From The Dogist -- the Elias Weiss Friedman first became known as The Dogist when he took thousands of photos of dogs and posted them online along with their unique dog stories. Even before he was The Dogist, though, he was Over his decades of studying dogs and their people, Elias has arrived at a deceptively simple realization: This book weaves together stories of the many dogs throughout Elias’s own life--the dogs he grew up with, the dogs of people he knows, and the tens of thousands of dogs he has encountered on the street while doing his Dogist work. Told in a light tone that does not shy away from more serious issues (Elias is not above the occasional sentimental moment or dog pun), the book charmingly explores the ways that dogs are not just our family and our friends, but also irreplaceable beings capable of generating boundless love and restoring balance to our lives.; In an increasingly alienating and divisive world, there is one clear remedy: the one with four legs that rolls over for belly rubs. Dogs can change our lives, and this book might just change yours....

Autorentext
Elias Weiss Friedman is a New York Times bestselling author, photographer, producer, and the creator and namesake of the popular online platform The Dogist, which boasts more than ten million followers across platforms. Over the last decade, Weiss Friedman has photographed more than fifty thousand dogs and redefined dog portraiture through his singular style of humanizing his subjects. Weiss Friedman is known for his philanthropic work as an advocate for dog rescue and advocacy organizations throughout the country, raising funds for many organizations that support dogs and help people through The Dogist Fund. He is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Dogist: Photographic Encounters with 1,000 Dogs and The Dogist Puppies.

Ben Greenman is a former New Yorker editor and bestselling author who has published both fiction (The Slippage, Please Step Back, Don Quixotic) and nonfiction (Dig If You Will the Picture, Emotional Rescue). He has also co-authored a number of books, including projects with Steven Van Zandt, Brian Wilson, George Clinton, Sly Stone, and Questlove.

Klappentext

"... weaves together stories of the many dogs Elias has been lucky enough to know, both in his personal life and while doing his Dogist work. Told in a light tone that does not shy away from more serious issues (Elias is not above the occasional sentimental moment or dog pun), this book charmingly explores the ways that dogs are not just our family and our friends but also irreplaceable beings capable of generating boundless love and restoring balance to our lives. In an increasingly alienating and divisive world, there is one clear remedy: the one with four legs that rolls over for belly rubs. Dogs can change our lives, and this book might just change yours."--Provided by publisher.

Zusammenfassung
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A uniquely insightful, uplifting, emotional, and informative book that shows us how dogs make our lives better by making us better people, from the Dogist

The stunning hardcover of This Dog Will Change Your Life features a custom-stamped case, endpapers, and a beautiful jacket.

Elias Weiss Friedman became known as The Dogist when he took thousands of photos of dogs and posted them online along with their unique dog stories. Even before he was The Dogist, though, he was a Dogist—a fervent dog lover, and an evangelist about the relationship between dogs and humans and the joy this bond brings us in the modern world.

Over his decades of studying dogs and their people, Elias has arrived at a deceptively simple realization: Dogs make people’s lives better by making people better. Dogs improve us. They save us. They give our lives greater meaning and fulfillment. They teach us to become the best versions of ourselves. They help us understand our own identities, deepen our relationships, and remind us of patience, purpose, and commitment. We constantly seek those things in our human life, but so many of the answers are already right in front of us, in our dogs.

This book weaves together stories of the many dogs Elias has been lucky enough to know, both in his personal life and while doing his Dogist work. Told in a light tone that does not shy away from more serious issues (Elias is not above the occasional sentimental moment or dog pun), this book charmingly explores the ways that dogs are not just our family and our friends but also irreplaceable beings capable of generating boundless love and restoring balance to our lives.
In an increasingly alienating and divisive world, there is one clear remedy: the one with four legs that rolls over for belly rubs. Dogs can change our lives, and this book might just change yours.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

What Is a Dog?

I feel kind of awkward that the last part of the introduction included a quote from Lévi-­Strauss. Well, not totally awkward, maybe, but I want to be careful. I’m not an academic or anything close to it, and I don’t want this book to be academic either. It’s a celebration of the joy that dogs bring into our lives, and more specifically of the way that they can help us have a better approach to our identity, our relationships, and our purpose. It’s meant to attain and then maintain a kind of emotional altitude, so I don’t want it to feel too weighty. In that spirit, I want to issue a Dogist Pledge. Every time I quote a high-­end academic thinker or author, I’ll try within a few paragraphs to quote a comedian of some sort. In this case, it’ll be Groucho Marx, who popularized the quote “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” When I first heard that quote, I was younger, and I thought it was funny. I still think it’s funny, but I also think that it’s profoundly inaccurate. Books are great, sure. No argument there. You’re in one now, and hopefully you’re enjoying it. But as it turns out, you can read inside of a dog. I’ve been doing it for years, trying to look into dogs through their expressions and movements, to locate their essence and understand how it changes our essence. What I have learned is that it’s not dark at all. It’s almost all about light, the special radiance they possess that brightens the world.

What is a dog? It seems important to handle that question before we start talking about how and why dogs improve the lives of the humans around them. Ask a zoologist—­or, if you can find one, a cynologist (someone who specializes in the care and training of dogs)—­and you’ll get an answer that starts off like this: “Oh, good question.” (Cynologists are very polite.) “It’s a common domesticated animal, Canis familiaris, sometimes referred to as Canis lupus familiaris.” Then they’ll probably clear their throat, politely, to signal that if you want to know much more, you should probably read their peer-­reviewed paper “What Is a Dog?”

Even that brief answer, though, contains much of the story. Why sometimes Canis familiaris and sometimes Canis lupus familiaris? To answer that question, we need to travel to the past. Ready? Okay—­it’s not now anymore. It’s long ago, maybe twenty thousand years ago, prior to or perhaps just at the beginning of the Last Glacial Maximum, an ice age in which sheets of ice covered most of North America, northern Europe, and Asia. These sheets of ice accounted for much of the planet’s available moisture, locking it in place and reducing it elsewhere, and this in turn lowered sea level, expanded deserts, and created harsh and isolated e…