After a bit of introductory throat-clearing about Garfield’s own dog Ludo, for instance, the opening chapter sets out to survey dogs in art history. It starts by mentioning a couple of gimmicky modern exhibitions of art by or for dogs, then lollops back and forth seemingly at random. Here’s a canine mosaic in the ruins of Pompeii (and a mention of the “Herculean” dog rescue mission, which probably should read “Herculanean”); there’s a stroll through the National Gallery in London. Here’s an anecdote from the time Garfield visited David Hockney’s studio in LA; there’s a parachute belonging to a dog soldier in Park Avenue’s Museum of the Dog in New York. He ends it by naming a “personal Top Six” dogs in art history. No 1, on which Garfield lavishes two pages, is that kitschy 19th-century painting of St Bernards smoking cigars and cheating at poker. Goya – perhaps being judged too much of a downer – gets no mention at all.
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There are chapters on evolution and canine behaviour, what Darwin thought about them, and how they respond to music (with the inevitable footnote about Snoop and Li’l Bow Wow); on the animals’ association with healing (Garfield tours London’s Whittington Hospital with a “therapy dog” called Bryn and reports that patients are pleased to see him); on dogs that can do clever tricks (including a couple of pages on Laika, whose main trick was being sent fatally into space); a chapter on selective breeding and the invention of the Labradoodle; and so on. It’s sometimes hard to summarise what a chapter is about, they wander so.
On page 139 Garfield is ambling around a dog show marvelling at the wacky things you can buy for your dog (snacks made from Himalayan yak milk; “Cold Pressed Fish Supper … with turmeric, linseed oil, yucca and apple cider vinegar”); and then on page 285 he’s ambling around another dog show marvelling at the wacky things you can buy for your dog (“lamb hotpot … with chia seeds, kelp, turmeric, banana, salmon oil, and added vitamins A and D, zinc, iron, manganese and copper”).There’s a chapter on dogs in literature, in which Garfield pronounces Bill Sikes’s dog Bullseye the western canon’s best in show. But it’s two chapters later that he gives us his bits on Snoopy and Fred Bassett, before plunging into a follow-your-nose digression on the dogs of Instagram and the noisome neologisms of WeRateDogs (“doggos”, “boopability”, “floof”). By the time you get multiple pages transcribing imaginary conversations Garfield has invented between Ludo and other dogs on Hampstead Heath, you start to wonder if he has screwed the pooch. So to speak.Did you hear that? Sound frequency is measured in Hertz (Hz). The higher the Hertz, the higher-pitched the sound. Dogs hear best at 8,000 Hz, while humans hear best at around 2,000 Hz.
If you’re in the market for 300-odd pages of mostly interesting things that Garfield has thought, invented or Googled about dogs, slapped down in no particular order, then Dog’s Best Friend will be your jam. Me, I thought it was a bit of a dog’s breakfast.• Dog’s Best Friend: A Brief History of an Unbreakable Bond is published by Profile (£16.99). To buy a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.READ ALSO: