One thing that preoccupied me was the [animal] trainers’ habit of talking in highly anthropomorphic, morally loaded language. That was the language that I wanted to understand because it seemed to me after a while that it was part of what enabled the good trainers to do so much more than the academic psychologists could in the way of eliciting interesting behaviors from animals. Trainers, for example, have no hesitation in talking about how much a mare loves or worries about her foal, a cat her kittens, or a dog or a horse their work. But for philosophers and psychologists to speak of love was to invoke abilities that are, for reasons I am still not clear about, as rigidly restrictive to Homo sapiens as some religious doctrines have restricted the possession of a soul to members of certain races, cultures, and sometimes genders.

This passage perfectly captures what this book is about: Hearne’s quest – I had written “struggle” there but it doesn’t feel like she is wrestling with the question, so much as measuring it, moving through it, plotting her way across middle earth to it – to reconcile her study of philosophy with her work as a dog and horse trainer. Her mind seems to be always watching animal behavior, measuring it against what she has been taught as a philosopher.

An example: she describes training a wolf, which may learn the commands we give a domestic dog, and may even become “fond” of this trainer – but the wolf will be unable to guard our homes, since he does not have a domestic dog’s commitment to humans as pack member. “With other wolves, he may, of course, be respectful, noble, courageous and courteous. The wolf has wolfish social skills, but he has no human social skills, which is why we say that a wolf is a wild animal. And since human beings have for all practical purposes, no wolfish social skills, the wolf regards the human being as a wild animal, and the wolf is correct. He doesn’t trust us, with perfectly good reason.”

I love the stories she tells of how she trains her dogs. She tells the story of a dog who loves to dig holes. Rather than tell the dog not to dig holes, she enters the dogs frame of reference. When the dog digs a hole, she joins the dog, turning the rough hole into a beautifully perfect diamond. The dog, delighted to learn that there is more to hole digging than she had ever imagined, joins joyfully into the game as it progresses from the perfectly shaped hole to filling the hole with water from a hose. And is handily right there to learn that the final step in the religion of hole digging is to dunk the dog’s head playfully – not meanly, Hearne is clear to say – in the water-filled hole.

Surprised, she backs off and regards the human, as if to say, “If I had realized that hole-digging led to this…” It doesn’t stop her, at first, from digging holes because, perhaps, that one time was a human aberration. But when it happens again and again, the dog decides that hole-digging is not perhaps the hobby she wanted to indulge in anymore. So much so that, when Hearne and her dog go for a walk in the woods, and the dog notices a hole beside the trail, an animal burrow of some kind, she barks distractingly in the other direction and then kicks some dirt and pine needles over the hole so that Hearne doesn’t take it in her mind to play the hole-digging game.

One of the things that makes me angry as I walk to work, is seeing people walking dogs that they can’t control. And they can’t control them because they are holding the leach loosely, casually, in their non-dominant hand while their dominant hand and their mind is occupied with their smartphone. And then they get mad because their dog eats something it shouldn’t or attacks another dog or breaks free and runs into the street. There is a right way and a wrong way to walk a dog.

Several years ago, my husband and I went for a walk with my sister and her child and my mother’s large dogs. The dogs, who my mom spoiled like children (mainly, I am convinced, to piss my sister off), owned the walk. They dictated where we walked, where we stopped, they peed on people’s lawns and my sister and her child were unable to control them because they held the leash casually. The next day, my husband and I took the dogs for a walk just the two of us. My husband was nervous – he had never walked a dog before and, having witnessed their behavior on the previous walk, her worried that they might get away from us. I showed him how to hold the leash properly, shorter, in your dominant hand, with the slack held in your non-dominant hand. The dogs walked quietly beside us. When they wanted to pee, they asked, and we released the leash to give them room, when the place was appropriate. My husband – who I state again had never walked a dog before – remarked how much easier it was to do than he had imagined.

The difference is that, when you use it accurately, the leash becomes a communication tool, the way that a horse’s reins are a communication tool, a way for you to talk to the animal about what is expected in the relationship and who is in charge and when certain behaviors are expected of them. When a service dog wears their vest, they know they are on-duty and that certain behaviors are appropriate; and when the vest is removed, other behaviors may be allowed.

Some people fight this approach, believing that it interferes with the animal’s freedom. That was not my mom’s problem, she just liked to be the center of attention and the dogs gave her that. When she died, her last dog went from acting like a naughty toddler who climbed up on counters to eat whatever she wanted, stealing food from my mother’s plate at dinner, and sitting her huge self in my tiny mother’s lap, and returned to being a dog. And not a bad dog, either: my sister’s friend, a master of the hounds, remarked that he had expected a bad dog – which generally means a dog that is mean or dangerous to humans – but that this dog was a good dog.

The ultimate complement.