Marc Bekoff & Jessica Pierce 
Unleashing Your Dog 
A Field Guide to Giving Your Canine Companion the Best Life Possible

No matter how cushy their lives, dogs live on our terms. They compromise their freedom and instinctual pleasure, as well as their innate strategies for coping with stress and anxiety, in exchange for the love, comfort, and care they get from us. But it is possible to let dogs be dogs without wreaking havoc on our lives, as biologist Marc Bekoff and bioethicist Jessica Pierce show in this fascinating book. They begin by illuminating the true nature of dogs and helping us “walk in their paws.” They reveal what smell, taste, touch, sight, and hearing mean to dogs and then guide readers through everyday ways of enhancing dogs’ freedom in safe, mutually happy ways. The rewards, they show, are great for dog and human alike.

Table of Content

Part One: Canine Captives

What Does “Being Captive” Mean?

Unleashing Dogs, Enhancing Freedoms

Becoming Fluent in Dog

Walking in Their Paws

Giving Dogs the Best Possible Lives



Part Two: The Field Guide to Freedoms: Exercising and Enhancing the Senses

SMELL



Sniffing

Peeing

Rolling in Stinky Stuff

Scent Identity: Dog perfumes, shampoos, deodorants

Olfactory Overload: Can there be too much of a good thing?

Butts: A critical canine communication center

Burps, Gas, and Dog Breath



TASTE



Let Them Eat Pasta

A Detour into the Dog’s “Second Nose”

Eating Gross Stuff: Tasting the Wild

Drooling

The Joys of Working for Food

How Food Is Offered

Obesity

Chewing



TOUCH



Mediating How Dogs Sense the World Through Touch: Walking, Collaring, Leashing

Walking as Shared Time, Mutual Tolerance, or Power Struggle

Off Leash Time

Friends

Petting

Hugging and Licking

Whiskers

Together Time

Alone Time



SIGHT



Dog-Dog Interactions

Tales about Tails

Losing a Tail

Speaking with Ears

Emotionally Intelligent Dogs

Your Dog Is Watching You



HEARING



Barks and Growls

Whining and Whimpering

Baby-talking Our Dogs

Quiet Time

Noise Phobias

Audible for Dogs




Play: A Kaleidoscope of the Senses
The State and Future of Dogs
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Notes

About the author

The author or editor of thirty books,
Marc Bekoff, Ph D, is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a former Guggenheim fellow. The author of ten books and hundreds of articles,
Jessica Pierce, Ph D, is faculty affiliate at the University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities.