I read this book after reading Berns's first book about dog imaging (How Dogs Love Us) to see what else he learned. It was interesting to see how those initial fMRI studies with dogs led him to also do imaging in the brains of other large animal species, including sea lions, dolphins, and Tasmanian devils and tigers. So there is a lot of comparative anatomy and big picture thinking about how different brains are configured and what that means about the life and dignity of each species. I found one of the most delightful chapters to be the one entitled: Why a Brain? More wonderful big picture thinking.

"Animals have brains to tailor their actions to their environment.
In other words, animals do not exist in isolation. They are embedded in the world around them, and part of the function of a brain is to link the external world to the animal’s decision-making system, and ultimately, its body."

This book does add to his the body of data trying to understand what your dog is thinking and experiencing, but it is so much more than that. Maybe so much so that the main title is a bit deceiving and may be disappointing to many. It was all interesting to me and I'm glad to have read both books.

I'm really disappointed with this one. I LOVED Berns's first book on animal neuroscience, "How Dogs Love Us," but this one just really missed the mark. While the summary does say that the book discusses a variety of animals, for a book that features dogs in the title, he focuses very little on the dog project itself compared to the previous book. I enjoyed the sections where they explored new avenues for dog brain scanning, but otherwise the sections on other animals were interesting at times but felt very disjointed and without a coherent order to them. The section on the Tasmanian Tiger featured a narrative from the perspective of the last known Tasmanian Tiger and a zookeeper that just felt completely out of place. And the final chapter just completely devolves into a bizarre rant about gene editing and the ethics of future human evolution that just absolutely did not fit in the book. I'm really bummed as I loved the first book and really support the idea of his research, but Berns completely missed the mark with this one.

I started this book while in a class on Dog Psychology with Dr. Berns. We were only assigned a few chapters, so I decided it would be time to read it the whole way through. It was a worthwhile decision, because I got to learn about so many other animal brain stories.

It was refreshing to once again be immersed in the terminology of neuroscience and brain studied. The book’s language is also very accessible and would not be a hard read for someone unfamiliar with the topics involved.

This book also showed Dr. Berns’ iconoclastic personality and approach, which ironically is the name of another of his books. Which will likely be my next read, after How Dogs Love Us and his new book The Self Delusion.

I loved this book - I found it fascinating and I think anyone like me, with a massive interest in how animals work, and how we can help them, will also find this fascinating.

I did however find a few bits a bit boring, if that is the right word, for my level of knowledge about this subject, I did find quite a few bits where I started to drift because I couldn't fully understand the details. But, the whole book in general wasn't boring at all and I learnt a lot. About animals, about the brain, about organisations set up around the world to help animals, even about animals that I thought I already knew quite a lot about and that was what I was hoping for when I read this book.

There's no straight answer to what it's like to be a dog, and I think the title is rather misleading, but I agree with it, because what Gregory has been doing all equals up to one thing, what it's like to be a dog. To understand dogs, and many other animals, in ways we never have before. To give them a voice, a voice that they need so badly right now.

It may be a bit over the top to say this, I don't think so, but when I finished this book, the first thing I felt was proud. Proud that there's people out there that are still, and will for as long as they can, fighting for the animals. People who know that animals need to be as equal as us and it's honestly so heartwarming to know that.

I hope that this book gets read by everyone, so that people can learn to understand why we need to help animals before it's too late.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When this book came across my desk, I was instantly intrigued. Show me a dog lover who hasn't wondered what their dog is thinking? This book didn't strictly answer that question (blame the publisher for picking a catchy name that doesn't represent the content), but did present some fascinating science. If you're interested in the intersection between neuroscience, animal behavior and language, them this will be an interesting read.