Shaggy dog stories

What is it that distinguishes humans from other animals? The default answer nowadays is tediously misanthropic, but a more interesting distinction is that humans keep pets. Why this should be is the subject of this book. Jacky Colliss Harvey investigates the men and women who have owned, doted on, and in some cases mistreated their pets, in literature, painting, the movies and history. This begins 26,000 years ago, when a boy and his dog went exploring in bear caves in the south of France. The evidence was discovered in petrified tracks at Chauvet in the Ardèche in 1994.

Harvey has a scholar’s aspiration and she is tremendously erudite, ranging far and wide, from Jacques Derrida (‘The animal looks at us and we are naked before it’) to John Wick (an action movie starring Keanu Reeves, who visits terrible vengeance on the villains who have killed his dog), half-answering questions about why exactly we have pets.