Have you ever watched a horse flick her tail or had a dog greet you at your door and known in your heart that the animal was exhibiting something more than simple instinctual responses? If so, you must read this book. In it Vicki Hearne asserts that animals that interact with humans are more intelligent than we assume. In fact, they are capable of developing an understanding of “the good,” a moral code that influences their motives and actions. Hearne’s thorough studies led her to adopt a new system of animal training that contradicts modern animal behavioral research, but—as her examples show—is astonishingly effective. Hearne’s theories will make every trainer, animal psychologist, and animal-lover stop, think, and question.
Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
First published by Knopf in 1986, Hearne's groundbreaking book was born of her need to be able to talk about her training relationships with dogs, horses and other animals. Hearne (1946-2001) found that there was no vocabulary, that captured the complex set of dependencies, trusts and moral quandaries that arose for when she trained dogs to track, or horses to jump. Through luminous anecdotes, she here develops rigorous and beautiful descriptions of the transactions between animals and people, what they entail and what the expectations-on both sides-are. Drawing on everything from Xenophon, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein to legendary Disney animal trainer William Koehler, Hearne anticipates the work of philosophers like Donna Haraway, but also provides of kind of training manual for the soul of anyone who has an animal or animals in his or her life. She would go on to write Bandit: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog and other books, but none distills Hearne's vision, and imparts a sense of her discovery, as this book does.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Library Journal
This engrossing treatise on animal behavior and interspecies communication provides an astute and possibly unique synthesis of a domestic animal trainer's practical knowledge and the intellectually more distant and even sterile theories of the academic world. Modern psychologists and philosophers have typically railed dogmatically against the anthropormorphism and morality inherent in the language of animal trainers. But Hearne points out that the validity of the trainers' methodology is supported by the fact that trainers who actually work interestingly and successfully with animals can accomplish so much more than most academic researchers in training their charges. The author believes that the training relationship is a complex and fragile moral understanding between animal and human. Enthusiastically recommended. Robert Paustian, Wilkes Coll. Lib., Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
The impulse behind this book is specifically philosophical, which is a way of saying that the circumstances of my life have been such that it mattered enormously to me to find an accurate way of talking about our relationships with domestic animals. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The impulse behind this book is specifically philosophical, which is a way of saying that the circumstances of my life have been such that it mattered enormously to me to find an accurate way of talking about our relationships with domestic animals. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
If you are interested in exploring deeply the underpinnings of our attempts to share meaningful relationships with animals, don't let the previous negative reviews dissuade you from reading this beautiful book. If you personally have a deep relationship with an animal or animals, you know what she says is true.
For those who don't have such relationships, in particular the aforementioned reviewers, let me just say that you are welcome to persist in your positivist, reductionist, rationalist, anthropocentric world view. Just don't presume to speak for the rest of us who see a bit beyond it, or deny the existence of that which you cannot experience or understand.
By Susan Shott
Format:Paperback
How sad to see this bit of sadistic thuggery reissued. This is a book about the poetic joys of torturing dogs. One sample: Hearne describes how she helped her dog dig a hole, while dancing playfully around with the dog, filled the hole with water, still acting playful with the dog, then suddenly, without any warning, forced the dog's head under water and subjected her to near drowning. What the dog must have thought of that hideous and incomprehensible betrayal I cannot even begin to imagine. And yet reviewers prattle on about what a lovely book this is. I think dogs would disagree. The book is also nauseatingly pretentious.
By M. S. Werner
Format:Paperback
I would like first to praise Donald McCaig for his entrancing introduction to Adam's Task. As I began the book I soon felt that Mr. McCaig had not read it after all. In the first chapter alone there were seventeen undocumented names scattered through a syncitium of undisciplined prose. Pedantics masquerading as wisdom paint a sorry picture of the writer. Pretentions to culture separate the sheep from the goats (sic.) winning the praises of its worshipers, and alienating the more clairvoyant. I am reminded of a biochemist who lectured biochemistry to physicians, and medical bioethics with biochemists, thus putting himself beyond critical examination by either. Name dropping is not scholarship. Endless, many-branching sentences are not good writing. Hearne is pretentious in both areas, and seemingly grossly ignorant of both. I, too, am an animal. I identify with them. I even believe they are as entitled to souls as are humans. Indeed, American Indians, who saw the life ebb out of each kill, were poignantly aware of that fellowship. Mrs. Hearne has only muddied the waters.
Want to see more reviews on this item?
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 26 reviews
3.1 out of 5 stars
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry
- Books > Science & Math > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry
- Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Animals
- Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Ecology > Animals
- Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Fauna
- Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Reference
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
