People are perfectly glad to accept the idea that dogs love us, so they must be able to love each other. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Every dog might wish to be Dog One, but like us, most dogs want membership in the group even more than they want supremacy over others. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
We may never find a way to live in suburbia with deer as we do with raccoons, say, or squirrels. So for this reason, it’s very important that we make sure always to save enough wild or open land so that they can live in their normal manner. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Besides individual things like thunder and gunshots, what dogs fear most is not belonging, being alone. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
We are surely the primary agent of death for all members of the cat tribe. For many if not most cat species, our depredations must surpass accidents, disease, and even starvation by a considerable margin. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
I always thought of deer as solitary animals that weren’t very interesting. But my goodness, that was very wrong. The big eye-opener for me was that they’re social. They have family groups. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Not even a maggot is an it, and to refer to any animal in that manner is an affectation, an ignorant stab at science-speak. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Once you’re known to be an alcoholic, that’s how many people identify you, which could be a reason not to talk about it. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
In my cosmology, indigenous wild deer are more important than exotic ornamental shrubs. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
I would like to visit a dog’s mind to know what he’s thinking and feeling. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Every day, the humane societies execute thousands of dogs who tried all their lives to do their very best by their owners. These dogs are killed not because they are bad but because they are inconvenient. So as we need God more than he needs us, dogs need us more than we need them, and they know it. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Veterinarians are essential allies to the millions of us who experience the human-animal bond. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Animals need to understand other species, if only to prey on them or escape from them. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Dogs who live in each other’s company are calm and pragmatic, never showing the desperate need to make known their needs and feelings or to communicate their observations, as some hysterical dogs who know only the company of our species are likely to do. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
No other creatures of the savannah sleep as deeply or as soundly as lions, but after all, lions are the main reason for not sleeping soundly. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Dogs like to learn stuff, if not from another dog, then people are OK… They love activity, playing, interesting walks, and just belonging, being together. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
We fill the woods with invasive primates camouflaged to look like piles of leaves who sneak around, sprinkling estrus doe urine and manipulating gadgets that sound like antlers clashing. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
You can look at your dog and see that it’s thinking and has strong feelings. And if it does, so do wolves. And if wolves do, so do elephants. People aren’t the only beings that think and feel. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
People acquire a dog, don’t understand it, can’t train it, get fed up, and… offer it for adoption, hoping to pass on the problem to somebody else. But nobody wants a problem dog. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
You have to be able to love members of your own species before you can branch out and apply that to other species. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Primates feel pure, flat immobility as boredom. But dogs feel it as peace. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Many expressions of a cat’s feelings seem deeply related to the capture of live prey. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
When I was very young, my nanny was a big Newfoundland dog… whose task was to keep me from drowning. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
With all due respect to the nation’s fish and game departments, more deer die because people hunt them than because people feed them. – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
