Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 288 pages
• Published by: Skyhorse Publishing March 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1602390029
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1602390027
• Book Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 11.2 ounces

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 gorgeous 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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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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name (Paperback) This is one of my favorite books of all time. Vicki Hearne - animal trainer, poet, and philosopher - talks about her relationship with the working animals she trains. She presents her philosophies by illustrating them with stories of animals she has trained. If you have deep respect for animal intelligence, this book will confirm and deepen your beliefs. Training, she says, is the creation of a shared language. But language has many ambiguities. For example, trainers haven't a clue what the world smells like to a dog, for whom "scenting" is a primary sense. Yet humans and dogs can learn to work together across the gap of their differences by coming to share the vocabulary of trained scent work. Animal training, says Hearne, is as challenging for the trainer as it is for the animal. Trainers must learn humility, and learn to communicate in new ways. For example, horses take in information through touch and are extremely sensitive to the motions of the rider. Once a trainer comes to understand this (and other things about horses), she or he can begin to understand the way a horse understands its world and its self. Of course I don't do justice to the book by summarizing a few of its philosophical points! Hearne writes gracefully, and shows a great mastery of a variety of disciplines - psychology, philosophy, literature, animal training. Her anecdotes make the philosophy much easier to understand, and the philosophy makes the implications of the anecdotes much richer.