Talking to Animals: How You Can Understand Animals and They Can Understand You

Best-selling author Katz (A Good Dog; Izzy & Lenore; Saving Simon) has written another heartfelt book about his deeply personal relationship with animals. He starts with describing his childhood growing up poor in an immigrant neighborhood, being bullied, and experiencing a quarrelsome and abusive family life. His stories about the dogs he encountered in particular will have readers relating to the emotional bonds that develop between human and animal. Katz goes on to discusses attachment theory—the study of the dynamics of long-term relationships and feelings in human beings—and applies this to our relationships with our pets, suggesting that intimate interactions with dogs replay early human emotional development. He states that people generally treat dogs and other pets in one of two ways: the way they were treated as small children, or the way they wish they had been treated.