How the Dog Became the Dog

June 27, 2011
Reaching back into murky prehistory to determine just when, where, and how the wolf joined forces with early man to become the domesticated dog we know today has long proven difficult. With this informative account, Derr (Dog's Best Friend) takes on the challenge of untangling the limited, often contradictory findings available from archeological digs and genetic studies to seek the dog's origins. Rejecting the argument once prevalent among biologists, that dogs evolved from wolves that hung around prehistoric villages to scavenge, Derr delineates instead a past in which wolves and humans teamed up to bring down more game and to reap other advantages from each other's company, in a process made inevitable by the similarity of their social natures and pack hunting techniques. Sadly, Derr's envisioning of this ancient friendship falls prey to sentimentality: "I can almost see through the occluded lens of time three wolves lazing outside the cave mouth," begins one hazy scene. And the book's catalogue of prehistory and Neanderthal stomping grounds could do with a bit more focus: some chapters jump around desultorily or lose focus. Still, Derr's real affinity for canines comes through strongly, and the book should appeal to dog lovers with a curiosity about the origins of their favorite companion.

August 1, 2011

Derr (A Dog's History of America, 2004, etc.) explores various scenarios on the road to the long, fruitful relationship between dogs and humans.

"Among the broader population of Pleistocene wolves and human were individuals who by virtue of extreme sociability and curiosity, or both, became best friends and compatriots after encountering each other on the trail," writes the author in this rangy, critically stimulating and warm book. Derr begins with an overview of behavioral and biological experiments and models and theories, which becomes a dirge-like march, perhaps because readers know that he is going to pick many of them apart. So much new information comes in daily regarding dog studies that the ground is always shaky. But there are a number of ideas, backed by research and evidence, which Derr unfolds in a quietly stirring manner. The first is that wolves and humans were drawn together by their mutual sociability and curiosity, and that they stayed together thanks to mutual utility. All evidence places the first dogs at the camps of hunters, so the old notion that humans and dogwolves first made acquaintance around the local dumpster can be laid to rest. "Rather it was an animal capable of forming an active friendship with a creature from another species," and, absent proof otherwise, likely consensual, in response to the needs and desires of both. Indeed, being able to manage anger and fear, control assertiveness and restraint and moderate one's appetite is more wolf than primate behavior. Derr also provides a striking geographical analysis of mixing grounds ("a biological and a cultural process involving two highly mobile species") and enjoyable illustrative scenarios as he imagines specific events taking place.

A transporting slice of dog/wolf thinking that will pique the interest of anyone with a dog in their orbit.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 15, 2011
During the Pleistocene epoch, wolves and humans were drawn to each other out of sociability and curiosity. From these various encounters came the dog. As Derr (A Dog's History of America, 2004) notes in his survey of how dogs became recognizably dogs and not what he calls dogwolves, each species benefits from the relationship. As he synthesizes genetic and archaeological evidence, it becomes clear that the earliest dogs, animals like the one that left its pawprints next to the tracks of an approximately eight-year-old human in France's Chauvet Cave 26,000 years ago, are socialized wolves, dogs that existed genetically before they began to look like dogs. As he follows humans through time, Derr also follows dogs as they went through physical changes and became intimately associated with humans. Throughout, he emphasizes that people define the dog, that the relationship is mutually beneficial, and that those wolves that did not choose to be with humans remained just thatwolves. An essential read for dog lovers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)