I have trained my dogs in tracking, scent discrimination and even dabbled in search and rescue. Alexandra Horowitz’s book on the dog’s smelling and sniffing capabilities certainly added considerable information to what I already knew. I loved the fact that she checked out so many different avenues of dogs working with their noses. She even went so far as to see if she could hone her own sniffing and smelling capacity. She truly brought the amazing talents of dogs noses front and center. It was great that she used her own dog to truly get the feel of what they must be experiencing as they smell when she took nosework classes. Very informative and interesting book. If you’re interested in how and where dogs noses are used, this book is for you. I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the best kind of science book and I love this book almost as much as I love dogs. I knew that smell is important to dogs, but this book goes so much more in-depth that it is fascinating to read.

I found this book and it's wide ranging exploration of the sense of smell fascinating! Horowitz has managed to write a smart book that's very well researched and technical without being dry. I was surprised by how much of it pertained to humans given the emphasis on dogs in the marketing.

After reading Horowitz's first book 'Inside of a Dog', I was really excited to be able to get my hands on this one too. Being a self-confessed dog lover I am fascinated by books to do with our canine friends and just love reading everything I can about them.
Being a Dog was very highly focused on how dogs smell and how their noses work. It really got me thinking a lot more about how my own dogs smell and why they find certain scents so appealing compared to others.
I was totally amazed at some of the statistics given in this book in relation to the power of a dogs nose. I own two beagles and being that they have one of the strongest noses around I now pay so much more attention to how they react to certain smells and find myself watching them a lot more in everyday situations. It's very interesting when you start to compare how much scent rules a dog's world whereas ours is much more vision orientated. You start to realise just how little we do pay attention to the smells around us throughout the day and it starts to make you more aware of your surroundings once you do pay more attention to everyday scents.
The author tells about her experience in controlled scent tests and these just fascinated me. I couldn't imagine how interesting it would be to participate in something like that. It is obvious that the author is very passionate about her subject and willing to do practically anything to gather research material.
I admit that I was expecting this book to be a bit more dog orientated like the first one but it ended up focusing a lot more on the author's journey of trying to experience life in the way that dogs do.
Even though there were definitely some interesting parts in this book, I did feel that it dragged on in some sections as the author tried to be a bit too over-descriptive to get her point and experience across. There definitely could have been some major condensing down in some chapters and the point still would have come across just as well.
Overall I did enjoy this book and would easily read anything else this author brings out in the future.

This a lively exploration of dogs' sensory world--from the biology of their noses to experiments that explain why, if you have a regular schedule, dogs can tell when you're about to come home (they time it by how your smell fades). Horowitz uses both science and observations from her own two pets for vivid examples, and you can't beat bits like how, due to physics and mammalian biology, almost all total bladder voiding happens in 21 seconds.