Win Dog's Best Friend: A Brief History of an Unbreakable Bond

Dog's Best Friend
By Simon Garfield
Orion, $32.99

A charming meditation on the relationship between humans and dogs, drawing upon science, history, art, and personal experience to illuminate a magical bond that has endured millennia from the New York Times bestselling author of Just My Type.

Ludo is now an elderly gentleman, and we would do almost anything to ensure his continued happiness. We schedule our days around his needs, his mealtimes, his walks, the delivery of his life-saving medication (he has epilepsy, poor love). We spend a bizarrely large amount of our disposable income on him, and he never sends a card of thanks. When he's not with us for a few days, the house feels extraordinarily empty. I feel so fortunate to know him.

Ludo is a dog, Simon Garfield's beloved black Labrador retriever, one of millions of canines who have become integral parts of human lives. But how did the dog become top dog? How did these faithful animals come to assist us not only in hunting, but in bomb disposal and cancer detection and ultimately become our closest companions? Dog's Best Friend examines how this bond developed over the centuries, and how it has transformed countless lives, both human and canine.

Garfield begins with the earliest visual representations dogs depicted in ancient rock art and ends at the laboratory that first sequenced the canine genome. Along the way, he offers lively portraits of the legendary Corgis of Buckingham Palace, the dogs of the Soviet space program, the world's first labradoodle, a border collie that can identify more than a thousand different plush toys, and modern First Dogs, including Millie Bush and Bo Obama. Garfield introduces us to the best dog trainers who share their secrets, surveys the wild world of dog breeding and dog shows, and unearths the deep psychological roots of the human-dog link. Charmingly, Ludo pops his snout in from time to time as well.

A celebration of this deep interspecies connection, delivered in Simon Garfield's inimitable, disarmingly witty British style, Dog's Best Friend offers delights and insights for every dog and animal lover.