Educate

EDUCATE

One of the primary mission goals of Scooby North America is education about animal welfare. Many abusive practices are founded on the belief that animals don't have feelings, don't think rationally, or simply don't matter. This page lists fascinating books that explain that animals do in fact think, feel and yes (as anybody reading this website already knows intuitively) matter. It's going to take many more decades to debunk those old beliefs but the good news is that the scientific community is now making forward progress on scientifically PROVING that animals think and feel. It's been a bitter fight between science and pet owners because scientists (and those who rigorously follow logic) dismissed everything pet owners knew as "anecdotes". But now new scientific studies are using methodical (and humane) scientific studies to verify all those anecdotes.

Be sure to set yourself up on Amazon Smile with Scooby North America as your charity of choice, and then click on the book images to browse and purchase. Read on and educate yourself so that you can help us fight the good fight!

Information Specific to Galgos

Galgo News is a very informative site that collects news items from the global galgo rescue community in one place. Curated by Beryl Brennan, this is a good place to start when you need to find rescue organizations, news, or connections.

From Heaven to Hell is almost the "Bible" of the galgo world. Carefully written by Beryl Brennan, and just as carefully translated into several major languages, this book contains everything anyone would want to know about the breed, common diseases, proper care and feeding, their history, and their current horrible situation.

Warning: this book does contain some graphic images and descriptions. However, the information contained within is extremely valuable and accurate. Beryl sells this book as a fundraiser for European efforts to solve the galgo problem. Click on the photo to purchase a copy from her.

Okay, this book is not about galgos. However, I have listed it here because it is informative and extremely educational. Thayer has written the first comprehensive examination of the history and controversy of dog racing. She has brilliantly remained neutral and simply given each side an equal voice to tell their side of the story.

Reading this book did not switch me toward or away from either side, but I came away feeling that the racing industry sadly had themselves just as much to blame for the pending demise of their industry as the anti-racing publicity campaigns, and I feel much more educated about the nuances and issues from both perspectives.

I feel that there are many parallels between our racing industry and the galgo coursing community in Spain. This book could be a business case study for the Spanish hunting federations to learn what NOT to do!

Information Specific to Dogs

What's a Dog For? is a very good book that examines the history of dog domestication (debunking alpha theory), the relationship between dogs and humans (more sympatico than some like to admit), breeding (sometimes called our most successful eugenics program), the author's personal emotional struggle with the concept of euthanasia and the impossibility of choosing one dog to save from a shelter full of lost souls, and his musings about animal rights.

If they are emotional, thinking, feeling, sentient creatures, is it wrong to treat them (in law and practice) like chattel? The book is full of anecdotes and the author has a lovely writing style that makes this book a page-turner.

The Other End of the Leash is a book that is more about behavior than training, however understanding your dog's behavior better really increases your ability to train well. If you understand why he does what he does, you'll have a better relationship with him.

In this book, McConnell debunks alpha theory and explains how and why positive reinforcement and gentle, respectful training methods work better.

This is a very good book that's not actually about the Pit Bull breed, but about the demonization of dog breeds in American history. Before pit bulls were supposedly killing everything in sight, dobermans were doing that. And before dobermans, german shepherds. And before german shepherds, it was bull dogs.

The author pulls together information from newspaper and magazines over the last couple of hundred years to really shine a light on what causes specific dog breeds to become bloodthirsty monsters. Clue: it's not the dogs. I think this is a must read for anybody who is in favor of breed specific laws, and heck, everybody else! Are dogs dangeous? Not as much as the media makes them out to be, and when they are it's usually the end result of abuse at the hands of ignorant or sadistic owners.

Patricia McConnell's fantastic book explaining how to identify emotions and moods in your dog. I used to think that dogs were expressionless because they didn't have the mobile faces like we do, and then I read this book.

McConnell aptly explains how to recognize dogs facial expressions, and once you know what to look for you realize that it's not that much different from us. It's very possible that I dismissed things like a dog smile as silly anthropomorphism.... and now I know better! Dogs do smile! (And frown and cry and laugh and worry and much much more!)

This book explains in an easy conversational style how dogs process the world they live in. It explains how dogs use their sense of smell, hearing, taste, vision and sight. It also explains how dogs learn, both early socialization and trained skills later in life.

It's a great book that explains how dogs are able to accomplish the amazing things they do, like search and rescue, nosework, and simply being your best friend ever. It ends with a chapter on dog consciousness that is great food for thought.

Cognitive Ethology (or, Scientific Efforts to Prove that Animals Think and Feel)

This is a fascinating exploration of a variety of scientific experiments designed to illustrate that various species of animals are capable of a LOT more than we have previously thought. Morell first explains that animal behavior is full of anecdotes from pet owners, trainers and others who work with animals, but the scientific community dismisses anecdotes as not true evidence. This book describes attempts to document evidence that the scientific community will have to accept sooner or later. (Don't worry, it's written in easy to read language.)

There is a chapter about an ant study that showed they don't learn new locations by following scent trails as we previously thought, but that they actually teach each other to identify landmarks. There are stories of birds that communicate with each other vocally, fish that work complex calculations in their heads to spit and hit prey with deadly precision, dolphins that are capable of more rational thought than we realized, the growing body of evidence that elephants remember everything and use that to pass information from generation to generation, clearer understanding of the socialization of chimpanzees, and more information about the differences between dogs and wolves.

Despite the radical-sounding title, Bekoff has written a very good explanation for why humans should change the way they handle animals and show more compassion for their suffering. The book is organized into one chapter for each of the six reasons, and is a very good read. His reasons are: all animals share the earth and we must coexist, animals think and feel, animals have and deserve compassion, connection breeds caring but alienation breeds disrespect, our world is not compassionate to animals, acting compassionately helps all beings and our world.

Alex and Me is the story of Alex the Grey Parrot who was methodically taught not only to speak human words but also to count, and correctly identify objects, attributes of the objects (their shape or color), and categories of objects. The author noticed that while many scientists have attempted to teach primates to communicate with humans using things like American Sign Language, no one had attempted to teach human language to a species that was physically capable of making human vocal sounds. So she endeavored to do so, methodically and carefully to avoid accusations of trickery or cueing her subject, and with astonishing success. Alex's communication experiments were not only successful, but also provided hints that (some) birds are capable of a certain amount of rational thinking and emotions. Alex frequently demonstrated remorse, manipulation to get what he wanted, temper tantrums, love and frustration.

The author documents one of Alex's surprises: while he had been taught to count objects, the author did not teach him the number zero. So she was shocked when during one experiment where she mis-spoke a question, asking Alex which object was green when none of them were, he kept repeating "nuh", his word for no. ... or nothing. It took her a little repetition of his answer (she was having a bad day!) before she realized he was telling her NONE of the objects were green. This is astonishing because it's believed that only humans are capable of understanding the concept of nothing or none.

(This book is written in layman's terms, but if you are of a scientific mindset and want to read about her training methods, get the book titled "The Alex Studies".)