About the Book
An entertaining history of our small canine companions, told in tender, engaging stories and featuring charming illustrations of the most famous pocket-sized pups and their owners across the centuries
“What a respite from the woes of the world, to dive into this brilliantly researched and wittily written study of the history of our love affair with small dogs. I loved it.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love
“If you love little dogs, you will love this book—and if you don’t, these delightful, surprising, and informative pages will change your mind!”—Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus
Yap! Whether that sound suggests an irritating little runt of a dog or a sweet huggable bundle of canine fluff, you need to curl up with this captivating, informative, anecdotal history of our most diminutive four-legged friends. Dogs have been valued members of our societies for tens of thousands of years. They’ve guarded our homes, herded our flocks, hunted our food, and rescued us when we’ve needed help. But since ancient times, little terriers and lapdogs have enriched human lives in a different way. For millennia we’ve bred and kept them, both because they work for us and they bring us joy.
Animal historian Dr. Stephanie Howard-Smith tells the story of our smallest working canines and our beloved companions in a series of fun, lapdog-sized chapters, each of which focuses on a famous historical pooch. From the convents of medieval Europe, where nuns hid small dogs to be their faithful friends (despite the disapproval of male church leaders) to King Charles’s Spaniels, Queen Victoria’s Pekingese, Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua, and the pet influencers of twenty-first-century social media, Yap! follows the pawprints of the pups who set the mold for the dogs we share our homes with today.
Celebrating the petite companions with whom we’ve had our longest and closest relationship, from the lean mean little terriers who’ve kept our homes vermin-free, to our precious French Bulldogs and Toy Poodles, Terriers and Dachshunds, Pomeranians and Pugs, Shih Tzus and Spaniels, Howard-Smith presents a heartfelt ode to the yapping little dogs that have shaped our lives as much as we have shaped theirs: how they've evolved from working dogs to couch companions, providing the blueprint for the modern canine, and offered us companionship when we’ve most needed it.
About the Author :
Dr. Stephanie Howard-Smith is a dog lover and animal historian. She has a PhD on the cultural history of lapdogs in the eighteenth century and has given lectures to English and history students at universities across the United Kingdom. She is the author of a number of academic essays on dogs in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Britain. Her scholarly research has explored London's first celebrity veterinarian, porcelain pugs, and dogs at home in Georgian England. Howard-Smith also writes about dogs in culture and society for a popular readership. Yap! is her first book.
Review :
“Yap! is a book that is every bit as charming, smart, perfect, and delightful as its subject. What a respite from the woes of the world, to dive into this brilliantly researched and wittily written study of the history of our love affair with small dogs. I loved it. (And Pepita loved the parts I read to her as well!)”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
“If you love little dogs, you will love this book! Scholarly but highly readable, Stephanie Howard-Smithʼs historical research, charmingly presented, shows just how deep and real our adoration of toy breeds runs, and why some folksʼ dislike of toy breeds says far more about the human condition than the canine.”—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus
“As a relatively recent convert to the joys of small dogs, I had no idea what a rich, complicated, and long tradition I was joining. But now I do! Yap! is erudite, and also engaging.”—Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth
“A delicious must-read for those of us who adore our smaller pets.”—Rachel Joyce, author of The Homemade God
“Yap! traces the long history of our love affair with, and criticism of, clever, obedient, and affectionate little dogs. If this witty chronicle doesn’t end up in every dog lover’s Christmas stocking, I’m a chihuahua.”—Amanda Vickery, author of Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England
“Howard-Smith takes the unleashed reader on a delightful romp through the lives of people and their pugs, spaniels, beagles, Maltese, and other smaller canines whose joie de vivre has carried dogdom into the most intimate corners of people’s lives.”—Clive D. L. Wynne, author of Dog Is Love
“What they may lack in stature, small dogs more than make up for with their big personalities. Stephanie Howard-Smith’s captivating history of terriers, pugs and other diminutive dogs brilliantly illuminates their oversized influence on humankind over the last 11,000 years. A treat for dog lovers of all sizes.”—Chris Pearson, author of Collared: The Story of Man’s Best Friend Through the Ages
“A brilliant juicy bone of a book, with lashings of history, culture and canine chronicles.”—Chris Packham, TV Naturalist and author of Fingers
in the Sparkle Jar
“The first serious history of small dogs, Yap! is a fantastic read that combines sparkling historical analysis with warm and entertaining stories that show us why the relationships between little dogs and their owners mattered in the past and continue to matter today.”—Jane Hamlett, Professor of Modern British History, University of London
“A treasure trove of doggy delights. Howard-Smith reveals how small dogs have been loved, cossetted, mourned, ridiculed and immortalized by humans, leaving their mark on art, literature and material culture.”—Helen Cowie, author of Animals in World History
