Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a dog? What might be going on inside their heads? How they might be feeling in all the different ways they live on our planet? Well, this book is for you!

It’s written by an imaginary mongrel dog who is trying to explain what it’s really like to be him. He describes his own experiences throughout his life and the thoughts he has had about them. Even if you think you know all about dogs and have one (or several!) of your own, some things may still surprise you. Did you know that a dog looking guilty is not saying sorry? Or how dogs find out about each other? How might the size and shape of a dog affect their view of the world and things around them?

To help you on your journey through the doggy world, our narrator asks some of his relatives and friends, big and small, to each give a little of their side of the story. What might a police dog or a dog belonging to a homeless person think about their lives? And finally, what is the difference between rehoming and rescuing a dog?

This middling-sized dog does not have all the answers, and he asks you to think carefully about some of the questions he still has. He would be most gratified if you would help him and other dogs to be better understood by spreading the word to all your friends!

Kendal Shepherd qualified as a veterinary surgeon from Bristol University in 1978. With extensive experience in small animal practice, she was the first vet in the UK to be accredited by the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour as a certificated clinical animal behaviourist in 2005. She has been heavily involved in the anatomical and behavioural assessment of dogs for the Courts under both sections 1 and 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.

Her present particular passions are the routine education, particularly of children, in the understanding of canine communication and prevention of aggression and dog bite incidents, the abolition of Breed Specific Legislation and a complete overhaul of the DDA and other legislation pertaining to dogs, and the encouragement of veterinary professionals to routinely safeguard the behaviour of their patients in all cases that they treat.

Customer Reviews

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Alice Oven | Author of The Clean Pet Food Revolution and Senior Editor, Veterinary and Life Science books at Taylor & Francis, UK.

There are thousands, millions of children's books about dogs but very few that are really about dogs; that is, real dogs. I Am a Dog is different, putting little people in canine paws to offer an inside view of what it means to be a dog in a human world. Because if anybody knows dogs, it's Kendal Shepherd. Her decades of experience navigating difficult, sometimes tragic, interactions between dogs and humans allow her to approach this subject with bottomless empathy and a unique understanding of what we, as humans, owe dogs. Yet while the intention behind her book is serious, Kendal's dog narrates his stories with humour, affection and buckets of personality, wonderfully illustrated by Anna Currey. We accompany him on walks, at training classes, in the family home, the park, at the vet, and along the way we meet all sorts of other dogs: pet dogs, working dogs, racing dogs and even free ranging dogs. This may be a children's book, but Kendal is unafraid to tackle contentious issues, getting to the core of welfare topics like brachycephaly, biting, aggression, so-called ‘dangerous dogs’ and foreign adoptions. She does so in such a straightforward way that adult readers will wonder why these concepts ever appeared so complex. It may not seem groundbreaking to describe the discomfort and pain a ‘cute’ French Bulldog feels or explain that not every dog wants to be petted, but if every child grew up with that knowledge, our world could be a very different, kinder place for dogs. So, when my three-year-old daughter gets a little older, this is the dog book I'll be handing her. I hope that it will help her grow into the kind of human that a dog deserves.