WHY ARE DOGS

Profiles of over 50 breeds, ancient and modern, give young dog lovers plenty to wag their tails about.

Olsen starts by going back about 15,000 years to speculate about the first tentative connections between people and wolves and the beginnings of breed diversity. She then examines groups adapted for various specialized purposes such as hunting and herding. A single page at the end about “adoptable” mixed-breed pets seems more an afterthought. The similar-looking breeds are sometimes hard to tell apart in her illustrations, though she does make liberal use of labels and often describes minor differences in shape, color, or coat in the accompanying annotations. Still, all the pooches she portrays in her cartoon-style illustrations glow with doggy appeal, whether posed hard at work hunting or herding, strutting their stuff as show dogs, or lolling comfortably in period or modern family settings. Framed with an eye to prospective owners, her pithy commentary often includes remarks about common dispositions and care requirements, which she puts in a generally positive light while being frank enough to admit that dogs originally bred as herders may need plenty of exercise, and those with guard duties in their ancestry tend to bark a lot. A racially diverse human cast in period or present-day dress looks on fondly in the pictures.

A fetching gallery, wide-ranging but not indigestibly so.