BEING A DOG

Written with the same scientific insight and engaging voice as her blockbuster Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz now explains how dogs experience the world through that spectacular organ—the nose—and how we humans can put our own under-used sense of smell to work in surprising ways.

In Being a Dog, Horowitz, a research scientist in the field of dog cognition, explores what the nose knows as never done before by taking an imaginative leap into what it is like to be a dog. Under the tutelage of her family dogs, Finnegan and Upton, Horowitz sets off on a quest to make sense of scents, combining a personal journey of smelling with a tour through the cutting edge and improbable science behind the olfactory abilities of the dog. In addition to speaking to other cognitive researchers and smell experts across the country, Horowitz visits detection-dog trainers and training centers, including 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, as she helps create a “smell-scape” of Brooklyn.

From revealing the spectacular biology of the dog nose, to following a tracking dog being put through his paces and trying herself to become a better smeller, Horowitz covers the topic of noses – both canine and human – from surprising, novel, and always fascinating angles. As we come to understand how rich, complex, and exciting 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 glimpsed or sensed or smelled into the fourth dimension, literally breaking free of their human constraints and understanding smell as never before; that they have, for however fleetingly, been a dog.

Horowitz is an assistant professor of psychology at Barnard College. She has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and has studied the cognition of humans, rhinoceros, bonobos, and dogs. She has researched dogs professionally for eight years. Before her scientific career, she worked as a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster and was on the staff at The New Yorker.