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

The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs, by Patricia McConnell, is a fascinating and warm-hearted book about dog training by a woman with impeccable credentials. She’s one of my favorite writers, and I was pleased to notice recently that this book was #5 in popularity of all the dog training books that Amazon sells.

No wonder that this book ranks so highly…

It’s not another training manual, although it does have plenty of training advice.

Rather, it’s a book about understanding dog behavior, written by an academic with a a heart. She discusses many of the ways that we humans use body language in different ways than dogs do,  with the resulting misunderstandings. She tells us how we can better understand our own actions and dogs’ responses.

Since the book is written in a very personal and often amusing way, it’s a very good read. Patricia McConnell has worked for years as an animal behaviorist and has trained many dogs that their owners were about ready to give up on. She has done a lot with aggressive dogs.

If you were only going to buy one book on the behavior of dogs, make it this one. I’m sure you won’t be sorry! Read the rest of this entry

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