers new things about dogs and humans. I've found myself taking time to observe via my nose. Im so glad I read this book.
December 31, 2023
My dog was born without her nose and this book really helped me understand what she’s thinking and how she might be missing out on certain smells and interactions!
November 10, 2017
A lot of good information, but the author can be overly verbose at times. I’d like to read a condensed version of this book (e.g. a National Geographic-type article would probably be enough for me).
November 16, 2016
Most informative and thought-provoking but also hugely entertaining... a must for all dog-lovers
August 10, 2023
I loved the author’s approach to learning how dogs use scent to understand their world. She brings her extensive knowledge of dog behavior as the director of the Dog Cognition Lab. But she expands her understanding of the dog’s nose by exploring a variety of sources and testing out her knowledge on her own two dogs. She also looks at how humans use their much more limited sense of smell and explores ways to refine it. As a dog lover I found this book both fascinating and very useful.
November 10, 2018
As a dog-owner, made me think a lot about how my pup experiences the world--and encouraged me to take her on more "smelling" walks to reinvigorate her own innate sense of smell! Recommend for dog owners, especially for breeds with better noses than pugs.
December 1, 2022
If you ever wondered about how your dog experiences the world, this is a book for you! Delving deep into the world of scents, Alexandra Horowitz gives us an idea of the information a dog gathers with his nose. This book was cute, funny, and enlightening! As a dog owner, I loved learning about the world that is most interesting to my dog.
October 16, 2016
I acquired and read this book as part of researching a possible future novel, but would have found it engrossing, informative, and entertaining in any event. It has also inspired me to pay more attention to the odors around me -- especially when I walk my dog.
There are occasional redundancies, but few.
Along with all the information and anecdotes, the narrative is sprinkled with evocative descriptions of various odors.
There are occasional redundancies, but few.
Along with all the information and anecdotes, the narrative is sprinkled with evocative descriptions of various odors.
September 28, 2025
Somehow we start out talking about dogs and end up by talking about wine. I loved the book when dogs are in the foreground, huffing and snuffling and sniffing things. People: let your dog sniff things! On human beings, our eyes are everything. Our facial anatomy makes clear which sense is predominant: our eyes centrally located, protected by eyelashes and eyebrows. Our nose prominent but largely an afterthought. The dog’s face: his snout is the main thing. It is how they experience the world. The richness of their olfactory landscape is literally unimaginable: imagine the smell in a trail of footsteps laid down, seconds apart, many hours ago, and the ability to detect the variations in the individual footsteps well enough to unerringly determine the direction of travel.
There is a lot of content about the science of smell. Very interesting, although not as endearing as the dog-related material. For example, consider the difficulty of olfaction research, just in the lack of a standard smell quantity. Vision can be broken down into light wavelengths; sound into pressure waves. With smell, we are groping for the language to explain the experience. That smell when the pot boils over and the vegetable water burns on the stove. Wet dog. Pencil shavings. Asparagus.
There is a lot of content about the science of smell. Very interesting, although not as endearing as the dog-related material. For example, consider the difficulty of olfaction research, just in the lack of a standard smell quantity. Vision can be broken down into light wavelengths; sound into pressure waves. With smell, we are groping for the language to explain the experience. That smell when the pot boils over and the vegetable water burns on the stove. Wet dog. Pencil shavings. Asparagus.
April 29, 2018
I always knew that animals were better "smellers" than people. It is very obvious that their noses are different than humans but to what extent? Well I guess I never really gave it much thought. But in this book, not only does Alexandra Horowitz explain the anatomical differences between animal and human but also the big differences in dogs' smelling abilities compared to other animals. And she does it in a most interesting manner. All dogs are extraordinary smellers, if we let them be dogs. And we too can be smellers, no where close to dogs, but nevertheless good enough to enjoy a new perspective of the world. This book not only explains dog's phenomenal "sense of smell" but also the many valuable ways their smell "superpowers" are being utilized.
February 6, 2018
I could read A.Horowitz’s descriptions about dogs forever and never tire of them. She is poetic and precise and insightful. I loved anything that talked about how dogs smell, how scent detection dogs are trained, how we are constantly un-training our pet dogs. This book fell flat for me in Horowitz’s descriptions of her own smell journey. This lasted multiple chapters in the middle of the book. When this book stopped talking about dogs directly, I put it down for a few weeks before coming back. The second or third to last chapter on appreciating wine through was fascinating.
* Listened to on audiobook. Read by the author (who has a lovely, easy-to-follow presentation).
* Listened to on audiobook. Read by the author (who has a lovely, easy-to-follow presentation).
January 17, 2023
This one was disappointing in the way I don't think it did merit a whole book. It could have been a chapter on another book (which it already was), because after explaining to us how the dog's nose works, how they are more olfactory than visual and some very interesting tidbits, the author launches into explanations in how she tried to smell the world as her dogs, and on explanations about how dogs are trained to use their noses to seek diferent scents, which would have been better IMO if we got the training with a few anecdotes instead of all the conversations she had with the specialists on the area...
December 3, 2025
Listened via audiobook on a road trip. The title is a little misleading (though the subtitle helps)—it is as much about the human nose as the dog nose, and I would have liked to learn even more science about what dogs are able to smell and how they experience that. And some of the fields where humans do our most refined smelling—perfumery and wine—aren’t that interesting to me. But I still learned a lot about noses and smells, was inspired to use my own nose more and try to refine my sense of smell, and will look at my dog differently as he endlessly sniffs his world.
April 11, 2017
If you like dogs, and wonder about their behaviors and abilities, then this book is for you. Everyone knows that dogs' sense of smell is far superior to humans'. But did you know, for example, that a dog trained to find whale poop (which will only float in the ocean for 30 minutes) can locate it from a boat? This book, while not a page turner, is fascinating.
March 13, 2021
Fascinating insight into how smell works, and how dogs smell. I think reduced stars are mainly because I've read a lot of nonfiction lately and I'm saturated. But this is still really well written and interesting. I am also sniff smelling more often, and recalling how weird it was to lose ALL smell when I had covid-19, so added Future-World problem.
January 20, 2019
Although I read this book very slowly - I thoroughly enjoyed learning about our sense of smell. Loved the adventure of seeing the world through a dog's nose! Learned a lot about my dog's natural behaviors. I accept the sniff challenge : )
February 7, 2017
Alexandra Horowitz of Barnard College’s Dog Cognition Lab writes as well as she smells. That’s not a comment on her scent, but on her ability to smell, her olfactory processes. More to the point, she not only can “sniff out” a story and style it intelligently and humorously, but can enlighten her reader about the gift of the sense of smell, the power of sniffing, olfaction and the brain, and the incredible ways in which dogs’ “nosework” serves human needs. Even wafts of old books and literary allusions arise from her pages, giving them a full-bodied fragrance.
In Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell, Horowitz’s humorous imagery and pithy observations (such as calling dogs’ inclination to urinate on fireplugs “pee-mailing” and “hot dogs can’t smell much”), become verbal treats, rewarding us for receiving training on a subject too few of us value. She’s equally diligent in explaining and documenting the science behind olfaction and development of detection skills. And while the training is thorough and perception-altering, it is rather easily acquired—especially if you have a dog in your life that you can observe while following Horowitz’s journey into scent detection, inhalation, and snoots and “snortles.”
You should punctuate your reading of this delightful book with dog walks, the kind where you let your dog walk you and follow his/her lead more often than not. Flare those nostrils, engage in deep and satisfying sniffing, learn to “see the world nose first” a la Horowitz, and in so doing, enrich your own life as well as your relationship with your canine friend. (Rolling around in the grass while you do so is optional, but highly recommended).
-Cindy
In Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell, Horowitz’s humorous imagery and pithy observations (such as calling dogs’ inclination to urinate on fireplugs “pee-mailing” and “hot dogs can’t smell much”), become verbal treats, rewarding us for receiving training on a subject too few of us value. She’s equally diligent in explaining and documenting the science behind olfaction and development of detection skills. And while the training is thorough and perception-altering, it is rather easily acquired—especially if you have a dog in your life that you can observe while following Horowitz’s journey into scent detection, inhalation, and snoots and “snortles.”
You should punctuate your reading of this delightful book with dog walks, the kind where you let your dog walk you and follow his/her lead more often than not. Flare those nostrils, engage in deep and satisfying sniffing, learn to “see the world nose first” a la Horowitz, and in so doing, enrich your own life as well as your relationship with your canine friend. (Rolling around in the grass while you do so is optional, but highly recommended).
-Cindy
October 3, 2016
reflections: I've always been fascinated by the dog's power of scent. My favorite mystery book series 20 years ago was the Bloodhound series by Virginia Lanier. I've enjoyed other books about dog scent ability: What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs by Cat Warren and Elle & Coach: Diabetes, the Fight for My Daughter's Life, and the Dog Who Changed Everything.
Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell is the newest on the list. Have you ever wondered why a dog rolls around in the dirt? Or wondered why sniffing pee is so important to a dog?
Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor specializing in canine cognition, tells us about her two dogs and experiments. One experiment involved a motion detector camera on a post in the middle of a park to see how often dogs return there to pee and/or sniff.
The title Being a Dog also examines how humans (specifically the author) can be more like a dog in smelling and sniffing things. Because Horowitz is a professor, some of her paragraphs are a bit too textbook-like. The topic of scents, however, is still intriguing.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the privilege of reading this book.
Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell is the newest on the list. Have you ever wondered why a dog rolls around in the dirt? Or wondered why sniffing pee is so important to a dog?
Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor specializing in canine cognition, tells us about her two dogs and experiments. One experiment involved a motion detector camera on a post in the middle of a park to see how often dogs return there to pee and/or sniff.
The title Being a Dog also examines how humans (specifically the author) can be more like a dog in smelling and sniffing things. Because Horowitz is a professor, some of her paragraphs are a bit too textbook-like. The topic of scents, however, is still intriguing.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the privilege of reading this book.
November 20, 2016
Brilliant! Alexandra is so smart, brave, creative, funny & able to express it well. I've enjoyed all of her books & this one was the best yet. Life-changing even (especially having read her other 2 books). I have always given my pup free reign to smell & watched his explorations with mild interest but now I am smelling more things myself. I have always loved his barnyard smell but now I know the sweet hay smell comes from his paw pads. Now I know that my cat smells dusty with more of a dirt smell in his paw pads. Now I understand why I no longer smell the incense in the shop where I work, not even when I first walk in the door: my brain has stopped noticing it. I have been remembering my time working at a coffee roastery learning to notice & describe smell & taste -- a difficult thing! I've never lost that interest but I'm paying more attention now. On walks & in crowds I am noticing smells more, actively letting them in. I plan to continue my own exploration & I hope Alexandra keeps writing!
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