It’s a good primer for learning about dog body language. It will help you understand the some of the signals your dog consciously and unconsciously gives off. You can use this information to try to mimic your dog’s behavior in an attempt to communicate in different situations.

While some readers find the book lacking in practical advice and the information too basic, the majority of readers will appreciate even gaining a few valuable insights they weren’t aware of before.

There is also a companion DVD (45 minutes) that is available to purchase that is also good. The author also has a couple other related behavior books, Barking: The Sound of a Language (108 pages) and My Dog Pulls: What Do I Do? (64 pages)

The main problem is that the information between all her books could be combined into a single book. While there is no question that the information in each is good, it just falls short in value compared to other books. Overall though, as long as you don’t mind this, On Talking Term With Dogs: Calming Signals is a good read, particularly for the new dog owner.

Understanding Our Dogs by Understanding How They See the World

This is a new warmhearted book out by animal lover Jennifer Arnold aimed at helping people better understand and relate to their dogs. Jennifer has an inspirational story to tell. At the age of 16, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Not long afterward, she decided to dedicate her life to helping people. She founded, Canine Assistants, a non-profit service dog school in Milton, Georgia aimed at training and providing service dogs to those with special needs and disabilities.

Through a Dog’s Eyes is partly an autobiography about Jennifer and how Canine Assistants came about, her experiences, unforgettable dog stories, dog physiology, canine sensory abilities, examples of dog intelligence, and other dog facts. There are also interesting but less scientific sections that go into the mystical 6th sense that dogs may have that border on ESP.

Her training philosophy can be described as 100% positive training. Jennifer is extremely outspoken in her views that the popular dominant / alpha model style of training is wrong and that instead friendship, positive reinforcement, and trust should be the real foundation in the relationship between dogs and their owners. She also speaks out against devices like invisible fences and shock and choke collars.

Jennifer pours her heart out in this book, and it is evident that she has an intense bond with dogs. Whether this book is right for you really depends on your expectations. If you are looking for something that focuses more on actual dog obedience training and how to solve dog behavior problems then a book like Secrets of Dog Training is a better fit for you. However, if you are looking for an inspirational read full of heartwarming stories, then Through a Dog’s Eyes is a great choice.

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The book covers a broad range of topics and is a very easy read. It has advice on housetraining and crate training as well as providing step-by-step instructions on teaching basic commands like sit, stay, and fetch. There are sections on understanding your dog’s mind, walking your dog, dealing with aggression, destructive behaviors, and more. In particular, a lot of people like the personality tests for helping to profile your dog’s type so you can train accordingly.

While the dog training portions of the book are solid, several people have expressed that the authors are out of their element in the sections that deal with nutritional and medical information. It is true that veterinarians will vary to a degree on health advice, but some readers have taken issue with alternate treatments being presented as facts, the information on vaccines, and a mention of feeding your dog raisins (because they may be toxic to dogs).

Overall, it’s a serviceable dog training book for new dog owners and trainers. There are no mind blowing revelations, just practical advice. Not all of the book will be useful for everyone. For example, there are over 70 pages dedicated to training for competition, not exactly an area you would expect to find for a book for beginners. That takes up nearly a quarter of the book. Anyhow, you can find better dog training books out there, but Dog Training for Dummies is not bad at all for the average person looking for a beginner book.

The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dog

This book isn’t a dog training guide to use in working with your dog. It doesn’t offer step-by-step instructions on how to teach basic commands, tricks, and other practicalities for training a dog. Instead, it focuses on animal behavior. McConnell sees humans as another interesting species related to chimpanzees and apes. To McConnell humans are primates and dogs are canids like wolves, jackals, and foxes. She drives the point that although humans and dogs share a unique relationship and live together, that we are different and communicate completely differently. As a result of this, a lot of our actions get lost in translation and can be misinterpreted by each other.

The Other End of the Leash is a mix of observations on anthropology, evolution, and a collection of stories. It offers good insight into the interactions between humans and dogs. It looks not only at dog psychology, but also focuses on human behavior and how dogs perceive our actions. It suggests ways that we can better interact such as changing our voice and body language to avoid sending mixed signals that confuse our dog. Often our natural behaviors and good intentions are misunderstood.

However, the book is not without its critics. Many feel the book a mere collection of stories that focuses too much on McConnell and her own dogs rather than have more of her clients. Some readers find the book too self gratifying and are annoyed of McConnell’s constant references to being an applied animal behaviorist and having a Ph.D. Other people feel the book deals way too much about primates, citing example after example of how they behave differently from dogs. And yet others find the book too talkative and wordy lacking in substantive information on how to put the concepts in the book to use.

Nonetheless, most people will find the book humorous and intelligent. It would be particularly useful for those who are fairly new to dogs. If want to get a better idea of what goes on inside a dog’s head and you are open to changing your own behavior in an attempt to reduce miscommunication with your dog, then The Other End of the Leash will be nice read for you.

It’ll teach you how to handle those day to day problems and ailments that your dog is sure to encounter as well as how to make solid decisions about serious health problems.  Learn how to accurately self-diagnose so you can catch small problems before they become large ones.  Be aware of the different warning signs that there might be a problem such as lethargy, hair loss, and other behavioral changes.

All this is covered in a comprehensive and reliable 240 page guide complete with supplemental full color diagrams, photos, and illustrations. One of the nice things about this book is that if your dog sick now you don’t have to wait.  It is available for immediate download.

Most all the common ailments and major sicknesses are discussed:

This book promises to set the foundation for housetraining your puppy in 7 days. It is a very quick and easy read. The book is 96 pages and can be read from cover to cover in less than an hour. It is precise and to the point and follows a straightforward approach. How to Housebreak Your Dog in 7 Days gives clear step-by-step instructions on how to housetrain your dog using the crate method.

This crate training method relies on being able to confine the dog to a crate or an enclosed area for several hours at a time throughout the training process. The book gives an overview on housetraining and focuses on developing consistent schedules for feeding, exercising with, and taking your dog out to relieve itself. It is flexible, providing different schedules that can be adjusted to suit your individual needs whether you are a stay at home owner or whether you work 8 hours a day.

How to Housebreak Your Dog in 7 Days also includes information on paper training your puppy even though the author makes it clear that it is unnecessary if you ever plan on having your dog always use the bathroom outdoors.

The book’s information is accurate and reliable and you will get good results if you follow its advice. The key to getting the most out of the book is to be consistent and follow the directions exactly.

Although the book definitely works, the essential information is really pretty simple and the principles could probably be boiled down to a handful of pages. If you’re already familiar with housebreaking a dog, you probably will not gain much additional insight. The book is really targeted more toward owners who are housetraining for their first time.

And there is no doubt that it is indeed helpful for those novices to housebreaking. However, most of the important information in the book can easily be found on the Internet with a simple search or from a detailed pamphlet from your vet. Whether this How to Housebreak Your Dog in 7 Days is right for you really comes down to whether you want to spend the time searching around or to just pay the $8 to have the information neatly organized in a book right in front of you.

As the title suggests, The Power of Positive Dog Training, focuses on praise and positive reinforcement training for your dog. It makes a good primer for those who are new to “clicker training”. Clicker training is a behavioral psychology based training method that relies on anchoring good behaviors and rewarding them. The good behavior is anchored through the use of a clicker, a device that makes a distinct, short clicking sound to tell your dog precisely when they are doing the right thing. It lays out the case for a positive training philosophy rather than other methods that use pinch collars, shock collars, and choke chains.

The book is clearly written and the techniques are explained clearly so they are easy to understand. The Power of Positive Dog Training is really more for training a new puppy but also useful for newly adopted dogs as well. It is nicely organized into a six week training schedule with one chapter devoted for each week. Each chapter lays out different exercises and bonus games to do with your dog. Topics included are stop, stay, come, heel, leash training, potty training, aggression, separation anxiety, socialization, and more. The information provided is complemented by pictures as well.

While some believe that Miller comes across too ideologically rigid with a completely positive approach being the only way, I’d say that the author is just passionate about a kinder way of training. For some though with dogs with strong problem behaviors, they may find the book lacking when it comes to addressing much more challenging behaviors.

Overall though, The Power of Positive Dog Training is recommended if you a new dog owner or if you are new to positive dog training. The book is filled with encouragement and practical tips to ease the frustrations and challenges of training puppies. It shows you can effectively train a puppy without resorting to cruelty.

It is clearly written and well organized. The tricks are organized from easy to intermediate to advanced and expert. They are laid out with step-by-step instructions, and it has a lot of really nice pictures. It even has photos that show how to handle each step of the trick along the way. The pictures are nice enough to make it a “coffee table book”.

You’ll learn the standard basic commands like sit, stay, and come as well as tricks like fetch, roll over, and play dead. But then is also filled with a lot of tricks that you normally wouldn’t think of like having the dog take a handkerchief out of your pocket, turn off a light switch, and even get me a beer!

Not all the tricks will be applicable to your dog. (The biggest complaint about the book seems to come from those with very small dogs). And you may not be interested in a lot of the tricks and some take a long time to teach your dog.

But, all in all, 101 Dog Trick comes through with good information on teaching your dog tricks. If you spend the time and work through the book, it really does make it a great way to spend time with and bond with your dog, not to mention impress your friends and neighbors.

Just so you know, Skete Monks isn’t the name of a person; it refers to The Monks of New Skete. At their monastery in Cambridge, New York, they’ve been training and raising dogs for more than 30 years. The original version of this How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend came out in 1978, and since then it has sold over half a million copies!

The monks have brought their years of experience to the book and covered a variety of topics. The topics include how to find and choose the right breed, naming your puppy, basic grooming, feeding, sleeping arrangements, dog dreams, dog loneliness, dog silence, exercises for your dog, how to massage your dog, how to cope with the death of your dog, as well as many more areas.

How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend goes beyond being merely a step-by-step guide but also goes into philosophy and delves into psychology of the relationship between humans and dogs. It stresses that dogs are not human, that they are descendents of wolves. As such, it goes into the pack dynamic and teaches you how to be the alpha of the pack and have dogs respect you. It focuses more on larger breeds of dogs.

The monks combine positive reinforcement and correction training techniques. Even though they promote to first use positive training, it is not heavily food based having to constantly use treats to reward desired behaviors. Instead, they establish getting used to using verbal and physical praise.

However, the book isn’t without its critics. Many people have taken issue with the book particularly the sections where discipline techniques used. It does advocate physical discipline in very specific extreme situations.

In the older version of the book, it had a section on using an “alpha roll” for extremely misbehaving dogs. This particular maneuver has been removed in the new version. The monks have this to say, “We no longer recommend this technique and strongly discourage its use to our clients. Though it can be argued that it has a natural basis in pack life, in a dog-human context it is potentially very dangerous and can set up the owner for a serious bite on the face (or worse), particularly with a dominant dog. The conditions in which it might be used effectively are simply too risky and demanding for the average dog owner; there are other ways of dealing with problem behavior that are much safer and, in the long run, just as effective.”

They do still recommend some physical corrections for other situations: “physical discipline should be reserved for the heinous canine crimes mentioned earlier, not meted out for every episode of bad behavior”.

There is a difference in philosophy. If you feel that you should never punish your dog, then this book is not for you. But all in all, the monks come across as treating the dogs with the utmost respect. They do not advocate beating your dog as has been overstated by some.

In the dog training world, there are a lot of different philosophies. Sometimes, people feel very strongly about them. Some people for example, don’t believe in the alpha model theory in training. If that’s the case, you may want to look at a different book.

The monks have a ton of experience in dog training and we do believe they have a lot of insight to share. And although it does cover many topics, this is a book that covers the basic commands, obedience training, and other dog problems in depth.

Cesar’s Way is quick and easy read. If you’re familiar with Cesar Millan’s show on the National Geographic channel, it makes a nice little companion. The information in the book is very simple and straight-forward. In it, Cesar goes into his background and explains how he came to be the Dog Whisperer and where he is today. It focuses on understanding the relationship between you and your dogs, the importance of exercise, how to be a calm but assertive pack leader, and his general philosophies about dog behavior.

The main criticism of this book is that it is too biographical and spends way too much time on Cesar the man instead of on actionable information on dog training. A lot of people feel that the title of the book is misleading and that it falls short when it comes to actually correcting common dog problems. They argue that it is too vague, fluffy, and “new age”, focusing too much on achieving harmony and balance and projecting energy.

Whether this book is right for you really comes down to your expectations. This isn’t really a dog training manual. If you have a brand new puppy and you’re looking for information you can put to use right away, the book really doesn’t make a good reference for dealing with house training and specific issues.

On the other hand, if you are already familiar with the show, already like Cesar Millan, and are interested in learning more about him, then you will like this book. It is not a detailed “how to” book with tons of examples, but rather focuses more on general psychology, frame of mind, and Cesar’s opinions on dog behavior, particularly within packs. If you’re looking for a pleasant and quick read and aren’t expecting the book to solve all your problems, check it out. But, if you’re looking for something more substantial, you should pass on this one.