I appreciate your review of John Bradshaw’s Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend of Your Pet (New York: Basic Books, 2011), which points out that dogs are much less like wolves than commonly believed (“Man’s Best Friend,” August 6, 2011). Although dogs share more than ninety-nine percent of their genes with wolves, this does not mean that their brains work in the same way. Domestication has done wonders over a long period of time that dogs have spent with humans. The process has taken about twenty-thousand years, according to the author. In the Chauvet cave in France there is a long trail of footprints made by a boy and a large canid that seems to be part-wolf, part-dog. Splendid. The only bit I miss in the argument is that humans have also undertaken a long period of domestication, which takes them quite some distance from Paleolithic humans. That is, domestication has worked both ways. Dog’s best friend cannot be understood otherwise.