Animal Happiness

I enjoyed many parts of this book, particularly the chapter on the orangutan trainer in which she writes,

"The great trainers of every kind of animal, from parakeet to dog to elephant, have said for millennia now that you cannot get an animal to heed you unless you heed the animal; obedience is a symmetrical relation. In a given case it may start with the human, who perhaps says to the dog 'Joe, Sit!' Soon, however, the dog will take the term and turn it, use it to respond, to say something back, and it is at this moment that the true training with any species either begins or fails. If the human being obeys, hears, heeds, responds to what the animal says, then training begins. If the human being 'drops' the animal at this point, not show more realizing that the task has only begun, then the dog or orang (or for that matter monkey) will not listen where there is nothing to heed."

However, a lot of the book is a meandering, often digressing philosophizing that I found maddening and irrelevant. show less