From St. George and the Dragon, a poem about assembling a jigsaw puzzle of it, that figures the future career of Hearne:

My task was to find the sharp / Silver lines of the horse's / Head, noble, yet bent to the / Saint's hand, but I've discovered /

The piece with the Jewel of / The Brow to be forever / Lost. I didn't lose it, but / The group has charged me to find / It anyway. Ed insists / That with that piece the horse's / Version of the matter, his / Fearful and trustful glance toward / St. George, stands revealed, and that, / For now at least, the horse's / Truth is ours, that without the / Horse's vision the Saint's is / Lost to us...

This is another boonie dog book review by Wolfie and Kansas. When we heard the title of Andrea Mohin's book of photographs, "New York Dogs", we thought it was more than a little oxymoronic. After all, how could dogs adapt to New York City? Imagine spending most of your life stuck in a small apartment, never being able to run free in the jungle chasing wild chickens, having humans follow you with a pooper scooper whenever you go for a stroll. When our noncanine animal companions of primate derivation first adopted Wolfie, they lived in an apartment complex in semi-urbanized Tamuning. Wolfie promptly ate the blinds, dug up flowers, barked at caniphobic neighbors, made messes in the neighbors' parking stalls, and forced our humans to spend their life savings to buy a house with a large yard bordering the boonies in Toto.

We were surprised to find that most of the dogs pictured in Ms. Mohin's book appear happy and healthy in their urban environment. Ms. Mohin's introductory essay also makes New York City seem reasonably hospitable for dogs. After seeing "New York Dogs", we've decided that maybe the Big Apple is not such a bad place after all: all those cars to chase; all those dumpsters and garbage cans to raid; and all those dogs in Ms. Mohin's pictures whom we'd like to meet. We still would not want to live in New York, but this book has convinced us that it might not be a bad place to visit (if we could get around the stupid quarantine laws.

I respect Vicki Hearne, I like this book. Bandit, and his case that Vicki fought for so well was a very important watermark in exposing the myths and half truths that cause so many local authorities accross the country to blindly deem certain breeds of dogs as dangerous. I want to love this book because of this, however, for me the book was to difficult to read. Vicki uses extremely complicated sentence structure and seems to enjoy putting the reader through the wringer before she makes her point. I had to come back to this book a few times to finish it. I believe this is a story we all should be aware of, unfortunately the style of writing alienates it from a good deal of it's prospective audience. If you're well read, go for it, if not just expect to go through a mental obstacle course before the book is finished!

This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the problem of biting dogs. It is extremely well-written, researched, referenced, and very informative.

My one reservation is that the author advocates the use of choke-collar training. There is so much to be gained from modern psychology and operant conditioning when training an animal. Pain in animal training is totally obsolete.

But this one small quibble doesn't spoil an otherwise engaging and thought provoking read! Very few fiction or non-fiction dog books can hold a candle to this one in scholarship and quality of writing.You will need to read it at least twice to absorb all the subtleties.

An extended and beautifully written book on an insight of Hannah Arendt's, that goodness that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil.

Emmanuel Levinas, at the end of an essay on Heidegger's Nazism, ``The diabolical is not limited to the wickedness popular wisdom ascribes to it and whose malice, based on guile, is familiar and predictable in an adult culture. The diabolical is endowed with intelligence and enters where it will. To reject it, it is first necessary to refute it. Intellectual effort is needed to recognize it. Who can boast of having done so? Say what you will, the diabolical gives food for thought.''

This book is some of that intellectual effort towards the future of dogs.

As an ex-shepherd, I found Ms. Hearne was often right on the mark in describing the strange relationships one must develop with animals to effectively train them. She does a good job of describing the personalities of a wide variety of animals - especially in the first half of the book. Human language can feel terribly inadequate when talking about the minds of animals, but she manages to help you understand a particular dog or horse without getting too anthropomorphic.

Alas, the book has some very long and uninspired philosophical rants. These can be very repetitious. Sometimes Ms. Hearne seems infatuated with her own cleverness in using language than to have a serious concern about saying anything.

So this book has some nuggets in it if your willing to wade through the prolix.

This is a fabulous book of essays on animal behavior and our humble, fumbling attempts to understand just what "animal happiness" entails. MS. Hearne is both an animal trainer and a philosopher and, in this book, as well as "Bandit" and "Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name", she distinguishes herself as a quirky original thinker in both domains.

How sad to see this bit of sadistic thuggery reissued. This is a book about the poetic joys of torturing dogs. One sample: Hearne describes how she helped her dog dig a hole, while dancing playfully around with the dog, filled the hole with water, still acting playful with the dog, then suddenly, without any warning, forced the dog's head under water and subjected her to near drowning. What the dog must have thought of that hideous and incomprehensible betrayal I cannot even begin to imagine. And yet reviewers prattle on about what a lovely book this is. I think dogs would disagree. The book is also nauseatingly pretentious.

I would like first to praise Donald McCaig for his entrancing introduction to Adam's Task. As I began the book I soon felt that Mr. McCaig had not read it after all. In the first chapter alone there were seventeen undocumented names scattered through a syncitium of undisciplined prose. Pedantics masquerading as wisdom paint a sorry picture of the writer. Pretentions to culture separate the sheep from the goats (sic.) winning the praises of its worshipers, and alienating the more clairvoyant. I am reminded of a biochemist who lectured biochemistry to physicians, and medical bioethics with biochemists, thus putting himself beyond critical examination by either. Name dropping is not scholarship. Endless, many-branching sentences are not good writing. Hearne is pretentious in both areas, and seemingly grossly ignorant of both. I, too, am an animal. I identify with them. I even believe they are as entitled to souls as are humans. Indeed, American Indians, who saw the life ebb out of each kill, were poignantly aware of that fellowship. Mrs. Hearne has only muddied the waters.

This is one of my favorite books of all time.

Vicki Hearne - animal trainer, poet, and philosopher - talks about her relationship with the working animals she trains. She presents her philosophies by illustrating them with stories of animals she has trained.

If you have deep respect for animal intelligence, this book will confirm and deepen your beliefs.

Training, she says, is the creation of a shared language. But language has many ambiguities. For example, trainers haven't a clue what the world smells like to a dog, for whom "scenting" is a primary sense. Yet humans and dogs can learn to work together across the gap of their differences by coming to share the vocabulary of trained scent work.

Animal training, says Hearne, is as challenging for the trainer as it is for the animal. Trainers must learn humility, and learn to communicate in new ways. For example, horses take in information through touch and are extremely sensitive to the motions of the rider. Once a trainer comes to understand this (and other things about horses), she or he can begin to understand the way a horse understands its world and its self.

Of course I don't do justice to the book by summarizing a few of its philosophical points! Hearne writes gracefully, and shows a great mastery of a variety of disciplines - psychology, philosophy, literature, animal training. Her anecdotes make the philosophy much easier to understand, and the philosophy makes the implications of the anecdotes much richer.

The chief interest of the dog and trainer story is how such a great writer could write it. Why did nobody say, ``Vicki, this is awful.''

The sex scene is particularly obligatory.

Back to poetry and philosophy and training!