Living with Freddie: How a Dog Taught Me to Be Human

An extraordinary memoir about learning to see the world through a dog’s eyes, by a New Yorker writer and animal behavior expert

“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.”—Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief

When Anna Heyward adopted Freddie, a rescued Italian greyhound, she was thrilled to bring a dog into her life. But Freddie, she quickly realized, had severe separation anxiety, unable to be left alone for more than thirty seconds without crying uncontrollably or injuring himself. Some would have given him back, but Anna dedicated her life to entering the mind of her dog, putting her relationship, social life, and job at risk. As Anna observed Freddie’s behavior, she began to experience the world as he did, and she changed—but not in the way you might expect.

Living with Freddie is a meditation on what it means to be bad or good, on how much we can—or should—try to alter another being’s behavior, and what is possible to know about another mind. But at its heart, this is a beautiful, heart-wrenching portrait of the relationship between a human and a dog. And at the end of Freddie’s story, you, too, may find yourself changed.