Guest Post: the Truth about Cats & Dogs

Dogs have owners; cats have staff. Dogs are man’s best friend; cats are man’s best frenemy. Dogs come when called; cats take a message and get back to you. As long as we’ve had dogs and cats, we’ve had dogs versus cats. Dogs are obedient, loyal, and love unconditionally. Cats are obstinate, fickle, and love […]

The Thankers of LWON

Dear Readers: Writing down our thoughts and feelings is pretty normal for the People of LWON. We’ve even written our thanks before. But this year for Thanksgiving, we wrote our thanks on paper. With our hands. Whoa. Click each image to enlarge.   And to you, Dear Reader: Thank you for reading us. Love, The […]

Dog Days

These are the dog days. Hot as a dog, lazy as a dog, wanting to curl up and take naps like a dog. Please, let us lie, sleeping like them, on these summer afternoons. But the phrase didn’t originate from the habits of our earthly canine companions. Instead, it came from Sirius, the dog star. […]

Guest Post: How Our Pets Domesticated Us

One of the most fascinating tidbits I came across while researching my new book, Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs, concerns the 10,000-year-old village of Shillourokambos. Located on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, the site was once home to an early farming community whose inhabitants stored grain in stone silos and corralled […]

Snark Week: The Rooster and the Puppy

In 2006, a puppy came to live on a small farm in Colorado. His name was Oskar, and he was the runt of the litter. Oskar was a playful little guy, but on one fateful autumn day, he would learn that he was living in the dark shadow of a blood-thirsty assailant. In the days […]

Conan’s Umwelt: How a Dog Sniffs

This is my puppy, Conan, and the reason I’ve been buying a lot of dog books. For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure, dog books are for skimming, not reading. They’re hokey, repetitive, poorly written and peppered with pseudoscience. But Friday I found an exception: Inside of a Dog, a fascinating, science-rich story of how dogs […]

Turning Wolves into Hounds

The morning begins. I’ve been awake a good hour but I’m not really, truly awake until I reach the woods with my husband and our dog Max. In the dappled light of late spring, with soft green leafdom almost enveloping us, we slip him loose from the leash. Max lifts his head. He catches a […]