What was your biggest takeaway from this experience? AH: The most surprising thing about using my nose was realizing how little I typically smelled to begin with. LJ: Being a Dog discusses using your nose to inhabit the world as a dog does. Conducting research and learning how to rely on her own sense of smell, the author took a nosedive into the canine domain to understand a dog’s point of view. 107), Barnard College professor Alexandra Horowitz points out that for these animals, the olfactory sense is essential. But in her latest title, Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell (Scribner, see review, LJ 10/15/16, p. Readers will finish this book feeling that they have glimpsed or sensed or smelled into the fourth dimension, literally breaking free of their human constraints and understanding smell as never before that they have, for however fleetingly, been a dog.To most dog owners, pets who insist on sniffing every fire hydrant and tree are nuisances. As we come to understand how rich, complex, and exciting the world around us appears to the canine nose, Horowitz changes our perspective on dogs forever. From revealing the spectacular biology of the dog nose, to following a tracking dog being put through his paces and trying herself to become a better smeller, Horowitz covers the topic of noses - both canine and human - from surprising, novel, and always fascinating angles. Under the tutelage of her family dogs, Finnegan and Upton, Horowitz sets off on a quest to make sense of scents, combining a personal journey of smelling with a tour through the cutting edge and improbable science behind the olfactory abilities of the dog. In Being a Dog, Horowitz, a research scientist in the field of dog cognition, explores what the nose knows as never done before by taking an imaginative leap into what it is like to be a dog. To a dog, there is no such thing as 'fresh air.' Every gulp of air is full of information.

By smelling, tapping into this sensory resource that we have but that we largely ignore, the dog has become an informant. It is rich in a way we humans once knew something about, once even acted on, but have since neglected.

What the dog sees and knows comes mostly through his nose, and the information that every dog has about the world based on smell is unthinkably rich. Alexandra Horowitz's runaway bestseller Inside of a Dog began a movement among dog owners to not just quietly accept and enjoy the presence of the pooch at their sides, but to wonder at that dog, and let him show us how he sees the world, and what he knows.

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