Reviews for The Essential Dachshund

The average rating for The Essential Dachshund based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-12-25 00:00:00 Tricia Ott The author is a journalist who is curious about the evolution of the dog. While I am often skeptical about non-fiction books written by non-specialists, this book provides some very interesting speculations about how and why the dog evolved from the wolf. Jon Franklin's hypothesis is that some wolves became "camp followers". They tried to glean food from the leavings of humans. Women would be on the lookout, and go to the wolves to kill one, and bring it back for food. Obviously, the women would not choose a "cute" or relatively friendly wolf, but instead would choose a snarling wolf to club. Over time, the friendliest, cutest wolves would survive among the followers. Thus, it was not a deliberate attempt by humans to domesticate an animal--it was just a fortunate by-product. The author speculates about the interesting coincidence, that modern humans and modern dogs evolved at just about the same epoch, about 12,000 years ago. This may have been due to the retreat of the ice age. At this time, the wolf lost about 20% of its brain volume as it evolved into the dog. Also, our ancestors lost about 20% of their brain volume, as they evolved into modern humans. Franklin speculates that the dog took on some of the tasks that humans gave up, while humans took on some of the tasks that dogs gave up, while each lost some brain mass. In other words, dogs and humans co-evolved, each becoming a species quite different from what would have evolved, had the other not existed. The author relates a story about how his wife's dog literally saved their lives when their house burned down. But, I won't spoil the book by revealing the even-more-important job that dogs perform for humans--read this fascinating book to find out!

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-28 00:00:00 Duane Davis I thought this book would be about the history and domestication of dogs, but it is really more about the author's search to understand his relationship with his dog. It is written by a journalist and has a lot of emotional fluff and very little actual science. I read a little over a third of the book before I gave up. Most of what I had read so far just detailed the author's search, such as going to the library to check out wolf books. Just not enough facts and science for me. Although the writing is good and flows really well, so it is very easy to read.