From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs are Smarter Than You Think by Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods Dutton (c/o Penguin USA, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2013. 367 pages. $37.95/hardcover or $14.95 paperback.
Publicity for The Genius of Dogs alleges that co-author Brian Hare has done more than anyone else to change human appreciation of the intelligence of dogs. This overlooks the influence of more than 150 years of highly popular fictional Lassie stories, originating with The Half-brothers, by Elizabeth Gaskell in 1859, and countless real-life feats of resourceful intelligence performed by Lassies named after the fictional dogs, including the rescue and revival of a “drowned” British sailor in 1915 and the rescue of a drowning boy from Lake Ontario in 1936. Read more