In “The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves,” dog cognition expert Dr. Alexandra Horowitz digs into puppy behavior to explain why our four-footed friends act the way they do.
is about her first year raising and getting to know her dog, Quiddity. She spoke with WNYC’s Tracie Hunte about why we find puppies so irresistible, why they aren’t blank slates, and why having her own human baby only partially prepared her for having a four-footed newcomer.TRACIE HUNTE: You have all these really sweet ways of describing puppies in the book. Could you tell me what a puppyA puppy is like an early-dog device to bring us into a relationship with dogs.
That was an interesting struggle for me, too, because I'd hoped that it would be clear that there was a dog who was sort of our dog, and it wasn't. People pick a puppy because they look cute, they like them, but that's not enough to decide on. I spent many, many hours over nine weeks, and it still wasn't clear. You're just gonna have to take that leap, and then they'll grow their way into your family.
TH: Whenever anybody talks to me about getting a dog, I automatically tell them do not get a puppy because I feel like that is just a very chaotic thing to bring into your life.I think that's good advice. I did get that advice from a friend of mine, who's a vet. I said, I'm gonna get a puppy when she's very young and I'm gonna watch her from birth. And she said, “Why would you want to do that? That's aidea.
But also, what was her early exposure? She did grow up around a lot of other barking dogs, she was in a very noisy environment; what it means is that I don't have an anxious, aggressive dog towards those things. The reason everybody hates the big puppy breeders, for instance, is that there's no chance of that happening in that kind of context.
And what I think is interesting is that point is usually when we step in. So there's a reason to think that we are substituting as parent figures. But in their little brains, are they thinking about us truly as parents? I really don't know. It's amazing to me, frankly, that they just waltz into human homes and can deal with it, versus so many other animals for which this would all be a gigantic disaster. So they must see us as like them, just as weird bipedal dogs.