Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s The Old Way: A Story of the First People, about Kalahari hunter-gatherers, came out last October. She is the author of The Hidden Life of Dogs and The Social Lives of Dogs: The Grace of Canine Company.
The dog/human bond, for all its importance, is one of the least examined relationships in Western culture. To some, a dog is merely an object, there to perform a function such as pulling a sled or guarding a property, to be discarded when no longer useful. To others, a dog is a stand-in, for a child to cherish or an enemy to abuse. To still others, a dog is like a body part –...
The problem is this: we often form representations of the subjective life of animals. What are we up to when we do so?
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