Positive reinforcement training. The interesting parts were the discussions of what certain dog behaviors can tell you. Still strange to me that the clicker/positive people are so anti the “leadership” methods. They are not so different firstly and seem to take real life into greater account.

This book was written by veterinary behaviorists, who understand both a dog's psychology and it's anatomy and natural behavior. These are the guys that dog trainers learn from. They are called "diplomates".

This book is filled with good tips on dealing with specific issues, like how to introduce children to dogs, and how to teach them the proper way to interact with dogs. And how to deal with fear and aggression in dogs, and even otherwise mundane but highly difficult things like how to get your dog to allow you to brush its teeth. It includes example stories of purportedly real-life scenarios between owners and their dogs to help explain what went wrong between owner and dog, and what the owner could have done differently.

The book talks about the trouble with people misreading a dog’s body language. For example, people often mistake “guilt” in dogs, thinking that when they do something and look “guilty”, it shows they know they did something wrong. However they actually are simply submitting and relaying “I surrender”, because they know that the circumstances that seem to make you angry exist, but not that they are to blame for those circumstances. Such as a dog that has an accident in the house. It knows you get angry when that mess is on the floor, but it doesn’t associate the fact that it caused that mess that is making you angry.

Chock full of great information. This would be a great addition to the library of any dog lover! ( )

This is a good, down to earth training guide for anyone unfamiliar with dog behavior or a first time dog owner. This book was written by a team of veterinary behaviorists and offers a more scientific approach to understanding a dogs behavior and creating a desirable behavior. The chapters are organized by specific behavior, so it is easy to research the information you need to know. However, the first few chapters about dog behavior in general are very informative for everyone to read.

There were a few little scientific quirks in here that I disagree with, they don't really impact the overall content of the book, but may impact your attitude. There is a small discussion about "Are Wolves Smarter Than Dogs?" The authors state that "Wolves can't be all that smart a species or they wouldn't have become endangered." I don't think intelligence is an issue so much as evolutionary differences in relationships with humans. Dogs have evolved to take cues from humans and wolves have evolved to rely on instinct. This is the way it should be since wolves are wild animals. The authors also tell owners to not fear that their dogs will ever act like wolves, while this is true most of the time for well trained dogs, I always remember the Bernd Heinrich quote "A wolf is never a dog, but a dog is always a wolf."

With that being said, I actually agree with most of the training methods in the book which focus on positive reinforcement and clear, concise commands.

This book was provided for free in return for an honest review. ( )