LivingwithFreddie

“Part memoir, part animal science, Living with Freddie joins such triumphs as My Dog Tulip that seem to be about dogs but manage to be deep, incisive, and sometimes heartbreaking portraits of the people who are devoted to them. Heyward writes with great clarity, heart, and frankness about her struggles with a difficult dog, about the idea of behavior itself, and, most of all, about the nature of love.”

“Compelling, vivid, and essential, Living with Freddie confronts the mystery of love, the nature of suffering, and the heartbreaking ways in which one may be inadvertently embedded in the other. This book should be required reading for anyone contemplating adopting a pet, or even raising a child. Please read these pages. You will come away changed.”

“A beautiful book—at once a touching memoir about loving a ‘difficult’ dog and a searching inquiry into what it is to be sentient, alive, and in hierarchical relation with other sentient living beings . . . Anna Heyward zooms in and out between the everyday and the cosmic with dizzying and delightful ease, leaving the reader feeling enlarged and enlightened.”

“In this extraordinary, beautifully written book, Anna Heyward places the science and history of our relationship with dogs within a deeply personal story about the joy and the pain of living with, and trying to relate to, a nonhuman animal. Living with Freddie is a stunning meditation on the bond between beasts and humans.”

“Anna Heyward writes with sublime curiosity, uncommon lucidity, and an open heart—about her dog Freddie, yes, but also about love, natural selection, and humans’ relationship with the nonhuman world. I sobbed through the final few chapters, but I couldn’t put it down. Living with Freddie is an incandescent debut.”

“The perfect book for those of us who constantly gaze into the eyes of our beloved dog and don’t really have a clue what we’re seeing”

“Erudite and deeply compassionate - a profound meditation on our relationship with dogs that will change the way you think and feel about them and, perhaps, the way you perceive yourself”

“A beautiful, moving, and heartfelt tribute to the most special relationship on planet earth – the bond between humans and our dogs.”

“A gut punch of a book. Living with Freddie is a brave account of the challenges the author faced when living with Freddie, a rescue dog, for a year. Interspersed with behavioural research, the story allows the reader to begin to understand the ramifications of what living with humans means for a dog. A necessary and fresh angle on the way in which we co-exist with ‘man’s best friend’.”