As I was reading Tommy Tomlinson’s Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show, something delightful and ridiculous—at least in name—stuck its long schnoz into my lap, demanding pets. It was our silken windhound, a real breed (at least UKC recognized), bred mostly from borzois and whippets to create a smaller borzoi. And sure, Archie’s hair is sweetly soft, and he can run like the wind with that double suspension gallop that sighthounds share, but c’mon. Silken windhound?
That is all to say I’m not going to be objective in the least writing about Tomlinson’s book, for I’m a dog person through and through.
Of course I’m not alone in that canine love. Tomlinson informs us there’s one dog for every four people in the U.S., just one of the many well-researched tidbits he sprinkles like pills of information hidden inside all the other treats of the book that explore, well, happiness of all things. When he runs through the possible ways wolves evolutionarily decided to play nice with humans—there’s a debate—he ends “we domesticated dogs, and they domesticated us.”
Care to read the rest then do at California Review of Books.
Review also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on August 2, 2024.
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