Fit for Man and Beast

Dominion by Matthew Scully St. Martin’s, 434 pages, $27.95 LAST SUMMER my daughter’s dog, Barkley, got horribly sick. He’s a small dog, a mixture of Pekinese and poodle, and he needed surgery. The animal hospital said it would cost a lot, but we didn’t hesitate. When we saw Barkley after the operation, he could barely move, but we could see in his eyes that he knew us, and we felt that he wanted us there. He responded to our attention.

One effect of this episode, aside from Barkley getting well, was that I began thinking about man’s relation to animals: about how dependent animals are on us and, more important, what our obligations to them might be.