Living with Freddie

An extraordinary memoir about learning to see the world through a dog’s eyes, by a New Yorker writer and animal behavior expert

When Anna Heyward adopted Freddie, a rescued Italian greyhound, she was thrilled to bring a dog into her life. But Freddie, she quickly realized, had severe separation anxiety, unable to be left alone for more than thirty seconds without crying uncontrollably or injuring himself. Some would have given him back, but Anna dedicated her life to entering the mind of her dog, putting her relationship, social life, and job at risk. As Anna observed Freddie’s behavior, she began to experience the world as he did, and she changed—but not in the way you might expect.

Living with Freddie is a meditation on what it means to be bad or good, on how much we can—or should—try to alter another being’s behavior, and what is possible to know about another mind. But at its heart, this is a beautiful, heart-wrenching portrait of the relationship between a human and a dog. And at the end of Freddie’s story, you, too, may find yourself changed.Anna Heyward worked on the editorial staff of The New Yorker and as an editorial and special projects consultant at an art gallery. She was a graduate student in animal behavior and welfare science at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. Her writing has also been published by The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, The Paris Review, and Vogue, among others. She was born in Melbourne and lives in New York.