For a very good guide to all sorts of dog training processes and dog behavior challenges, I use and recommend Clickertraining ...that link goes to the description of this terrific ebook you download immediately, wherever you are! -- Rosana

I am a big fan of the writing of Marta Williams. I’ve read her first book several times. So I was delighted to get an email from Carol Upton with this review of a new book by Marta Williams.  — Rosana

Ask Your Animal: Resolving Behavioral Issues Through Intuitive Communication

By Marta Williams, Foreword by Vanessa Williams, New World Library, 2008, Soft Cover, $14.95, ISBN: 978-1-57731-609-1, Available at www.martawilliams.com

Reviewed by Carol M. Upton

Like almost everyone else in the world. I started out believing that being able to communicate intuitively with animals was pure science fiction. ~ Marta Williams

Around the world, people are starting to see how communication with other species enhances all life. Whether you want to enrich your relationship with one pet or plan serious study of animal communication, Ask Your Animal will deeply inspire your direction.

Prior to becoming an animal communicator, Marta Williams worked as a wildlife biologist and environmental scientist. Intrigued by the idea of intuitive communication with animals, she set out to learn all that she could about the subject, a path which led her to become a full-time animal communicator. Read the rest of this entry

Dogwise.com is a terrific dog bookstore and publisher, firmly in the camp of cutting-edge positive dog training methods. Like all businesses, they are noticing the economy. Here is part of an email that I got from them a few days ago:

Like a lot of businesses throughout the country, the current recession has impacted us as well. For Dogwise, cutting edge training and dog care books and DVDs continue to be in hot demand (thank goodness and thank you!).

What we have seen, however, is that certain items – which in a strong economy we would expect to sell at a good pace – have slowed down significantly. Books that keep sitting on our shelves don’t do us a lot of good, even if we think highly of them.

As booksellers we have two choices, one being to return them and the other is to offer to them to you at a steep discount.

We have chosen the latter, and if you head to our clearance section (there is a tab on the top of our home page) you will see that we reduced prices on clearance items dramatically, most are now selling for well under 50% of their suggested price. So take advantage! All clearance items are first come first served and will not be reordered.

Read the rest of this entry

For the Love of a Dog (Amazon link), by Patricia McConnell, is the best dog book I have read in a long time.

The subtitle is “Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend.” McConnell writes with emotion herself, and some of my favorite parts of the book were stories of her dogs and her small sheep ranch. She is also a scientist, complete with a Ph.D. in zoology. Add to that over seventeen years of working with clients and their dogs, specializing in aggressive dogs, and there is a lot to learn from this book.

I expect to be blogging about ideas I got from the book, and re-reading my marked-up copy regularly, but now here’s a summary of what’s in For the Love of a Dog: Read the rest of this entry

Dee Ganley’s Changing People, Changing Dogs: Positive Solutions for Difficult Dogs was a self-published book that Dogwise has just brought out in a new edition. Many trainers use it, particularly since it contains many clearly explained exercises that help difficult dogs.

What’s a difficult dog? I suppose it’s any dog that someone gets exasperated with, but generally the term includes dogs who don’t learn as well because they lack normal control of their actions, or because their self-confidence is diminished.

This revised edition has new exercises and photos. It’s crammed with easy-to-read and easy-to-implement strategies, techniques, exercises and games, Dee walks the reader through over fifty methods of addressing canine fear and aggression. The simple and effective exercises will have you and your dog(or your clients and their dogs) well on the way to a happy relationship. Strictly positive methods!

This book covers a lot of ground, with sections on:

• Training equipment
• Toys and chews for environmental enrichment and play
• Canine communication
• How dogs learn
• How to assess a dog for training and behavior work
• A few case studies.

What Others are Saying 

“A good third of the book is an appendix giving step by step, detailed and clearly explained instructions for numerous exercises. Two of the self-control exercises that I use with clients almost daily are the Settle: Relaxed Down on Lead, and the Find It Game”. – Carolyn Clark, M. A. Director of Centre for Applied Canine Behavior

Having had more than one difficult dog myself, I was pleased to see this emphasis. Click on the image to go to Dogwise. I looked at Amazon, but when I was there, they only had the older self-published version so I didn’t bother making a link. (By the way, if you have that one, Dogwise says this one isn’t different enough to warrant buying their version.)