Roger Caras, former reporter on pets and wildlife for ABC-TV, loves animals and it shows in this book.

After prefatory pieces, which include a history of the domestication of the dog, six chapters celebrate the keen senses of the dog.

Deftly, like a good yarn, he employs anecdotes of his own dogs as observed in the house or outside of his "office shack" at his Thistle Hill Farm Home.

For instance, possessing acute hearing but a morbid fear of thunderstorms, his Newfoundland on a remote ramble is driven most directly back to home -- smashing through windows entering, and then leaving, a neighbor's house which stands in his path, only to arrive home without a scratch.

In other chapers, Caras celebrates dogs' intense capacity to love and be loved by owners, however unlovable and even when mankind has given up on that individual.

The author also ponders whether dogs can think. Other chapters explore the evolution of the dog, of the dog as hunter with primordial man and the reluctant, modern classes into which dogs can be grouped.

The joy in this book will be obvious to dog lovers, who already understand that the joy received from a dog must be shared.

Reviewed by Donald M. Hines
Great Eagle Publishing, Inc.
Issaquah, WA.

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