{"product_id":"a-first-guide-to-dogs-understanding-your-very-best-friend-isbn-9780593521830","title":"A First Guide to Dogs: Understanding Your Very Best Friend","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"Perceptive and engaging—essential reading for anyone seeking greater understanding of their four-legged best friends.\"—\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFeaturing fun illustrations and easy how-tos from animal expert Dr. John Bradshaw!\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUncovering the secret lives of pets, Dr. John Bradshaw invites young readers to learn more about their closest companions: their dogs! Told from the point of view of Rusty the Terrier, this lively, illustrated book gives kids a front-seat view to the everyday lives of dogs, sharing lessons and growing children into the best pet owners they can be.\u003cb\u003eDr. John Bradshaw \u003c\/b\u003e(he\/him) is an anthrozoologist, animal welfare scientist, and Director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol. He is also a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eClare Elsom\u003c\/b\u003e (she\/her) is an illustrator and author, and the creator of the Harriet \u0026amp; Horace series\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e She has illustrated dozens of children’s books and has been a guest at multiple literary festivals.\u003cb\u003eRusty\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Meet \u003cb\u003eRusty Barker\u003c\/b\u003e. He’s a terrier, a kind of dog whose original purpose was to keep rats away from farms and houses. These days most terriers are just household pets, but they still know how to sniff out a rat!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Of course, Rusty’s not his \u003ci\u003ereal \u003c\/i\u003ename, because he’s a dog. When dogs are talking to each other, they use smell-names, not sound-names. But he knows that when humans say “Rusty,” that means \u003ci\u003ehim\u003c\/i\u003e, so that’s what he answers to. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eSmells, Smells, Smells\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eWhat’s it like being a dog like Rusty? It’s not like being a grown-up. It’s not like being a child. It’s not like being an alien, either.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Dogs are like us in a lot of ways. They can see, hear, and feel most things that we can. But they also have a superpower: their sense of smell. That’s why they sniff things all the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMost animals live somewhere in the World of Smells.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e You and I live in the World, which is everything we can see. Dogs, cats, mice, snakes, ants, moths, and lots of other animals mostly live in the World of Smells, which is the same World as ours, but much, \u003ci\u003emuch\u003c\/i\u003e stinkier.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It’s full of poo smells, pee smells, leaf smells, sweaty foot smells, and loads of other stinks that we don’t even have names for, because our noses aren’t as smart as theirs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The first thing humans notice is usually what things look like. But dogs mostly care about what things smell like. That’s why you like watching TV and YouTube, and dogs don’t. YouTube for dogs would have to literally be a tube with stinky smells coming out of it all the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eYuck\u003c\/i\u003e, you’re thinking. That would mean that YouTube for dogs would make your house stink like a gigantic fart. But actually, it wouldn’t have to, because dogs’ noses are so sensitive that they’d only need a tiny amount of each smell, such a small amount that you wouldn’t even know it was there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A dog’s eyesight isn’t as good as yours, and they couldn’t care less if something is pink or blue, just so long as it smells interesting. That’s why the pictures in this book are in black and white, because that’s roughly how dogs see things. Smells are their colors. Their sense of smell isn’t magic, it’s just a way of experiencing the world differently to you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Put it another way: Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You know how to use the TV remote, don’t you? (OK, probably better than your parents do.) You can’t actually \u003ci\u003esee\u003c\/i\u003e the remote talking to the TV, but it must because the TV does what the remote tells it to do. The remote talks to the TV using infrared light, a kind of light that your eyes can’t see.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Well, that’s a bit like how smells are for dogs. There are loads of smells that dogs find really exciting, but we have no clue about, because they are just too weak for our noses.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eEarly Morning\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e When Rusty wakes up in the morning, he sniffs the air before he even opens his eyes. His nose tells him that no one has come downstairs yet, because none of the people smells have changed from last night. It’s not walk time yet!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A few moments later, Mum comes downstairs in her dressing gown and opens the door to the garden. Out goes Rusty. He’s desperate for a pee, but first he has to have a sniff around the garden to discover what’s happened out there while he’s been asleep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Right away, he arrives at a place where he can smell that a cat has been walking across the lawn during the night. There’s nothing to see, no dents in the grass or yucky furballs, but Rusty’s nose lets him trace every pawprint that the cat made, just from the little bit of cat foot smell left behind (which I guess to a dog, is much sweeter-smelling than human foot smell. Let’s blame socks. And don’t even mention welly boots. Sorry, back to cats). Rusty can even tell which way the cat was moving, just from the differences between the smells of her pawprints. The fresher they are, the stronger the scent, so the direction she’s gone in is smellier than the direction she came from.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The World of Smells is always changing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mice have been scuttling about during the night, marking their trails with little spots of pee. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA twig sits on the lawn, a sappy smell coming from where a clumsy pigeon broke it off from the tree above.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There’s the smell of cut grass in the corner from when Dad mowed the lawn yesterday. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA wrapper that just blew in from the street smells of strawberry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Next time you’re in a garden, try crawling around with your nose to the ground, sniffing as you go. That way you’ll get a bit of an idea of what it’s like to be a dog, although your human nose won’t give you much of the detail.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It would be like always being close to something really smelly—a vase of flowers, chocolate brownies straight from the oven, a really bad fart (fingers crossed it’s brownies!).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And all these smells alter with the wind and the weather, which means they change and shift all the time. This makes for a very exciting morning for Rusty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He can tell straight away that it rained the night before, and not just because his paws are wet, but because there are even more interesting smells around than usual. Rain washes old smells out of the ground and plants’ leaves, reminding Rusty of things that happened a few days ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That’s a bit like when your mum and her friends flick through loads of photos on their phones when they meet up. Except that dogs don’t need to take pictures, because they remember everything their noses tell them!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e You can see how important smells are to dogs just by looking at their nostrils, where the air goes in and out. Yours point downward. Maybe this is to keep the rain out, but it also means your nostrils can’t be pushed up against things to get all the details of the smell. Not unless you want people staring at you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Anyway, most of the time you keep yours way up in the air, which is not the best way to capture all the lovely smells near the ground. Dogs can lower their heads right down to the ground, and their nostrils point forward so that they can sniff what’s right in front of them. (Dogs’ nostrils are called “nares,” which rhymes with “fairies.”)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But it’s the \u003ci\u003einside\u003c\/i\u003e of their noses where dogs are so much better equipped than we are. The air that they sniff into their nostrils swirls through a special 3D maze made of bones called “turbinates.” If you could lay the maze out flat, it would be roughly the size of two smartphone screens. That’s an amazing amount of surface to cram into a small head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The walls of the maze are covered with eight hundred different kinds of smell detectors. Smell detectors are microscopic hairs that stick out of the surface of the nostril-maze and catch the smells as they go by. If it’s the kind of smell that matches that kind of detector, the other end of the hair sends a message to the brain (“roses,” “poo,” “newly mown grass,” or “garlic”—and lots of others).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We actually have the same detectors that dogs do, but only a few hundred of each. Dogs have about a \u003ci\u003emillion\u003c\/i\u003e of each kind, and almost a billion altogether. That’s why they’re so much better at smelling than we are.","brand":"Penguin Workshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300910551269,"sku":"NP9780593521830","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593521830.jpg?v=1767720466","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-first-guide-to-dogs-understanding-your-very-best-friend-isbn-9780593521830","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}