Good Dog! Kids Teach Kids About Dog Behavior and Training is, as you’d expect from the title, a book written by kids. Evelyn Pang and Hilary Louie began writing this book when they were 9 years old, and Dogwise published it when they were 14.

The book is written for kids to read themselves, so it had to be clear and simple. (Hey, that is best for grownups too, and I’m sure this would be good for adults as well.) It is… I read some of it online, as you can do if you click the image or the link. I was pleased that clicker training is taught.

Dogwise Publishing commented, “We’ve believed for a long time that someone needed to write a book about dog behavior and training targeted towards young readers in the 8-12 year old range. There are lots of “read-to” books for little kids, but as children become good readers and interested in actually understanding and training dogs there has been little to choose from. So we were ecstatic when we were presented with the opportunity to work with two amazing young women on this book – not only did they write the book, but they illustrated it as well!”

The premise of the book is that when kids teach kids about dogs, everybody has fun! Kids will learn how to watch a dog and figure out what he is feeling or doing by gaining an understanding of body language and calming signal basics.

And they can learn how to teach him cool things like “Sit,” “Come,” and “Stay” just like professional trainers do – and even learn how to use clickers and targets when they train!

And, perhaps most importantly, kids can learn how to be safer around dogs they may come in contact with.

So if you are not a kid, but know a kid who is showing an interest in dogs, check this book out and get him or her started off right working with dogs.

What Others Are Saying

“This book, created by kids who clicker train, tells other kids how to use clickers to understand and communicate with their pets: a great idea and a useful and amusing book, with illustrations by the authors.” — Karen Pryor, founder of clicker training

“We know that kids learn best from their peers—so it is surprising that it has taken so long to get a dog training book written by kids for kids. Good Dog! Kids Teach Kids About Dog Behavior and Training covers the real essentials of being responsible and effective in caring for and training dogs. The emphasis is on safety and empathy—two things often overlooked in the profusion of books by adults. A must-read for any child or teen starting out with a new dog, or trying to better understand a longtime companion.”
-Randall Lockwood, PhD, CAAB, author and Senior Vice President, ASPCA, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Where You Can Get This Book

book is available at Dogwise, who published it. Good Dog! Kids Teach Kids About Dog Behavior and Training

And here it is at Amazon:

This series of weekly dog training tips  will include puppy training tips. That’s the case today, because bite inhibition is best taught very early on. In fact, the process begins with the puppy’s littermates. As they play, they naturally “mouth” each other — that is, they use their mouths to nip at each other. Their little teeth are plenty sharp, so it hurts, but their jaws are relatively weak at first so mouthing doesn’t do that much damage.

When one puppy does hurt another one, often the hurt one will stop playing for a while and move away. By this happening repeatedly as the litter grows up, puppies learn bite inhibition, that if they pretend to bite but use less force, the games continue. So the puppies begin to develop what’s called a soft mouth. This is one of several reasons that it’s important for puppies to stay with their mothers and littermates for a couple of months or so after birth.

The puppies’ mother or other adult dogs in the household will also correct the mouthing. If a puppy bites them, they may growl, curl their lips at the puppy, or get up and walk away.

Your Role in Training Bite Inhibition

If you get a puppy of whatever age, one of the first things for you to do — and it will naturally happen in the first day, most likely — is to determine just how far along your pup is in learning bite inhibition. At this stage, you are not looking for NO mouthing or biting. It’s actually much better for their training process if they will learn to develop a gentle bite. This is because if your dog should bite later on in life, the bite will do far less damage if the mouthing process has been allowed to develop into that ability to bite gently.

Of course, all this takes time and you will be enduring some sharp nips in the process.

Puppies often mouth when they are excited, or when they first wake up to an exciting new day. At those times, or at any time that your puppy mouths, here is what you or your children can do. Kids are more likely to be mouthed than adults because they are more lively than we are.

Say “ouch!” or yelp like another puppy would. Or say NO in a stern voice. Then stand up if you aren’t standing, and turn away from the puppy. Put your arms around your chest, to be less interesting to the pup. Stay like that, silently ignoring your puppy for around half a minute. Then resume interacting in a gentle manner.

Ian Dunbar has a wonderful DVD on training puppies which explains this in a lot more detail. Bite inhibition is actually one the very most important things you need to teach your puppy, and he explains why. See my review of Sirius Puppy Training here. One of the things I’m happiest about regarding this website is that hundreds and hundreds of people have bought this program and presumably gotten their puppies off to a better start in life. But with or without that DVD, keep at the bite inhibition process and within weeks you will see progress.

One of my favorite places to shop for dog items online is Sitstay. I’ve mentioned it before, and there’s a link to its clearance page on the sidebar of this blog. As a longtime small business owner myself, I love supporting other small businesses when I can, provided they offer quality at good prices. Sitstay does. I’ve always been very pleased with the things I’ve bought there.

They are also dog owners and real dog lovers themselves. It’s a family business, and I suspect that some of the inventory ends up going to the dogs!

The other day, someone emailed me with a question about getting good quality puppy toys, and I wrote back and just said: go to sitstay. She wrote me back after taking a look at the site and said she was going to have a lot of fun shopping there.

So what sort of things are there? They sell dog crates, leashes, clickers, and other training tools. Lots of toys, selected for quality.

Here are links to some of their sections:

• Diet and Nutrition
• Health Fitness recommendations
•  DVD & Books

They have a special going… actually, I *think* it’s a year-round deal:

Use Promotion Code DOGLOVER and save 10% on your next order.
(Just clicking on DOGLOVER will take you right to the site.)

The last two articles in my dog training tips have covered how to teach your dog or puppy to sit. This is one of the most commonly taught commands or cues. Now here are some ways that you can use the sit in daily life. If you have some favorite ways that I haven’t mentioned, please post a comment below the article.

Seven Ways to Use the Sit with Your Puppy or Dog

1. If your dog tries to charge into or out of the house, you can teach him to sit until you tell him it’s okay to go.
2. Ditto for getting in or out of vehicles.
3. Our dogs sit and stay before going to their bowls to eat. This is convenient, and I must say we’ve impressed a lot of dinner guests with this trick!
4. Another good time to use the sit is when you think your dog might jump up, like when those dinner guests ring the doorbell and there’s excitement as they enter.
5. It is useful in connection with teaching a dog to come to you and to sit in front of you.
6. It could save your dog from injury, or even save its life, if the dog was about to go out on a street with traffic and you called out, “Sit!”
7. It can make your dog less intimidating to a child who is about to pet your dog, with your permission of course.

A nice benefit of the sit is that dogs generally watch you closely when they are sitting, so you have their attention. Being able to get your dog’s attention when you want it makes life much more pleasant. Teaching your dog to sit also can strengthen the bond between you and the dog, as it’s something you two are doing together. You may think of it as a command, but the dog may think of it as something fun that he is doing with you. And here’s another tip: the more fun you bring to the sit or to any dog training, the more happily your dog will pay attention to you! That’s win-win.