‘The Dogist’ Host Elias Weiss Friedman Announces New Book (Exclusive)
Reflecting on the thousands of canines he’s met over the years, The Dogist’s Elias Weiss Friedman is ready to share his thoughts on how dogs can change a person’s life.
On Tuesday, Oct. 8, Friedman — known for his work as a canine street photographer and his viral success on social media as The Dogist — announced exclusively with PEOPLE that he will be releasing his first narrative book, This Dog Will Change Your Life.
“Dogs have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I always knew that they made my life better, but it wasn’t until I became The Dogist that I started to see that my experience was also a universal one,” Friedman says, in a statement shared exclusively with PEOPLE.
The book — which follows Friedman’s previous photography books, including 2015’s New York Times bestseller The Dogist: Photographic Encounters with 1,000 Dogs and 2017’s The Dogist Puppies — tell the stories of the many dogs Friedman has encountered throughout his life, including his own, the dogs belonging to his friends and family and “the tens of thousands of dogs he has encountered on the street while doing his Dogist work,” per a press release from the book’s publisher.
The book was born from the “simple realization” New York City-based Friedman had after studying dogs and their people for decades, a press release shares “Dogs make people’s lives better by making people better. Dogs improve us. They save us. They give our lives greater meaning and make our lives feel more fulfilled,” it says.
This Dog Will Change Your Life, which comes out this summer, will share funny tales of dog ownership while also tackling the hard issues surrounding our canine friends, giving readers the chance to explore “the ways that dogs are not just our family and our friends, but also irreplaceable beings capable of generating boundless love and restoring balance to our lives,” the release adds.
“Dogs make our lives better, and our love of dogs is one of the few things we all have in common,” Friedman says. “Dogs give us a deeper sense of our own humanity. Dogs bring us joy. Dogs change our lives. They teach us the lessons we didn’t know we needed to learn.”
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“We live in a fast, complex, and at times alienating world, and reconnecting with ourselves in order to live our best and healthiest lives, is more important than ever,” Friedman told PEOPLE. “Dogs are not only our best friend, but our best hope.”
Friedman “The Dogist” is represented by Alexis Rosenzweig, and the book is represented by Marc Gerald and Rosenzweig.
This Dog Will Change Your Life is set to hit shelves on June 10, 2025 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.