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Biographical Note:
Anna Heyward worked on the editorial staff of
The New Yorker and as an editorial and special projects consultant at an art gallery. She was a graduate student in animal behavior and welfare science at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. Her writing has also been published by
The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, The Paris Review, and
Vogue, among others. She was born in Melbourne and lives in New York.
Review Quotes:
"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."
--Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus
"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."
--Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or
"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."
--Marc Bekoff, PhD, author of Dogs Demystified
"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."
--Carolyn Kormann, staff writer, The New Yorker
Publisher Marketing:
An extraordinary memoir about learning to see the world through a dog's eyes, by a New Yorker writer and animal behavior expert "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."--Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus 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.
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