Your Dog Is Your Mirror: The Emotional Capacity of Our Dogs and Ourselves

Written by Kevin Behan

Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

In Your Dog Is Your Mirror, dog trainer Kevin Behan proposes a radical new model for understanding canine behavior: a dog’s behavior and emotion, indeed its very cognition, are driven by our emotion. The dog doesn’t respond to its owner based on what the owner thinks, says, or does; it responds to what the owner feels. And in this way, dogs can actually put people back in touch with their own emotions.

Behan was originally trained under the dominance theory by his father, John Behan, one of the first in America to make dog training a career. But he eventually came to believe that what made the modern dog trainable was not the dominance hierarchy but the dog’s ability to work as a cooperative group member in the hunt. This ability then evolved into an emotional capacity that perfectly complements human emotion.

Behan demonstrates that dogs and humans are connected more profoundly than has ever been imagined — by heart — and that this approach to dog cognition can help us understand many of dogs’ most inscrutable behaviors. This groundbreaking, provocative book opens the door to a whole new understanding between species, and perhaps a whole new understanding of ourselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781713547211

Kevin Behan

The author of Natural Dog Training, Kevin Behan is a veteran dog trainer and one of the nation’s foremost experts on dog rehabilitation.

Reviews for Your Dog Is Your Mirror

[sprocketeer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I met a beautiful little soul at an animal rescue nearly a decade ago who relentlessly proved - repeatedly - that he was my soulmate. After two wonderful years, at the age of six, he passed away. Those two years were magical...and two years more than any of the vets told me he could possibly live, much less thrive. But he did.

I understand it's the height of selfishness to say that Ivan hung on until the last possible second because he knew I would never stop mourning him. But, again, he did. That was just him. I even had it etched onto his little tombstone: "Ivan, who did."

I found myself weeping a little while listening, reliving all those little moments, the facial expressions (he had them for miles), and his unceasing desire to be right there with me the whole time. I knew he possessed the whole spectrum of emotions - especially empathy, which I've found often exists more frequently in our beloved animals than in ourselves.

This isn't a tear-jerking listen; quite the opposite, actually. It's thoughtful, often funny, and the author offers terrific insights about dogs, emotional receptivity and reciprocity, and the psychology of living things (not just people and dogs, but I do tend to read into things). This was an educational and insightful listen that's more than worth your time, especially if it leads to insight and reflection.

[Kathy Korolden · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very insightful, spiritual. It’s a look within self and companion

[Paulina Badrov · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you put in the time, this book can change everything.

[Allison · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

All philosophical in nature, no science or fact to back up what he writes, just his own opinion and anecdotes. Here's another person spouting off "animals don't have the capacity to think" because god forbid homo sapiens not be considered the most special and unique creature ever spawned. To summarize this writing, the author believes dogs can't think, they are just empty soulless vessels of mindless emotion and energy and nothing else. If you enjoy the company of animals I cannot imagine how you could enjoy a book that tells you dogs are just little braindead automatons running around reacting to the emotions of others and never having a thought or true connection with their human aside from absorbing and then mirroring the human's energy. This book and every baseless philosophical opinion of the author in it belongs in the bin.

[Richard Anaya Jr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book changed my life! I love my dogs even more.