DOWN BOY, DOWN, BLAST YOU!

Dog-gone! A truly anti-""man's best friend"" book? Well, not really. But it's a glossy humorous view of ""the canine infiltration of our culture and how it came to be."" It's about ""always having a dog on the wrong side of a door""; about ""the condition of being a dog owner.... Either you are in a state of exasperation over the dog's transgressions or you are conscience-stricken at your gross unworthiness of the true friend that your dog is, or is reputed to be."" And on. About the ""dog-books,"" those fallacious triumphs in which the biggest dogs are reputed to be most content in small apartments and the smallest are given the qualities of courage and occasional ferocity (with prowlers) usually ascribed to lions. It's bitesize, cantankerous dogma which will probably be graciously presented to the man who can't make his sitter sit.