Dog Training

Having studied behavioral psychology, this books makes a lot of sense. The book gives you tools to teach the most basic commands and tricks. If you can do that, then teaching your dog more advanced commands on your own will be easier. Training definitively builds a bond between an owner and his pet.

I wanted to teach my dog standard hand signals. I know I can make up my own, but I preferred to learn whatever the standard signals were to help them when they might be working with other people. Out of all the dog training books at the store that day, this was the only one that actually showed the hand signals in addition to having some great training information.

I happen to be an avid reader, but my husband is the complete opposite, so this book was absolutely PERFECT for him. I trained dogs for years and I wanted him to be able to help in the training of our dogs, and I thought reading a book would help him more than just watching me, and boy was I right. This book not only covers basic obedience, it also throws a few tricks in there. I think the best part is all of the wonderful photographs. They also have a little section in the top of each training page that goes over common problems with teaching a particular command. It really helps if your dog is being stubborn with a particular command. This book is well put together and very very easy to comprehend. The reason I'm giving this 4 instead of 5 stars is ONLY because NO training book can cover all of your needs unless your dog is absolutely perfect...in which case you wouldn't need this book! This book has come the closest out of all of the books I've read so far, though. And the only thing I don't particularly agree with is that for some, not all commands, the dog may have some trouble, and won't do exactly what the book expects the dog to do. But they also cover that quite nicely by telling you to go slowly and break the command down into smaller steps. For novice trainers, I think it would benefit them to include the small steps to illustrate the proper way to perform the command. Anyway, this is probably the best training book you can find on the market right now...especially if you don't have a lot of time to invest in reading a hefty, confusing manual.