I've wanted to mention a book that I've been reading: The Hidden Life of Dogs by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. It really does illuminate the fact that dogs (and all animals) are sentient beings which until a few years ago seemed to be an unidentified concept. For most of my life I always heard that scientific understanding was that most of our perceptions about dogs and cats was were misplaced projections of our own emotions, etc. Having always had an emotional and spiritual connection with my pets I never understood this theory.
This book really does explain dog consciousness, from the dog's perspective. I read a book a couple of years ago which was similar and really introduced me to this subject. The book was titled The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy - and Why They Matter by Marc Bekoff.
The book I'm reading now The Hidden Life of Dogs is quite interesting and includes the author's multi-year observations about her large menagerie of pugs, Huskies, even a dingo. She also spent a great deal of time on Baffin Island observing wolves and draws a lot of parallels between her two different study groups.
I really think both of these books are great reading and I hope you will all try at least one. Bottom line though is that our pets really are "our peeps" (our people) as I like to say. Any animal owner probably knows this but both of these books reinforce your intuition.
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