Abstract: This is the most complete book on dogs I have ever encountered — not a scientific one, but one based on state-of-the-art scientific knowledge and experience. It’s no wonder because Ádám Miklósi and his group are the leading researchers in dog behaviour, cognition and dog–human companionship. Vilmos Csányi, József Topál and Ádám Miklósi established the ‘Family Dog Project’ at the Budapest Eötvös Loránd University in 1994 (https://familydogproject.elte.hu/). Ever since, biologists and psychologists, together with many PhD students and postdocs, have produced hundreds of influential peer-reviewed publications and a few books. Their work has profoundly changed how scientists and laypersons alike view dogs and human–dog relationships, both as a consequence of their unique approaches and results, and also because research on dogs is particularly eagerly received by international science journalism. Actually, Ádám Miklósi (who can be seen in a picture on page 166, together with Zsófia Virányi and her dog Todor) had the role of an editor for this book, integrating the contributions of his Budapest peers: Tamás Faragó, Claudia Fugazza, Márta Gácsi, Enikö Kubinyi, Péter Pongrácz, and József Topál. These colleagues were also key in successfully pioneering the use of privately kept (‘pet’) dogs in science, despite widespread scepticism with regard to the animals’ potential value as research subjects. This initial reservation may, on the one hand, have been rooted in the old prejudice that domesticated animals would be the genetically and behaviourally ‘degenerate’ version of their wild counterparts. Today, mainstream scientists agree that the process of domestication adapts animals to live with humans. In the case of dogs, we can see that this can be an exceedingly successful strategy, as up to 1 billion dogs roam the Earth today compared with only 200,000 wolves. On the other hand, the resistance against dogs as subjects came from widespread doubts that these animals, which are kept privately in the most non-standardised way one could think of, could be any good for serious science. This was of course a misunderstanding because the proper, ‘standard’ way of dog keeping is in companionship with people, rather than in seemingly standardised lab settings. Finally, working with pet dogs was also a clever move for doing high-quality science using comparatively low-cost subjects. Actually, the initial scepticism from the scientific community also quickly vanished because of the obvious relevance of dogs and their long-standing relationship with humans. The Budapest group even argues that the social adaptation of dogs towards humans over thousands of years makes them valid research models for studies of human cognition and sociality. Such caninocentric scientific optimism is not shared by all colleagues in the field. Still, the example set by the Budapest group sprouted a wealth of pet-dog research all over the world (https://bit.ly/2JDLNbM), and caused the number of publications to skyrocket. The book starts with the usual pages of introductory tone-setting, which are, however, a bit moderate for a popular book, particularly in the light of the mindboggling wealth of knowledge that has accumulated over the past few years regarding the importance of dogs to our understanding of people. In fact, the authors could have done a more impressive job in making clear that dog keeping in modern, urbanised societies is not an atavism but is functionally important for a number of reasons; worldwide, dog keeping is not “steady or decreasing” as stated on page 11, but, to the contrary, it seems to be increasing. This somewhat sceptical distancing from the importance of dogs as human companions sets the unexcited tone of this book. On the one hand, this makes it good reading for people other than hard-core dog enthusiasts, but on the other hand this is a missed opportunity, the more so because the book attempts to offer no answer for why dogs have been, and are, so important to people. There is no mention of the concept of ‘biophilia’ [1Wilson E.O. Biophilia. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA1984Crossref Google Scholar], and the increasing scientific evidence for the beneficial effects of living together with dogs (summarised in [2Julius H. Beetz A. Kotrschal K. Turner D. Uvnäs-Moberg K. Attachment to Pets: An Integrative View of Human–Animal Relationships with Implications for Therapeutic Practice. Hogrefe Publishing, Göttingen and Cambridge, MA2012Google Scholar, 3Kotrschal K. Hund & Mensch: Das Geheimnis Unserer Seelenverwandtschaft. Brandstätter Verlag, Wien2016Google Scholar, 4Kotrschal K. How wolves turned into dogs and how dogs are valuable in meeting human social needs.People and Animals. 2018; 1 (Article 6)Google Scholar]) is only lightly touched on (pp. 154–155). Chapter 1 offers a crisp and revealing account of ‘dog evolution and ecology’. For those who are not familiar with the recent literature, it may appear confusing that the estimates for the emergence of dogs vary from 30,000 to 15,000 years ago. Based on the available genetic and archaeological evidence, and on the fact that much of the recent C14-dating needs to be re-calibrated [5Shipman P. The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA2015Crossref Google Scholar], the estimates are too conservative anyway. A realistic and informed guess for the start of ‘dogification’ would be some 30,000–35,000 years ago. Also, information on modern-dog grouping [6Parker H.G. Dreger D.L. Rimbault M. Davis B.W. Mullen A.B. Carpintero-Ramirez G. Ostrander E.A. Genomic analyses reveal the influence of geographic origin, migration, and hybridization on modern dog breed development.Cell Rep. 2017; 19: 697-708Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (181) Google Scholar] is desirable and necessary in the frame of such a book. An even more serious omission is the lack of any information on how, from a relatively uniform wolf type, the wealth of dog shapes and mentalities have emerged. A double page on selection for tameness would have been useful [7Belyaev D.K. Destabilizing selection as a factor in domestication.J. Hered. 1979; 70: 301-308Crossref PubMed Scopus (399) Google Scholar], particularly in the context of Chapter 6 on dog breeds. The latter chapter adds colour to the book and is probably necessary to sell it to the owners of the most popular dog breeds, but it does not contribute much substance. And to call this chapter, which deals with 32 breeds, ‘A Directory of Dog Breeds’ is certainly over the top. Chapter 2, consisting of fewer than 30 pages on dog anatomy and physiology, is generally well done and in the right position in the book. Still, a bit more attention towards these topics would not have hurt. For example, the diagram of dog skin on page 48 is misleading because it shows sweat glands. Dogs do have sweat glands, but these are mainly found in the paw skin, which is only a minor, atypical part of their body skin. While this information is provided in the text, it remains in unresolved contradiction to the figure shown. The single, two-page entry (pp. 52–53) on dog physiology is also a bit meagre. The clear information on ‘stress’ is very helpful, and it refutes the odd idea of some dog keepers that stress avoidance is the key to good companionship with a dog. In the diagram on page 52, the body temperatures of humans and dogs were evidently swapped (humans being at 38–39°C and dogs at 36–37°C) and heart rates of 140–180 beats per minute for a dog (same table) by far exceed our own measurements, which are between 80 and 100 at rest in medium-sized dogs, with body size having only a minor influence. The best chapters in this book are those at the core of the authors’ competence: Chapter 3 on ‘behaviour and society’ and Chapter 4 on ‘sensing, thinking and personality’. These 50 pages would have made a great book in itself. Chapter 5 on ‘dogs and people’ is also very nice, although important aspects are missing here. For example, there is no mention of the large role that wolves and dogs had (and still have) in human spirituality or of the idea that this spirituality was probably the main reason why humans and wolves got together in the first place [4Kotrschal K. How wolves turned into dogs and how dogs are valuable in meeting human social needs.People and Animals. 2018; 1 (Article 6)Google Scholar, 8Fogg B.R. Howe N. Pierotti R. Relationships between indigenous American peoples and wolves 1: wolves as teachers and guides.J. Ethnobiol. 2015; 35: 262-285Crossref Scopus (8) Google Scholar, 9Schleidt W.M. Shalter M.D. Dogs and mankind: coevolution on the move — an update.Hum. Ethol. Bull. 2018; 33: 15-38Crossref Google Scholar]. Also, there is nothing on the relationship between ‘dogification’ and the ‘Neolithic revolution’, and no mention of the role of dogs in warfare, one of the most prominent partnership domains to have emerged since the time humans became sedentary, as reflected in the >2,000 combat dogs that have been employed in Afghanistan by the US army. The book is very well illustrated with pictures, graphs and, where necessary, tables. Nearly every double page features a particular subtopic. This design makes the book very easy to read and enjoyable to consult. Of course, there are downsides to the relatively short sections of text: often this brevity leads to points being conveyed as clear facts where there is actually ambiguity, and this could have been avoided with the inclusion of longer explanations. Also, one might often want to read and learn more about a particular topic, or at least get hints about where to look for additional details. This is hardly possible because there are no references in the text and the limited amount of literature that is cited at the end of the book is a joke in the light of the wealth of literature that the field has produced up to the present day. But remaining somewhat superficial is probably the inevitable price to pay for a popular book targeting a wide audience. Generally, the authors did a great job in not tainting their book with too much opinion and in staying out of most of the minefields around the topic of dogs, some of which have even been created by scientists. Still, in some cases, they show a clear position, for example, in the debates about ‘dominance’ and ‘stress’, and also with respect to the connection between wolves and dogs. Most researchers fall into two opinion groups: the first holding that dogs are sufficiently close to wolves to justify subspecies status (Canis lupus familiaris), and the second emphasising that dogs are sufficiently distant from wolves, in terms of behaviour and genetics, to deserve species status (Canis familiaris). That the authors adhere to the latter position is made explicit on page 30. This they support with the statement that “wolves do not hybridise with dogs in nature”, which is clearly false. Wolves do — albeit infrequently — hybridise with dogs in nature. Also, although it is not explicitly stated, the opinion of the authors appears to be that dogs are less aggressive and more cooperative than wolves and that most of the social skills of dogs developed in domestication. While this may please the majority of dog owners, recent studies at the Wolf Science Center (http://www.wolfscience.at/en/), mainly by Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi, involving the raising and keeping of wolves and dogs under equivalent conditions, show otherwise: much of the attention and social and cooperative orientation of dogs towards humans is already present in wolves. Domestication has fine-tuned dogs towards humans in many ways, producing changes in the level, but not the type, of social skills. Hence, the changes during ‘dogification’ may have been over-emphasised by the authors (e.g. in the three points on page 100 regarding dog–human communication). Still, all this must not distract from the fact that Ádám Miklósi and his collaborators have contributed an incredible amount towards our contemporary knowledge of dogs and their relationship with humans. It is only natural then that they have now produced such a comprehensive and highly rational book on dogs. But it is also natural that even scientists will never fully agree on the relationship between dogs and humans. This is a great book, after all. And it provides a great motivation for studying and experiencing the ‘real thing’, by living with one or more dogs and by learning from them. In light of the expression “study nature, not books” that Niko Tinbergen once wrote above the door leading into the library of his Leiden institute, I suggest we do both.