From Publishers Weekly

Pop psychology and greeting-card effusiveness thickly pad the excellent training tips in this manual. Warren Eckstein, host of a syndicated radio program called The Pet Show, and a monthly visitor to TV’s Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee, and his wife (who disappears in the first-person-singular prose) urge readers to aid their dogs in the incalculably important tasks of “image-and confidence-building” and in developing “self-esteem” and “inner strength.” It’s hard to take seriously both the admonitions against “spreading gossip” about the family pet and the suggestions that readers tape-record themselves practicing “various types of woofs” (to improve their fluency in dog-speak) and equip their homes with a “doggy gym or physical fitness center.” There’s also some tiresome name-dropping of celebrity clients and a little name-brand-dropping. But those who persevere will find helpful discussions about introducing a second pet or a new baby into the household; remedies for excessive barking and other unwanted behaviors; and sound training principles. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The Ecksteins take the newer, refreshing approach that the dog is a family member and should be treated with love and respect. The owner’s responsibility is to learn to understand his or her pet and communicate well with it. To accomplish this, the authors provide sound information on understanding a dog’s body language and emotions and goes on to state that behavior problems result from boredom (on the dog’s part). At least half of this book discusses techniques for training the “basic five” commands: heel, sit, come, down, and stay. The authors emphasize the importance of praise and consistency. However, their corrective jerk on the leash is falling in disfavor as more progressive trainers look to motivational techniques to train dogs. Also, the use of the “shake can” to startle the dog is strikingly inconsistent with the philosophy in the first part of the book. The names used throughout for the imaginary dogs-Fido, Fluffy, and Clydie Poops-are somewhat irritating. Despite its minor flaws, this book is recommended for libraries needing an inexpensive source of good information on raising dogs. (Illustrations and index not seen.)-Edell Marie Schaefer, Brookfield P.L., Wis.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Description

Dogs are dangerous. And they are more dangerous to children than to adults. Not as dangerous of course, as kitchen utensils, drapery cords, five-gallon water buckets, horses, or cows. Not nearly as dangerous as playground equipment, swimming pools, skateboards, or bikes. And not remotely as dangerous as family, friends, guns, or cars. Here?s the reality. Dogs almost never kill people. A child is more likely to die choking on a marble or a balloon, and an adult is more likely to die in a bedroom slipper related accident. Your chances of being killed by a dog are roughly one in 18 million. You are twice as likely to win a super lotto jackpot on a single ticket than be killed by a dog. You are five times as likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than be killed by a dog. Because it is so extraordinary, lightning is often regarded as a universal cliché for an Act of God. Dog-attack deaths are even more extraordinary?five times more extraordinary. The supposed epidemic numbers of dog bites splashed across the media are absurdly inflated by dubious research and by counting bites that don?t actually hurt anyone. Even when dogs do injure people, the vast majority of injuries are at the Band-Aid level. Dogs enhance the lives of millions more people than even the most inflated estimates of dog-bite victims. Search-and-rescue and cancer-detecting dogs save significant numbers of human lives, and assistance dogs enormously improve the quality of many more. Infants who live with dogs have fewer allergies. People with dogs have less cardiovascular disease, better heart attack survival, and fewer backaches, headaches, and flu symptoms. Petting your dog lowers stress and people who live with dogs just plain feel better than people who don?t. Yet lawmakers, litigators, and insurers press for less dog ownership. This must stop. We must maintain perspective. Yes, dogs bite. But even party balloons and bedroom slippers are more dangerous. ?A tour-de-force examination of dog bites. Among other persuasive appeals for sanity, Janis Bradley has outed ?lumping?: the erroneous connection between kitchen-injury level bites and maiming or fatal dog attacks. She dares to be rational. Her rationality will?hopefully?raise the level of discussion in a topic mired in hysteria. Why do we get so excited about this particular class of injury? Enter the irrational. Human brains are organs that evolved for a single over-arching purpose: to maximize the representation of genes possessed by an individual brain?s owner in subsequent generations. We evolved in a different environment than the one we currently inhabit, however. Because of this, we are genetically predisposed to learn to fear animals with pointy teeth much more than to fear, say, hurtling along in hunks of metal at sixty-five miles per hour. Our brains are also not reliable truth detection devices. Any instances of truth detection are lucky by-products of selection for reproductive success. Scientific method was developed because of the chronic, abysmal failure of our brains to dope out reality, coupled with a fascination to know truth. Our intuitions are flat-footed much of the time. Stephen Jay Gould once mused, ?the invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.” If one searches the backgrounds of that small minority of dogs that kill people, lo and behold, many of them will have previously engaged in species-normal ritualized aggression: growls, snarls and kitchen-injury or less level bites in predictable contexts. This then becomes the foundation for the faulty causal leap, a slippery slope argument that says: if a dog is growly around his food dish, he will someday seriously hurt or kill someone. What is omitted is that a significant percentage of all dogs engage in species-normal ritualized aggression and the overwhelming majority will never hurt, much less kill, anyone. A sign

About the Author

After two decades as a college administrator and teacher, Janis Bradley became an instructor at the SFSPCA Academy for Dog Trainers in 2000, where she and her colleagues have prepared more than 300 students for careers as professional dog trainers. Janis lives in Oakland, California with Ruby, the teeth-clacking Doberman, and Henry, the Greyhound clown.

Review

“…do yourself ? and your dog ? a favor and follow the GOOD DOG! methods!” — Jack Hanna, Columbus Zoo

“Using training techniques like the ones in GOOD DOG! can create a lifelong bond between a dog and its owner.” — Martha Boden, Executive Director of the Humane Society of Indianapolis

Product Description

Thousands of dogs are abandoned or given to shelters every year because the owners don’t understand how to train and housebreak their pets properly. With Donna Chandler’s program, pet owners will learn to train their dogs in just minutes a day.

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Product Description

Create Your Dog’s Personality Profile for Training Success!

Teach your dog tricks you’ll BOTH enjoy, the fun way, without rules and regimentation! Use the Canine Personality Test included to find out your pet’s Personality Profile, and then follow the step-by-step guidelines to teach those tricks best suited to your star-to-be.

Included are practical tricks to make your dog useful at home; tricks to build rapport between dog and trainer; and cute tricks, great just for showing off.

Instructive and fun photos and illustrations throughout complement the easy to follow, step-by-step instruction from trainer Mary Ann Rombold Zeigenfuse.

Dog Tricks: Step by Step, Revised Edition, will entertain you and your dog, whether you are preparing for show biz or simply looking for fun activities to share with your best friend.

From the Back Cover

Create Your Dog’s Personality Profile for Training Success!

Teach your dog tricks you’ll BOTH enjoy, the fun way, without rules and regimentation! Use the Canine Personality Test included to find out your pet’s Personality Profile, and then follow the step-by-step guidelines to teach those tricks best suited to your star-to-be.

Included are practical tricks to make your dog useful at home; tricks to build rapport between dog and trainer; and cute tricks, great just for showing off.

Instructive and fun photos and illustrations throughout complement the easy to follow, step-by-step instruction from trainer Mary Ann Rombold Zeigenfuse.

Dog Tricks: Step by Step, Revised Edition, will entertain you and your dog, whether you are preparing for show biz or simply looking for fun activities to share with your best friend.

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Review

…I find this book so uniquely valuable, it will be front and center in my bookcase. — Dr. Marty Becker, Veterinary contributor to ABC TV’s Good Morning America, Knight Ridder Tribune Pet Columnist, Coauthor Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul, 2002 Veterinarian of the Year

Dr. Yin knows how—and why—to train, and how to convey the finer points to the average dog owner… — Leslie Larson Cooper, DVM, Diplomate, American College of Veterinary Behaviorists

Dr. Yin’s book includes just about all you need to know to get the most enjoyment from your pet… — Edward Price, Professor Emeritus of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, author of Animal Domestication and Behavior

Sophia Yin’s approach to dog training is a perfect meshing of the scientific theory and practical application. — Raymond Coppinger, PhD, Professor of Biology, Hampshire College

Product Description

Dr. Sophia Yin’s How to Behave so Your Dog Behaves will not only teach you how to get the best behavior you can can from your dog, but help you forge a deeper relationship with your canine companion. This instructional guide provides:

-a positive, scientifically sound approach to behavior modification with clear, straightforward explanations;

-an in-depth guide to not only understanding dogs, but also understanding how to efectively communicate with them;

-friendly, instructional drawings that enhance training concepts;

-problem solving exercises and spot quizzes that reinforce learning.

Dog owners and trainers alike will benefit from a clearer understanding of how changing their own behavior will result in a well-behaved dog.

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Product Description

Humans become pack leaders, and this book shows owners how to assert their position to the puppy. Addresses training puppies in proper behavior and preventing problems such as nipping, barking, or jumping on people. Offers solutions to fix problems.

Product Description

An astute observer once described the scene at a typical dog show as “organized confusion.” While the action may seem more confusion than organization, the reverse is actually true. It just takes a little while to learn this. Dog Showing for Beginners is the ideal means for the budding exhibitor to grasp the essentials and understand what is unfolding before her or him in this unique recreation. Every chapter has something important to tell the reader. Opening with a candid overview of what to expect from being a part of the sport, Dog Showing for Beginners goes on to help find that first show dog and explain how to get started in showing and hands-on learning. Here are simple explanations of how dog shows are structured and how dogs become champions. Excellent guidance on getting the equipment needed and entering shows is included along with how to approach your first show. This book also helps the reader find a place in dog showing and how to deal with the up and the down sides of the game. From beginning to end, Dog Showing for Beginners is touched with an insider’s sometimes irreverent whimsy; as the author points out, if you’re going to do dog shows, a sense of humor is a definite plus!
A Howell Dog Book of Distinction

About the Author
Lynn Hall is the author of numerous books for young people, including Kids and Dog Shows and Careers for Dog Lovers> She has been active in a number of breeds and is deeply involve in dog club activities and educational initiatives for the sport.

Product Description

Is stress causing your dog’s behavior problems? Research shows that as with humans, many behavioral problems in dogs are stress-related. Learn how to recognize when your dog is stressed, what factors cause stress in dogs, and strategies you can utilize in training and in your daily life with your dog to reduce stress.

From Publishers Weekly

While such recent entries into the dog obedience market as Linda Colflesh’s Making Friends , Bashkim Dibra’s Dog Training by Bash and the Monks of New Skete’s The Art of Raising a Puppy wow the canine-happy with authorial charm and painstaking thoroughness, this volume aims to please by virtue of its succinct, pared-down approach. Volhard and Bartlett, the author and illustrator, respectively, of Teaching Dog Obedience Classes , march the reader through exercises designed to produce a “good” dog: i.e., one that is housetrained, comes when called, has no bad habits, stays when told and does not pull when walked. However, they may overestimate their audience. Only a novice owner who is endowed with unusual powers of deduction will be able to fruitfully apply directions like “Distract and do something pleasant for the dog.” Devotees of training manuals, on the other hand, may pick up some worthwhile tips: reinforce your status as leader by having the dog sit and stay when you need to open the door. Illustrations not seen by PW.

Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Those who love their dogs will find a wealth of clear, precise and sensible instructions here for teaching their canine companions to be the ideal pet. In the ultimate guide for teaching your dog good manners, two award-winning authors take the reader through a short course in dog behavior, highlighted by original cartoon art. Humorous yet practical suggestions are presented for preventing bad habits, dealing with a dog’s basic needs, growth stages and why things happen and when. What All Good Dogs Should Know abounds with practical information on a motivational, humane and highly effective approach to dog training. This book is essential for anyone who values a dog as a friend, pet and companion.
A Howell Dog Book of Distinction

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