A Yale University podcast devoted to exploring the big questions animals raise about what it means to be human.
Ep. 49 – Dog Cognition Expert Alexandra Horowitz on the Quiddity of Puppies
Most books about puppies are dog-improvement manuals, guiding readers on ‘How to Raise the Perfect Dog’ or how to achieve ‘Perfect Puppy in 7 Days.’ Dr. Alexandra Horowitz‘s profound and totally delightful new book is not that type of book. It’s an unprecedented look at the complex, overlooked, and often hilarious journeys of puppies becoming themselves.
Horowitz spent a year studying the science of how puppies grow up while closely observing the development of her own new family member, Quid. “Instead of following an instruction manual for a puppy, I wanted to follow the puppy: through introductions to a new world, meeting suspicious older dogs, a playful feline with long claws, and an adolescent boy who, in his enthusiasms and energy, bridges the world between dog and human,” writes Horowitz. “By slowing down to observe the changes in our new charge from week to week, I hoped to make new sense of the dog’s behavior in a way that is missed in a focus only on training.” Photo courtesy of Alexandra Horowitz.
“Instead of following an instruction manual for a puppy, I wanted to follow the puppy,” she writes. The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget famously watched his own three children grow into adults and his observations of them helped inspire many of his theories about how young human minds develop. Horowitz, a world-renowned expert in dog cognition, set out to do the same for her family’s spectacularly eye-browed, exquisitely sensitive, and rambunctious new bearded lady, Quiddity. In The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves, Horowitz observes, documents, and revels in the first year of Quid’s life from her birth on Day One through the puppy equivalents of infancy, childhood, and adolescence.
Horowitz is a bestselling author of multiple books on dogs, the host of the podcast Off Leash, and the founder and leader of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. She combines deep scientific expertise with the doggedness of an investigative reporter, the gift and imagination of a master storyteller, and the infectious enthusiasm of, well, a puppy. She has devoted her career to trying to answer the question, “what is it like to be a dog?,” and has inspired people around the world to try to better understand the complex inner lives of our closest four-legged companions. In this podcast episode, we spoke with Horowitz about the science of puppyhood, how Quid is enjoying her big literary debut, and what we have to learn from trying to understand how puppies encounter and make meaning of the world.
In The Year of the Puppy, Horowitz compares the development of young dogs and young humans. On the topic of dogs’ often downplayed communication abilities, she writes: “When a researcher (or parent) gushes over the creativity of a two-year-old child’s ability to put together words in a novel way, to express a new meaning—water plus bird for a duck, say—I smile, nod my head agreeably, and remember the moment that Quid put together two actions—walking over to the stairs to our bedroom, and looking at us—to express a new meaning: I need to pee. I’m just sayin’.”
In February 2022, Horowitz wrote an obituary for her late dog, Finnegan, in The New York Times. “As with anybody who has lost an animal who has been part of their life, they are still very much with you,” Horowitz told us. “You still are thinking about them all the time. There’s a lot of grief. In some places grief is not even normalized or allowed, but I think more and more it is. And you want to do something with that energy … I think obituaries serve that purpose. They are a public acknowledgement of a loss and the grief and the people who have been touched by that person, or in this case, that animal. And so I thought, why could that not exist for Finn, even if it were just for myself, right, to write something down as something to do with that energy and love?” Photo by Vegar Abelsnes.
Quiddity sniffs out the results. Photo courtesy of Alexandra Horowitz.
