Puppy Care and Training Book

There were many really good sections to this book. Bringing your puppy home, feeding your puppy, health of your puppy, were all really well done. I was not a huge fan of the training sections. I'm realizing I have to much experience to be a fan of most training books.

A couple things I didn't agree with:

1. I really would recommend a clicker over a spoken "yes", which is used throughout this book, as a marker that the dog has done the right thing. This sharpens when you mark the right behavior and you aren't going to accidentally say yes to the wrong things. Yes is such a common word, it is hard not to say it all the time, your puppy can get desensitized to it. In addition, if multiple people are training the puppy, the clicker will sound the same from everyone, but everyone's yes will sound different.

2. She suggests ignoring and turning your back on the puppy for 10-15 seconds when the puppy has done something wrong. I would never turn your back, learned from my experience training animals at an aquarium. I would look at the puppy but keep a completely expressionless face and let this go on for only 3-5 seconds. Count out Mississippi's in your head to make sure it is 3-5 seconds. Most people count 1,2,3 really fast. If you don't believe me that this will work, ask a person a question and when they answer, stare at them with an expressionless face for 3-5 seconds. They will think they did something wrong. Your puppy will too.

A book with much better training theory is Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor. However, she does not have the step by step training plans that this book has. You would have to come up with them yourself. Personally, I find coming up with training plans fun.