100 books like At Home and Astray

Michael Brandow has an agenda. He wants to change radically how pedigree dogs are bred and valued.

He argues that the preference for standardized fancy forms and coiffured coats should be replaced with a priority for dogs’ health and well-being. Dogs should be valued as companions, not commodities.

Brandow develops his argument historically, starting with the Victorian invention of multiple breeds and the very idea of Dogdom as composed of discrete, standardized, physically uniform breeds.

Not everyone will agree with Brandow, but his strength of feeling and the thoroughness of research makes for an engaging, often witty, and thought-provoking read. The narrative combines social and animal history, psychology and ethics, and stories, most entertaining but some shocking.

Edmund Russell has a challenging approach to History. He wants histories of human societies and animals to be written together.

It is uncontroversial that humans shaped domestic and farm animals, but Russell contends that these animals have shaped human societies, in a process he terms coevolution.

This fascinating book reveals the coevolution of greyhounds and humans. Greyhounds were created with the physique and speed to catch hares on country estates. Then in the nineteenth century, through organized coursing events and dog shows, greyhounds became standardized and more uniform in look.

The new greyhounds created new social roles through the democratization of greyhound ownership and new recreational opportunities. Coursing was reinvented in the twentieth century as greyhound racing, an innovative mass urban entertainment, where dogs chased electrically powered hares in a floodlit spectacle.

I had to recommend a book published in the nineteenth century. There is none better than The Dog by William Youatt published in 1845. It was the most popular book of the era and is my favourite.

Youatt ran the most successful veterinary practices for dogs in London. The main work of veterinarians then was with horses and Youatt was looked down upon as a mere ‘dog doctor’. But his expertise was widely recognized. He was veterinarian to the RSPCA and London Zoo and wrote influential books on farm animals, the horse, and the humane treatment of animals.

The Dog is now available online, see the links below. I recommend the Introduction and browsing what he has to say about individual breeds. Many will be familiar in name, if not ‘look,’ others have disappeared.

Pet Revolution sets the history of the modern dog in the context of the other domestic pets kept by Victorians.

Dogs were the most popular pet, with the greatest emotional and financial investment. Pet Revolution captures how, across all social classes, dogs became more than family pets, they were family members.

Victorians developed services to support family dogs: homes for strays, veterinary practices, pet shops, special foods, and doggy books and magazines. The story of the development of pet cemeteries is particularly fascinating and is very revealing about changing feelings and attitudes.

There are many books about the love between dog and man – but this classic is surely one of the richest, warmest, and yet most clear-eyed. The author, Joe Ackerley, was a gay man in London in the mid-twentieth century at a time when his predilections could get him arrested and imprisoned. It is perhaps because he couldn’t easily be open about the love he felt for other people that he is so well able to capture and express the love that exists between man and dog. “Unable to love each other, the English turn naturally to dogs,” he wrote.

This is really how the Disney film Old Yeller should have ended, with a rabid canine raising hell and ripping out throats. What a phenomenal book.

My first foray into the world of Stephen King. I loved it so much I tried to name my dog Cujo … but I was overruled. We settled on Otto cause it sounds sorta similar. But, again, I love this book for the same reason I love Who Goes There?—a beast is terrorizing people who are trapped and can’t flee. It’s a simple formula for monster-themed novels, but it gets me every single time. 

This is a gentle, joyful story about perseverance and growing up. 

A young boy named Peter wishes he could whistle. When he sees that another boy can whistle to get his dog to run to him, he wants to do the same with his dachshund Willie. Peter tries and tries to learn. He tries so hard his cheeks get tired. He doesn't give up and triumphs in the end.

Several other books by Ezra Jack Keats feature Peter and Willie together and they're a pair worth knowing. 

As a dog lover, I want to know what canine whines, squeaks, and whimpers mean. How to Speak Dog has confirmed and expanded my observations of dog communication.

I love these details on canine body language. If you want to understand your dog’s receptive language ability and productive language ability, read this book. I’m convinced that the Appendix alone is worth the price of this book and includes a Visual Glossary and Doggish Phrasebook.

Flush is an experimental novella by Virginia Woolf that relays the biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s beloved cocker spaniel.

Told from the titular Flush’s point of view, Woolf mixes imagination with research, drawing largely from Browning’s own poems about the dog for inspiration, as she portrays the pup’s inner thoughts as he goes from a carefree country puppy to the city dog of a reclusive poetess, and back to the country as the Brownings marry and flee London for the Italian countryside.

This is a story fraught with dangers and full of triumphs and sweet moments that will warm the hearts of any dog lover.

Of all my picks, this one is the most startling read, I think. It follows the life of a very small boy, left for some reason abandoned, who takes refuge with a stray bitch and her litter, and consequently grows up as a dog.

This, too, is very much a tragedy; although he lives as a dog, and everything he knows is of being a dog, yet the boy is not a dog and cannot remain one, and his own complete failure to understand his circumstances when he is rescued results in one of the most heartbreaking endings to any book I have ever read.

It’s a strange and beautiful experience, reading this book, and although yes, it will break you, it gives a rare insight into how it can be for anyone brought up outside his proper culture.