November 22, 2022

E11 Dog geekery: A Dog's World - Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans. A conversation with Marc Bekoff.

37 minutes

Canine nerd level: 1/3 (for pet and companion dog owners)

C talks with evolutionary biologist and ethologist Marc Bekoff about A Dog's World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans. C's translation of this book was recently released in German, and they took this opportunity to invite Marc on the podcast!

By the way: I would also love to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to two Austrian dog training colleagues who happen to be biologists, Christian Holeček and Bettina Wernisch! Thank you for helping me find the correct German equivalents for the scientific terms in the English book! You both rock!

Marc shares about living with dogs in the mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado, and C challenges the argument that dogs would be able to learn how to hunt cooperatively. Marc, of course, has lots of answers to get all of us thinking.

The bottom line of the book, and the note we end on, is really about pet and companion dogs in a world with humans: dogs don't love us unconditionally! And giving them a soft bed and veterinary care may not be enough. We end with a number of tips about easy ways of increasing your pet dog's freedom at home or on a walk around the block.

For further reflections on my conversation with Marc - I realized we were coming at the topic from surprisingly different angles! - check out my blog post here:

https://chrissisdogtraining.com/reflections-on-my-conversation-with-marc-bekoff/

Get in touch with Marc:

https://marcbekoff.com/

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Pierce, Jessica and Bekoff, Marc. A Dog's World - Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans. Princeton University Press, 2021.

Pierce, Jessica and Bekoff, Marc. Die Welt der Hunde - ein Gedankenexperiment (the German version of the same book), Kynos, 2022.

Stephen, Spotte. Societies of Wolves and Free-ranging Dogs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Gompper, Matthew E. Free-Ranging Dogs and Wildlife Conservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Roberto Bonnani is mentioned as the author of a paper on the behavior of free-ranging dogs outside the Rome airport. I could not track down the specific paper, but searching for Bonanni's name will give you several different papers on free-ranging dogs if you want to dig deeper!

Get in touch with C:

www.chrissisdogtraining.com

chrissi.schranz [at] gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/chrissi.schranz/

https://www.instagram.com/adogisabondbetweenstrangers/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJJREwVukr_0qMsU5MLt9OA

Thank you ...

Thank you to Lesfm for providing our royalty-free intro, en-tro and outro music, and to Isabelle Grubert for designing the show logo!

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