This book isn’t exhaustive. But it is, I hope, highly provocative—a catalyst for a paradigm shift in our current thinking about dogs. My hope is that it can be the ice-breaking, cage-shaking, appetite-whetting first step toward a new and more successful road for people and their canine companions—for you and your dog. L.E.G.S.® is simply the beginning, an introduction.

You already love your dog (or will soon if you are thinking about taking him home). Now I would like you to meet your dog. As best you can. Halfway. Equipped with the kind of sensible expectations and appropriate measures that may make life easier for both of you. Hopefully I can spare you some heartache with what I have learned from science, from practice, and from so many amazing dogs and their owners. Your relationship will always have its ups and downs, as any relationship will. But if I can open your eyes to your dog’s perspective, even a little bit more, and in doing so bring you closer, then this book has made the difference I have dreamed for it to make.

So go ahead, drool over his adorable picture. Whether that face is already looking back at you in a frame on your nightstand or on that website just waiting to be found—your dog is ready to be met. You’ll find each other very soon.

SOURCES

2. Genetic Science Learning Center, “Epigenetics and Inheritance.”

3. Liane Giemsch, Susanne C. Feine, Kurt W. Alt, Qiaomei Fu, Corina Knipper, Johannes Krause, Sarah Lacy, Olaf Nehlich, Constanze Niess, Svante Pääbo, Alfred Pawlik, Michael P. Richards, Verena Schünemann, Martin Street, Olaf Thalmann, Johann Tinnes, Erik Trinkaus, and Ralf W. Schmitz, “Interdisciplinary investigations of the late glacial double burial from Bonn-Oberkassel,” Hugo Obermaier Society for Quaternary Research and Archaeology of the Stone Age: 57th Annual Meeting in Heidenheim (April 7-11, 2015).

4. Mietje Germonpré, “Fossil dogs and wolves from Palaeolithic sites in Belgium, the Ukraine and Russia: osteometry, ancient DNA and stable isotopes,” Journal of Archaeological Science (February, 2009).

5. Raymond Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger, Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution (University of Chicago Press, 2002).

6. Henri Lhote, The Search for the Tassili Frescoes. (E.P. Dutton, 1959).

7. Kathryn A. Bard, “The Egyptian Predynastic: A review of the Evidence,” Journal of Field Archaeology (Autumn, 1994).

8. John Baines, “Symbolic Roles of Canine Figures on Early Monuments,” Archeo-Nil (1993).

9. Coppinger and Coppinger, Dogs.

10. James E. Johannes, “Basenji Origin and Migration: Through the African Threshold,” The Official Bulletin of the Basenji Club of America (July, August, September, 2005).

11. Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game (1413).

12. Ria Hörter, “Wolf Hunting with Dogs in Western and Central Europe,” The Canine Chronicle (May, 2016),

13. Li Q, Liu Z, Li Y, et al., “Origin and phylogenetic analysis of Tibetan Mastiff based on the mitochondrial DNA sequence,” Journal of Genetics and Genomics (June, 2008).