Q & A with Cat Warren for Companion Animal Psychology

 

Cat Warren’s New York Times bestseller, What the Dog Knows:  Scent, Science, and the Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive the World, was the Companion Animal Psychology Book Club choice for April. I interviewed Warren about her wonderful book, training scent detection dogs, and caring for working dogs’ welfare.

The Young Reader’s Edition of What the Dog Knows will be published in October.

Zazie: What inspired you to write this book?

Cat: You know, this goes back a little because the book first came out in 2013. I really conceived of it in 2009 and it was quite literally, Solo and I had done a very hard search that day and it had taken all day and I was just exhausted. And he had worked long and hard and honestly. My legs were covered with seed ticks, and I was on the couch with my husband and I looked at David and said, “You know what, I think I want to write about this so I don’t forget.” So that was the beginning of it. And then it turned into a reporting project and a research project, which I love, but it also turned into a thing where you watch somehow more carefully and you pay more attention, just like when you video when you’re doing dog training and then you look at the video afterwards. You see so much more. And so in a way it sort of did double duty. I think that it made me more aware, as I was training and handling Solo, and simultaneously there was that kind of joy in reaching out to really good handlers and trainers and scientists, and finding out things I didn’t know. So that was a two-fer!