Sit Stay Fetch… oops, I mean Secrets to Dog Training… may be the best-selling dog training ebook on the internet. And with good reason: it includes audio files, videos, and several bonus ebooks, as well as the main ebook. One thing I really like about it is that it’s extremely well organized and will help you to get organized with your own dog training.

Secrets to Dog Training would be useful to some of you readers and less so to others, because Daniel Stevenson is of  the opinion that you need to be alpha over your dog. I don’t find this way of thinking to be helpful, and so I wouldn’t care to use the ebook. But different strokes for different folks (and their dogs, I guess), so if you are on the same page as Daniel here and could use a good dog training plan, take a look at the Secrets to Dog Training website.

Sit Stay Fetch is now Secrets to Dog Training is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

Not today. This time, it’s his wife, top trainer Kelly Dunbar, who I am going to quote.

One of my favorite positive dog training sites to browse is Dog Star Daily, where Kelly Dunbar is the executive editor. It has blogs by a lot of really top trainers, where you get a sense of their lives working with all sorts of dogs and dog behaviors. I also like the huge selection of free dog videos, mostly on training, made by anyone who wants to submit one. Someone there does review them before they go up; you can see my video on how I make dog food using Dr. Pitcairn’s recipes there.

So I was really pleased to read a post by Kelly Dunbar a few months ago where she introduces

Dog 2.0: the next revolution in dog training.

We are in the process of “going green” with all of our training products. We are digitizing everything, essentially digitizing Ian’s brain and all 30 years of his experience in dog behavior and training.

She gives a bit of background, that Sirius Puppy and Dog Training, founded in 1982 by Ian Dunbar, was revolutionary in that it was the very first puppy training school, and that it led to a whole movement of training pet and companion dogs, not just dogs who would end up in the show or obedience ring, or maybe running a dogsled race. I remember those days, when every dog training book I read assumed I was heading out to compete somewhere. Things are so different now.

So if anyone has earned the right to speak of Dogs 2.0, it’s certainly these folks. You can read the whole post here: http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/dog-20-next-revolution

And here is where they have posted audio books, e-books, and dog training programs which you can buy for very reasonable prices. There’s a series of multi-media lessons, where the first one is free and each subsequent one-hour program is only $2.00. I have myself sold products through the website they use there (lulu.com), and it is reliable.

I’m very pleased about all this for five reasons.

• First, so much dog training “information” on the internet is inadequate or just plain wrong. This stuff is high quality.
• Second, so much dog training “information” is very expensive. This is not.
• Third, being downloadable means it is available everywhere in the world, immediately.
• Fourth, while physical books certainly have their place, electronic products are significantly easier on the environment. It’s gotten so I think twice now before buying a physical book, but not for the e-books!
• Fifth, I agree wholeheartedly with Kelly Dunbar and will let her have the last word: “Ultimately we are very excited to embrace the new technology because it is dogs in general who will most benefit from this revolution. Solid, tried and true training information is now available at your fingertips… so please take a look around and then get out and use what you’ve learned to spend some quality time with your dog. Training keeps dogs out of shelters and that is why we do what we do. “

The Dog Training Revolution Takes a Green Turn is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

Okay, they are, listed loosely in terms of much I like them and my opinion of value for the price:

Before You Get Your Puppy, by Ian Dunbar, is a popular paperback by a foremost dog trainer now available as a free download from the publishers. It “covers the first three developmental deadlines covering the period of puppy selection until your puppy’s first week at home,” according to the site. They offer it as a public service. If you haven’t read anything by Dr. Dunbar, he writes extremely well.

The A1 Dog Training Collection, by Silvia Kent. The link takes you to my page reviewing this collection, which can be purchased individually or as a group at a good discount. Individual ebooks are: Dynamic Dog Training, Overcoming Dog Behaviour Problems, Your Dog and Your Baby, The Harmony Program, and Take the Class: The Dog Obedience Instructor’s Handbook. (I have separate pages reviewing each ebook, all linked to from this link.) I really like how much love and respect she shows to dogs.

The Ultimate House Training Guide Ebook, by Martin “Scoop” Olliver. The link takes you to my review of this comprehensive ebook on potty training puppies and adult dogs.

Sit Stay Fetch. While I don’t subscribe to some of the theories in this ebook / mp3 set, it is very nicely put together and quite comprehensive. The link takes you to my review, where I explain my differences with Daniel Stevenson’s approach and describe this well-organized training plan.

If you have written a dog training ebook, you would like me to review, please email me about it at my first name (rosana) at the name of this website. By the same token, if you have read a good dog training ebook, I would love to know about it.

The Best Dog Training Ebooks is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

Because it’s so easy to make and sell ebooks on any topic, dog training or otherwise, there is a huge worldwide internet marketing industry doing this. There are people who write ebooks on any topic, and there are people who write “killer” sales copy for the ebooks. Often the sales copy is more exciting and interesting than the ebooks. Often the ebooks are filled with half-baked, outmoded training theories — poorly explained to boot.

I guess it’s evident that I am unhappy with the low quality of dog training ebooks. Hey, I have my biases — I have been a librarian in public libraries, with a Master’s of Library Science and a lot of experience in selecting non-fiction how-to books for library collections. Both my parents were writers: my father the science fiction writer Cordwainer Smith, my mother a poet and a writer of engineering textbooks. I have been writing about dogs since I was eight, when my best friend and I wrote a series of stories about an imaginary dog we named Bounce. This background does not make me a top dog trainer — I’m nothing special — but it does give me a strength in the dog training world as someone who can evaluate the quality of books, ebooks, and DVDs offered for sale.

Now there are exceptions to my complaint regarding dog training ebooks. I really like the ones by Silvia Kent. There are some other useful ones, such as ones I recommend on this site for housetraining. And gradually, some book publishers are moving towards offering their books in ebook format as well as in print form, for ecological and financial reasons. I think we will see this trend continuing. At this writing, the Kindle ebook reader recently introduced by Amazon is getting a lot of attention. For a longer article I did on ebooks and books in general on another site of mine, see:
http://simplegreenliving.com/finding-and-reading-ebooks

I look forward to a time when the title of this article will be out of date.

After all, ebooks have some real advantages over books. You can have them immediately after you order them. You can get them from most countries, without international shipping… I have seen from my website statistics that people come from all over the world. You can read them on your computer, possibly print the whole thing if the publisher allows it, or just print out a few pages to take outside with you for training. Very ecological. (If the publisher hasn’t made printing easy, you can use a screen capture program like SnagIt to copy and then print some pages.)

We are living in an information explosion on dog training. Stay with the best books, DVDs, and ebooks you can find. For the books and DVDs, the best source is Dogwise — for ebooks, I have yet to find a good central source, so I will make this website more of a clearing house. Stay tuned… I’m working on a list of the best dog training ebooks, which I will put on this blog soon.

Why Most Dog Training Ebooks Are Mediocre is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

You can tell from the page where I describe the ebook whether you’d be interested. I’m sure it’s too alternative for some people, but if you’re reading this website you’re already interested in what’s effective, whatever the traditional wisdom has been!

Here are some tips from “The Natural Dog.”

[1] The day you get your pup and every day thereafter scour the floor for little items that your puppy might pick up on and swallow: pieces of string, coins, paperclips, pins and needles, dental floss, rubber bands, jewelry, children’s toys and clothes, nails and screws, thread, game station items like Playstation controls and cords, bits of food, napkins and tissues, rags and sponges, remote controls, batteries, etc.

[2] : What types of cleaning products do you use? Have you ever used a cleaning product that made you cough or was so strong you couldn’t stand to be nearby until it dried or dissipated? Consider that same cleaning product from your dog’s perspective.

[3] There’s evidence that suggests that annual vaccinations may not be needed – and in fact, some people suggest that continuing with them may in the long run do more harm than good.

To find out more about “The Natural Dog,” see my webpage where I give the full description….
http://training-dogs.com/natural-dog-ebook.html

It’s only $7, via PayPal

[tags]dog ebooks, dog health[/tags]

The Natural Dog: Useful, Inexpensive Ebook is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

(I am no stranger to the horrendous ingredients in much commercial pet food, and I’m careful to feed the higher quality dry dog foods to my own dogs. At times I’ve prepared much or even all of their dogfood, though I’ve been lazy about this lately. I got this ebook partly to reconsider making more of my own dog food again.)

As I opened Dog Food Secrets, I wondered what would the ebook be like? Would it be something I could recommend to my readers? I hoped so, as the need for reliable dog food information is great. Often ebooks are not written by the same person who creates the sales page. If the ebook carried on in the same vein, I wasn’t sure how effective it would be in helping people make the switch to healthier dog foods. Changing any habit takes some time.

I was encouraged by a sentence near the start of the book: “Just as you seek balance in your dog’s diet, we sought the balance in the available research, and present it to you here, in the most concise fashion.”

And I did feel that the ebook succeeded quite well in that promise. The first half of the book is a concise and clearly written overview of canine nutritional needs, and then it’s followed by a variety of dog food recipes you can cook at home. The ebook ends with useful data in Appendices, such as feeding recommendations.

You can get Dog Food Secrets here. I’m glad I did.

Dog Food Secrets: A Review is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

Some are great, some are junk, and I expect to be reviewing plenty more of them in the future.

With an ebook, you can download it immediately. You can read it on your computer or print it out. Since I am always reading whatever is in front of me, I am quite happy to read on my computer. But I realize many people aren’t, and you can print out whatever parts you want. This is a feature I really like; often I only print out a few pages.

I don’t think ebooks will ever replace physical books. But if you live in a place where it isn’t always easy to get the physical products quickly, or if you want information right now as we so often do when dealing with dog training problems, then ebooks are great! Almost all use the Adobe Acrobat .PDF format.

[tags]dogs, dog training ebooks[/tags]

EBooks about Dogs and Dog Training is a post from: Training Dogs Blog