Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name - Softcover

Hearne, Vicki

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1602390029 ISBN 13: 9781602390027

Publisher: Skyhorse, 2007

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Vicki Hearne was an accomplished scholar of linguistics, literature, philosophy, and behavioral psychology as well as a poet. She was a professor at Yale University and operated a dog-training school for years in Westbrook, Connecticut.

Donald McCaig, the author of Jacob’s Ladder, Rhett Butler’s People, and Canaan. He and his wife, Anne, work a sheep farm in the western mountains of Virginia.

Karen Joy Fowler is a New York Times' bestselling author of six novels, including The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are Completely Beside Ourselves, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

From the Back Cover

Adam's Task offers an innovative and metaphysical approach to training animals. Based on studies of literary criticism, philosophy, and extensive hands-on experience in training, Hearne asserts that animals (at least those that commonly cohabitate or interact with humans) are far 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. In response to her studies and experiments, Hearne developed an entirely new system of animal training that contradicts modern animal behavioral research and yet, as her examples show, is astonishingly effective.

Reviews

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.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1602390029
• ISBN 13: 9781602390027
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288