The History of Dog Breeds and the Invention of the Dog with Tamsin Pickeral

We chat about the history of dog breeds and what makes dogs so successful with Tamsin Pickeral, author of The Invention of the Dog: 75 Breeds that Changed the World.

 

By Zazie Todd, PhD

Listen to episode 67 of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation wherever you get your podcasts (Apple, Spotify) or below, watch on Youtube or below, or scroll down for the show notes. 

The Invention of the Dog with Tamsin Pickeral

Tamsin Pickeral's new book, The Invention of the Dog: 75 Breeds that Changed the World is a fascinating, touching, and beautifully illustrated account of where our beloved dogs come from. Tamsin joined Zazie and Kristi to chat about the book.

We talked about:

•     How the book came about, and what it was like selecting the artwork to be included in the book
•     Then we look at 3 very different breeds, starting with the history of the Shih Tzu
•     The history of the Bernese Mountain Dog
•     The history of the Yorkshire Terrier
•     How dog breeds became so different
•     Tamsin's favourite image from the book
•     Why dogs are so successful
•     The domestication of the dog
•     The depiction of dogs in art and how their appearance has changed over the years
•     And finally, we asked Tamsin to recommend a book to us

The Invention of the Dog: 75 Breeds that Changed the World is out now and available wherever books are sold.

The book that Tamsin recommended to us is Fairy Tale by Stephen King.

Tamsin Pickeral is an animal specialist and an art historian. She is an internationally published author who has written several acclaimed books on animal themes. Her new book, The Invention of the Dog, is just published and tells the true stories of some of our favourite dog breeds.

Learn more about Tamsin at https://tamsinpickeral.com/

The conversation with Tamsin Pickeral about The Invention of the Dog

Zazie: There are so many different dog breeds and they're so varied in terms of what they look like. And I think it's really fascinating to think about how they've come about.

And so that's what we're going to be talking about today because we're joined by Tamsin Pickeral, who is the author of a new book called The Invention of the Dog: 75 Breeds that Changed the World.

So welcome to The Pawsitive Post in Conversation. I'm Zazie Todd. I'm joined, as always, by my friend and colleague, Kristi Benson. Hey, Kristi. It's so fascinating talk talking about different breeds.

I've been wondering, is there a breed that you have never had and probably never would have, but actually would secretly really, really love?

Kristi: Yes, absolutely, I would. I adore sighthounds of, like, essentially. Give me the entire list. I love them and I don't think they'd be very.

It wouldn't be a good match for us at the farm, but I just, I love the way they look. I love the way they feel. Give me the long hair, even though I can barely even brush my own hair. Like, long hair.

Give me, like, the really short hair. I just, I would love one. That'd be my pick.

Zazie: Yep. I definitely love the shaggy dogs especially.

So we're here today with Tamsin Pickeral. Tamsin is an animal specialist and an art historian. She's an internationally published author who's written several acclaimed books on animal themes. And her new book, the Invention of the Dog, is just out now, and it tells the true stories of some of our favorite dog breeds.

It's lavishly illustrated with images of dogs through history, and it would actually make a great gift for anyone who loves dogs. So thank you, Tamsin, for joining us today.

Tamsin: Thank you so much. And it's lovely to meet both of you. And I have to just say, Kristi, that my favorite breeds are the sight hounds, and I actually have one fast asleep on the sofa downstairs at the moment.

So I'm a huge fan.

Zazie: Lovely. So your book has a gorgeous cover. And those of us who are watching on video can see the book behind you with that beautiful picture of a dog on the front there.

Would you mind holding it up to the camera just so that people on YouTube can see it?

Tamsin: Of course.

Zazie: Thank you so much.

Tamsin: Can you see that? Yeah, there you go.

Zazie: And I think that gives a good illustration of the kind of thing that you can expect to find inside the book as well.

So, Tamsin, how did this book come about?

Tamsin: Well, I was very lucky, actually, because I've written quite a few books in the past, including actually a book on the history of the dog in art and the history of the horse in art.

And cut a long story short, so two of the publishers that I worked with on those books and a couple of other books as well, one of them just contacted me a couple of years ago, completely out of the blue, and just said, would you be interested in writing another book about dogs? 

And I was like, oh, my goodness, this is the most amazing opportunity. Of course. I would absolutely love to. So, yeah, I was just really lucky. They actually came to me. That doesn't happen very often, but, yeah, amazing. 

And I'd worked with this particular publisher before as well, so it was just a really nice kind of story, really, to get together again and do this book together.

Kristi: I love it. I love the. I love just how much art there is in it. Like, it just. It's such a pleasant book to flip through and look at all the pictures and all the. Look at all the art and all the photographs.

So you have a background in art history. How did that come into play as you were working on the book? And I know before we started even, we were talking about the art in the book, and it was.

It seems like it's a very interesting process.

Tamsin: Yeah, it really is. I mean, I was very fortunate in that I had a picture researcher who I was working with, so it was very much a sort of a joint effort. So I gave them all of the breeds and the kind of. The idea as to what I thought would be best to illustrate the book.

And they then went. Went away and did all the hard work and. And then sent me a selection of images that I was then able to look at and go, you know, yes, I think this will work, or, no, I don't think this one will work so well in the book and what we really wanted it to be.

So it is a breed book, and it is about 75 different amazing dog breeds, but it's not a. It's not the kind of book for if you want to buy a dog, you're going to go and look in this book and it's going to tell you how much they weigh and how many hours of exercise they want.

It's not that kind of book. It's more of a. Just a celebration of the dog and the history of the dog through time. And so we wanted the images to really reflect that as well.

Um, and what we really wanted too was to have the photography element, because a lot of these, these kind of very pictorial books don't necessarily have historic photographs in them. And I think they're super interesting as well because they actually, you know, they tell such a history of the breed.

So, yeah, so it was kind of. It was quite a long journey to get all of the images right. But I hope. I hope that everybody enjoys them. I think they. They certainly look lovely, so.

Zazie: They do. I certainly loved looking through all of the artwork.

And so you've got 75 reads in the book. And obviously we can't go through all 75 breeds today, but we did pick out a few, or rather I picked out a few that I would like to talk about.

Of course, I have a Shih Tzu myself, so I thought we'd start with the Shih Tzu. So what does your book tell us about how the Shih Tzu came about?

Tamsin: Oh, well, you've got a great choice of dog there because they are the most amazing.

I love them. They're just so cool. And they've just got such big personalities, haven't they, for a small dog? They've got a lot of personality in a small frame, but they've actually got a super interesting history as well.

And they date back to ancient China.

Now we know that they date back to at least the Tang Dynasty, so that's sort of the sixth century and Common era.

And that's when they first start appearing in. In some of the artworks of that time. So we've kind of got evidence of very small lap dogs with, with the beautiful long, silky coat that they've got.

But they actually, their sort of heritage, pre heritage to that, if you like, is. Is even older.

And that's thought to trace back to the Buddhist month that monks in NASA, which is actually in the Himalayas in central Tibet.

And the monks were very big on dog breeding and breeding small, small dogs very similar to what you now see as the Shih Tzu. And as you may have guessed, seeing as they bred them in Lhasa,

their breeding efforts back then also gave rise to the Lhasa Apsa.

Now, they called these little dogs the little lion dog. And the lion is a very, very important symbol in Buddhism, meaning strength and courage.

And they. So they called these plucky little dogs that had all this character in them their lion dogs. And what we think happened is that these dogs, very ancient dogs, were gifted.

So they were gifted to the ancient Chinese emperors. And when these little dogs arrived in China, they started to develop their own characteristics that moved them away a little bit from the lasses.

And so this is kind of how they developed. They were very much a royal.

You'll be pleased to hear, Zazie, they're very much a royal dog. So that was. Their early history was based on the royal royal palaces of ancient China.

And they really started to develop their individual characteristics from the sort of the Ming Dynasty, which was about 1368, and on through into the Qing Dynasty, which ended in 1911.

And one of the sort of the real supporters of the breed in the Qing Dynasty was the Empress Dowager, Empress Qi.

And she was a great breeder of dogs, and she actually had the kind of the early pug, the early Shih Tzu, and also the early Pekingese.

And she was very, very big into. Into kind of popularizing these until her death in 1908.

And at that point,

all three of these breeds really suffered quite, quite severely during.

There was mass destruction and slaughter.

And it was really quite devastating for the breeds. But luckily,

some of them were saved, including two that went to England with Lady Brownrigg, and that kind of started the. Started the breed's resurrection, if you like. They also, at that time, went to Canada and to Australia and across Europe, and then they just gradually started to be bred for their characteristics until the breed was actually formalized.

So that's kind of where they came from. Um, yeah, I guess that's it, really.

I feel like I've run on. You'll have to stop me if I just get really boring and I'm just banging on and on.

Kristi: No, it's very interesting. Yeah. And I find it kind of fascinating that Zazie hopped from the Shih Tzu to the burner.

What was your thinking there, Zazie? But, yeah, so we wanted to know about the Bernese mountain dog.

Tamsin: Okay, so this is a really interesting. So what was it, Zazie? What took you from there?

Kristi: Were you just like. What's the most opposite I could come up with?

Zazie: Well, if I was to answer the question I asked Kristi at the beginning, like a breed that I've never had and probably never would have, but actually would really love, to have it would be a burners.

Tamsin: Ah, okay, well, that makes it, that makes it, that makes it very clear. Just for, just for the record, while we're, while we're talking about that, I've, I've always had sight hounds, but the breed that, that I would probably really like but probably never would, would be a dachshund. So I just love dachsies. I think they're the coolest little dogs.

Anyway, so the Bernese mountain dog is again, has got a really, really long history.

So they take their name from Bern, which is a region in sort of central west Switzerland.

And they date back to, we think around 2,000 years ago, which is when the Romans made their way basically taking everything in their path and arrived in Switzerland, where they settled and they took their dogs with them.

Now we know from,

from ancient artworks,

ancient Roman artworks and sculptures that there was already at that time a massive variety in different types of dog. From, you know, your very tiny lap dog to your great kind of mastiffs and your war dogs and your sighthounds.

There were all these different types already.

And so the Romans kind of took all of these dogs with them as they spread across Europe,

which very greatly affected many,

many of the different breeds that we see today.

One of which was the Bernese mountain dog,

which probably traces back mostly to the very old sort of mastiff types that came over, that came over from the Romans.

And once they settled in Switzerland, their dogs just became super adept at living on the farm. And the Bernese is known as one of the four dairy farm breeds in Switzerland.

So the other three are the Greater Swiss Mountain.

Then you've got the. I'm going to say this, I'm sure my pronunciation is terrible, but you've got the Appenzeller and the Entelbucher. So any Swiss people on this call, please feel free to tell me how badly I've just pronounced that.

But anyway, so they're, they're the four Swiss dairy dairy farm dogs.

And they developed to be the most amazing all round versatile farm dog. So they were very good. They had a natural instinct for protecting the flocks and the homestead as well.

They were used for moving livestock as well. But one of the biggest things that they really seemed to develop for was haulage. So they used to use,

they used to use them for hauling small carts, usually containing the milk churns from the cows that they were milking.

So they had this kind of really versatile, amazing kind of adaptive, adaptable dogs, which, which they are today.

And coupled with that, they've got the most incredible temperament as well, which made them really fantastic companions. And now today they're incredibly popular as pets for that very reason, because they just have all these wonderful qualities.

So that's. Yeah, that's. Oh, oh, and there are some famous Bernie. Well, there's lots of famous Bernie's, but actually some of my favorite. I think one of the lovely stories is the former Irish president Michael.

Michael Higgins had three.

Three Bernies. And he used to take them with him quite frequently when he went off on his diplomatic.

Diplomatic trips.

Um, and so these dogs met Joe Biden and they also met the Prince and Princess of.

Of Wales and the uk And Higgins always said that one of the reasons why he took dogs with him was that not. Not. Not only were they. Were they great icebreakers.

So they were a talking point. People would talk about them,

but he always said they were a great source of wisdom. And I just think that's great that your dogs are a source of wisdom. I love that.

Zazie: I love that too. I bet many of our listener that as well. I think that's a really nice way to think of dogs. So I want to switch to another breed and we're going to go back to a small one now.

So I wanted also to ask about the Yorkshire terrier and how the Yorkshire Terrier came about, because I'm a Yorkshire lass,

Tamsin: so I would never have guessed from your accent.

Well, the Yorkshire terriers are really interesting. Well, they're all interesting, but it's quite an interesting breed in comparison to.

To the Shih Tzu and the Bernese, just because it's a much younger breed.

So the Yorkie actually developed in the 1800s,

and it's thought to have come about at that time. There was quite a large movement of Scottish miners and mill workers from Scotland down into Northern England into Yorkshire and Lancashire.

And they brought their.

They brought their terriers with them.

Obviously, there's a lot of different terrier breeds up in Scotland, particularly historically,

and they brought down mostly what is believed to have been the kind of the early Skye territory Terrier and the early Clydesdale Territory Terrier, which is no longer sort of recognized, the Clydesdale.

Anyway, they brought these terriers with them and they bred with. With local,

local Yorkshire and Lancashire dogs.

And they kind of quickly developed this very distinctive,

distinctive characteristics with their beautiful,

long, silky coat, which is always a slate sort of blue, slate grey and tan,

but also with this tremendous character. So they were primarily. They kind of had a dual use back then, so they were really, really favored for their skill in ratting. So they are amazing ratters.

A Yorkshire terrier will take out a rat in an instant and enjoy doing it.

And back then there was a real rat problem,

particularly in the mills.

And so these little terriers were really, really very admired for that. And also because they were so small and yet they were able to take on rats and be.

And vermin and be useful.

There wasn't a whole lot of room in the mills and in the manufacturing buildings back at that time, so they could have these little dogs that would run around and do a great job and keep the rats at bay, but not be a problem.

You know, people weren't falling over them.

So that's really, that's really kind of how they developed. And then because there were so many of these dogs specifically in Yorkshire, they became to be coined as Yorkshire terriers. And that happened in about the 1870s.

And around that time there was a very famous Yorkie called Huddersfield Ben, which I just think is a great name.

And he was known as a champion ratter and he was also a very prolific stud dog. And because of that, his genes are actually in many of the modern day Yorkie dogs.

So, yeah, so they, they, they've got an interesting history.

I've got. There's a really cool story. If I've got time, I'll just quickly tell you about this famous Yorkie called Smokey.

Now, Smokey, I don't know if you've heard of her or not, but she was found, it's such a bizarre story. She was found in a foxhole in Papua New guinea in 1944 by a, by an American serviceman.

And he heard this dog and so he took her back to his,

to his barracks and his friend. Well, his tent. They were living in tents, not barracks.

His tent mate,

who was a guy called Bill Wynn, just fell in love with this little dog and they couldn't understand where she come from, what she was doing in the middle of Papua New guinea in the jungle.

Anyway, he,

Bill took this dog on and kept her and she ended up going on all kinds of different combat missions with him.

Bombings she ended up doing.

She saved a whole load of,

of lives by pulling a communication cable 70ft through a tunnel underneath the Runway

She was amazing. And,

and she was also noted as the first ever therapy dog. So she was the first dog that's been recorded that was taken around to military hospitals in Papua New guinea and then in Australia.

When Bill Wynn went out to Australia for recovery, he, he'd been very ill. He took her with him and she went round and, and cheered up all these servicemen that were in hospital.

And anyway, to cut a long story short,

she ended up having all sorts of medals and she's got a, she's got a memorial to her as well, and there's a book about her. But,

yeah, pretty amazing. A Yorkie in Papua New Guinea.

Kristi: Yeah. Random, is that?

Tamsin: Yeah, very random.

Kristi: So I think we, we did touch on just how very different these dogs are in size and in sort of function and,

you know, history.

So how and why did dog breeds become just so different,

so much variety?

Tamsin: I mean, that is a really good question.

Um, and nobody really knows the exact beginning of how they became different,

but one of the most significant events in the history of the dog, if you like.

Well, okay, so to go back to the beginning,

it's widely believed that dogs developed 20 to 40,000 years ago. So this is a very, very long time ago. We were in an ice age at that point in time and we were living alongside Neanderthal and dogs developed from wolves.

And I'm not going to go into all of that, but fast forward tens of tens of thousands of years to around 10,000 years ago.

And that is when humans, Homo sapiens, everybody else had disappeared by then,

moved to a settled way of life. So that's when agriculture, if you like, and settled lives began, essentially. So people changed from being hunter gatherers to having home places and farming and livestock.

And at that point,

that, I believe, is when dogs started to really change because all of a sudden there were different functions for dogs to do. And I think at that point in time you had certain dogs that,

that showed affinity for certain things. So you have some dogs that were, you know,

potentially particularly aggressive. So they were very good at protecting the, the,

the homes or for people.

You had others that would, that would naturally be very protective of livestock but wouldn't hurt the livestock itself, which is, which is quite, when you think about it, quite an unusual thing.

And then others, obviously, that were, that were very good at hunting and others that were very quick and could pull prey down, whereas your bigger breeds could actually kill the prey.

And so you've got all these different sort of functions for dogs.

And over the duration of time, it's natural for people, if you find a dog that's very good at something, you want to replicate that. So people would breed dogs together that were very good at certain functions.

And, and gradually you begin to,

to have these different dogs that are doing different roles very well. And I, I, that, that is how,

that is how it really, truly sort of began to see the spread. And then obviously, as. As trade routes opened up from east to west and west to east,

you have these different dogs that have developed in different countries, in different areas of the world,

suddenly been transferred, you know, around the world.

And so then you start to get different types of dogs crossing together and you get this sort of mix up of genes,

and then you sort of really start to see the development of. Of these different types of dogs.

It's a fascinating history.

Zazie: It really is. And the images in your book are so fascinating as well. And you talked a little bit earlier about how you chose them, but do you have any favorite images from the book?

Tamsin: Gosh. Well, that's a tough one because there's a lot of lovely images in there.

I mean, I mentioned at the beginning that I'm a massive sighthound fan and I do have a very elderly retired greyhound downstairs asleep on my sofa, which is what he does most of the time.

So I would have to say that probably my favorite image from the book is a painting called Eos by Sir Edwin Landseer.

And it's. Eos was Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband's dog. And she commissioned this painting to be painted.

To be painted for him as a surprise.

I can hold it up, actually. I have it open.

I don't know if you can see. Is it upside down?

Zazie: No, it's the right way up.

Tamsin: Oh, wow. Yeah, so that. That is the image.

And if anybody's interested, it's on page 23.

Amazing book.

But, yeah, I just think it's a beautiful. It's a beautiful image. But there's. There's so many. I mean, there's some fantastic,

fantastic photographs in there as well. I really love.

Let me see. There's one up here.

Yeah, so there's. There's a few, actually, of, um. Of the Siberian Husky and Malamutes sled teams.

There's some lovely photographs of black and white photographs of the. Of them.

And they're. They're pretty special as well. I mean, those are some brave, tough, tough dogs.

Kristi: I think it was.

It was actually the greyhound picture that sort of twigged me to think this. But I was.

As I was looking through your book, I was thinking, you know, there's just a difference in the art and the photographs in the art.

Humans have a bit of say in how these animals are sort of projected and how they're sort of depicted. And with the photographs, I think there's still. We still have, you know, control over that, but not as much you know, there's.

So I was curious about your thoughts about how things have changed as. As, you know, like the way that. That,

you know, showing and cataloging and commemorating these dogs has shifted from art to photographs. How do you think that has changed, you know, how people want us to understand their dogs, or do you have thoughts on that?

Tamsin: I mean, that's a really interesting question, and probably I could talk for a very long time about that, so I'll try not to.

I mean,

I think one of the interesting things is that the sort of. The first emergence really, of dogs in art in kind of a widespread way was people wanting to show that they had something special.

So people painted dogs normally as part of portraits.

So a lot of early royal portraits had. They were depicted. Their dogs, hunting dogs were very, very admired.

And it was. It was. It was a huge thing to have a really good pack of hounds or a really good pair of spaniels or. And so they were. So they were depicted.

And so they were always depicted in a sort of flattering manner, I suppose. And much like equestrian art, you know, that the horses that were painted were always like massive, great big snorting steeds.

And, and. And so the, The. The. The dogs in art were very much an extension of,

I believe, the people who were being painted as well, the portraits as well,

an extension of what they were trying to say about themselves.

And even with some of the early Dutch paintings.

I don't think there's any in the book. I think there's one.

But some of the early Dutch paintings that. In sort of 17th, 16th and 17th century that are showing sort of interior scenes with people as well, the dogs are there for a message.

So they symbolize something called.

Or they're a commentary on the scene that's in the painting itself.

And then as you sort of move forward through time and you get to sort of the 18th and 19th century, dogs become even more of a.

Of something to be proud of. And so they. You then start to get paintings just of dogs. So there's no people involved. It's just the dog.

And that, again, is quite a big.

That's quite a big move, I think,

in terms of sort of human perception of dogs. People were putting them up there as the central,

central subject matter of the painting.

And that's always something that you're going to have. I mean, everybody's proud of their own dog. So, you know, you want to. You want to sort of celebrate that.

And I think the difference with photographs and some of the photographs perhaps in,

in the book is that they are.

Whereas a painting is a very considered thing. You sit down and it takes time and,

you know, an awful lot of money for these certainly historic paintings to be done with a photograph. Even with a historic photograph,

they were much quicker and they were much more a snapshot of real life.

So, you know,

the animals, the dogs that you're seeing and some of the historic photographs are actually. That is actually what they looked like. There's no artistic license or no Photoshop back then,

but no artistic license either. So you're actually getting an actual view of what the dog actually looked like,

which I think is interesting.

And on that.

Sort of slightly on a tangent to that.

But what is also very interesting is that dogs have. Dog types have changed so much over the centuries. So breeds were only formalized in the sort of late 19th, 20th century,

when you had breed societies and the Kennel Club and the American Kennel Club and similar around the world.

But previous to that, you had very specific types of dogs that then obviously became the specified breeds.

But there's a lot of change between some of the earlier types and the actual breeds that you see now. And so the historic photographs, again, sort of demonstrate that. So,

for example,

your bulldog, for example, historically was much longer in the leg,

not so heavy in the frame,

much more of a working, athletic dog, whereas nowadays they're much heavier, shorter in the leg, heavier in the frame,

and, you know, very much a pet dog.

And you see that with a lot of.

With most dogs have very much developed through human intervention and human.

Specific human breeding goals, if you like,

since the 20th century. So that, I think, is very interesting as well. So you're starting to see a real difference. I mean,

actually, having said that about photographs,

a painting that is in the book is one by Thomas Gainsborough,

and it's called Pomeranian ***** and Puppy.

And that's very interesting because it's the most beautiful white Pomeranian.

Mother with her puppy.

But Pomeranians, back when he painted that painting, which I think was in the 1770s,

were really quite big dogs.

They, you know, they. They were quite sizable.

Quite sizable hounds.

But if you met a Pomeranian today, they are most certainly not sizable hounds. They're these gorgeous,

gorgeous, small, just balls of delicious fluff. But back then they were completely different.

So I think it's quite interesting.

Queen Victoria actually was largely responsible for the breeding down in size of the Pomeranian,

which is quite interesting.

But. Yes, Did I answer your question? I think I went off a tangent there.

Zazie: Well, there was a tangent that I wanted to ask you about, anyway. Because I think it's so fascinating to think about how the way breeds look has changed over the years.

And I didn't know that about the Pomeranian, I didn't know that they used to be big dogs.

And more often because I'm thinking about animal welfare and the way in which some flat faced breeds can actually really struggle to breed these days. And they didn't used to be so flat faced.

So I think that's really interesting for people to be able to look and to see some of the changes, you know, the ways in which these breeds have changed over the years.

For me, especially for the Shih Tzu to think I know what a Shih Tzu looks like now, but to be able to look and see what a Shih Tzu used to look like in the past as well, I think that's really fascinating.

Tamsin: Definitely. I mean it's quite interesting on the flat face breeds because there's been obviously a lot of research and studies into them and one of the reasons,

several studies have, have kind of indicated that one of the reasons that flat faced breeds are so,

so popular. So you've got, I think it's the French bulldog is now one of the most popular breeds.

And, and the theory is, is that flat faced dogs tend to have quite large round heads with very small noses and large eyes. And the theory is that they,

they are similar in appearance or people identify them with them as they would with an infant, a human infant that has the same kind of round head and eyes and small nose.

And this is quite a big, this is quite a big thing. It's called baby schema.

And it has been largely identified that this is something that people without even realizing they do relate and identify with these types of breeds. And that's given as one of the reasons why these types of breeds have become so popular around the world.

So quite interesting.

I like the science behind it and there is quite a bit of science in my book as well. I've kind of dropped it in here and there, but I find that quite interesting.

Zazie: Yeah, I love that about your book.

Tamsin: Thank you.

Kristi: So what I think,

you know, I have heard that before about the flat faced breeds and sort of people's attraction to them being because they are sort of human, the human baby kind of attraction.

But why do you think dogs are so successful just in general?

Tamsin: Well, I think,

I think a lot, so I. Okay, so I'm going to go right back to the beginning again, but only very briefly. So there's two theories of,

of the method of evolution of the Dog, if you like. So when wolves became dogs essentially,

and one of them is that,

that humans went out and,

and found small wolf cubs that had either been abandoned or left or lost by their,

by their pack or their parents. And they took them in and they tamed them and then they bred them together and, and off you went.

But the second theory is,

which I, I quite like is that actually some studies have been done to show that there's some genes on a chromosome that account for extreme sociability in dogs and wolves.

And the theory is, is that some,

some of the gray, gray wolves very early in time had this extreme sociability genes and that led them to self domesticate, if you like. So that led them to choose to creep a little bit nearer to the campfire,

maybe pick off a few of those bones that were left over.

And so they kind of self domesticated. And I, and I think, I think it was most likely a combination of the two.

But my point is, is that I think that dogs are extremely canny,

canny things, whether they, whether they consciously realize it or not. And I think the way they communicate with us is really one of the key reasons as to why they've become so successful.

Because very few things in the world make you feel better than a dog rushing up to you, wagging its tail and just showing extreme devotion. I mean that, you know, you would have to be made of concrete to not to not, you know, cave to that.

And I think that they are incredibly emotionally intuitive.

That's why they make such good therapy dogs.

You know, they, they've,

they're used a lot for medical detection and, and this kind of thing as well. And I think they're, they're very, very intuitive and I think they are very good communicators.

And I think the communication and the emotional intelligence of dogs are two of the reasons why they're so successful. And even though we might not even recognize it,

but even, I mean, it's quite interesting, dogs have,

have a specific facial muscle that allows them to raise their eyebrows which wolves don't, don't have.

And so this is something that's evolved. And you know, when you, when a dog raises its eyebrow at you, it's quite a thing, it's quite a communicative,

quite a communicative thing that people react to like tail wagging and the way they kind of show affection or fear.

But I think this is very much one of the reasons why they are so successful, definitely.

Zazie: And I think everyone listening to this loves dogs. And I'm sure They will have really enjoyed hearing about your book. I know. I've really loved hearing more about your book. I think we could talk about this all day, to be honest,

but we have to move on.

So we always like to ask our guests to recommend a book to us. So what have you been reading recently that you loved?

Tamsin: Okay, well, this is slightly. This is a slightly random one, just because I don't normally actually read books like this, but it's actually a book by Stephen King called Fairy Tale, which he wrote in 2022, I think, just after Covid.

And the only reason I read it is because my friend gave it to me and said, you must read this. So I was like, okay, well, I shall read it if you've told me I must.

And it's. It's a really, really great story. It's not as. I mean, I. Stephen King's known for horror and I. I don't actually normally read horror at all.

And there is an element of horror in this book, but it's not.

It's not.

It's not kind of the graphic horror that I would normally associate with him.

It's a fantastic story.

It's a dark fantasy. It's a bit wizard of Ozish,

and it's about this young boy,

Charlie,

and he inherits the keys to parallel universe,

and then there's this massive struggle between good and evil.

But the reason I love this book so much is because Charlie falls in love with a dog called Radar.

And Radar. And Radar is really the kind of the main character in the book. And it. He. It's. The relationship between this boy and this dog is so beautifully.

Beautifully crafted and beautifully written that it. Yeah, it. It had me in tears at times. But it's an amazing book.

Yeah.

And not one that I would have picked myself, but because my friend told me to read it, I read it and I loved it.

Zazie: Excellent. And the dog in there, always, Always a good thing.

Tamsin: And the dog in there.

Zazie: Yeah. Excellent. So thank you, Tamsin. If people want to know more about you, where should they go?

Tamsin: Probably my website. So, Tamsin. Www.tamsinpickeral.com.

Zazie: i'll put a link to that in the show notes. And the Invention of the Dog: 75 Breeds that Changed the World is out now and it's available wherever books are sold.

So it is actually really lovely book. It's very cool, I think, to get all that information about dogs and all of these different images. So it's, It's. I've enjoyed reading it and it's been really fun to chat with you about it as well.

Thank you for joining us.

Tamsin: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Zazie: And today I'd like to give a special shout out to our listeners in Reading, England. We're very glad that you're here with us and wherever you're listening or watching from. Thank you for being with us.

And we would actually like to know the answer to the question that we've all answered.

Namely, is there a dog breed that you have never had and probably never would have but you still really, really love? Let us know in the comments. So on YouTube, just drop a note in the comments.

If you're on your podcast app, if you look in the show notes, you can even click and leave us a voicemail and let us know there and we would love to know.

So thank you very much for being here. Thank you again, Tamsin. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you.

Tamsin: Thank you so much.

Zazie: Bye everybody.

Tamsin: Bye bye.

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