Chez PLJ

Happy New Year! Remember my list of dog books from a few weeks back? Here are two more for your edification:

Jon Katz (2005): Katz on Dogs: A Commonsense Guide to Training and Living with Dogs
Another general overview, with less emphasis on the actual mechanics of training puppies and more on the philosophy of raising dogs, with lots of personal anecdotes. Katz provides a valuable service by pointing out throughout the book that dogs are not just little humans and we do them no favours to think of them as such. He outlines how many behavioural problems can stem from people misunderstanding a dog’s nature or misinterpreting dog “language”. An entertaining read; some of the chapters are based on columns previously written for Slate.

The Monks of New Skete (1991): The Art of Raising a Puppy
This book is an excellent guide to puppies: how they develop; a fairly detailed guide on how to train them (using both informal techniques for very young puppies and formal training for older puppies and young dogs); and how to feed, groom and otherwise care for them. Because it deals with puppies rather than older dogs much of the Monk’s training methods are gentle and positive, though they do use leash pop corrections for many exercises. They also take an interesting tack in refusing to use food as a training reward (which is standard in most of the other books I’ve read).

So which books of all the ones I’ve read do I prefer? As a future dog owner the most useful are probably Ian Dunbar’s Before and After Getting a Puppy and the Monks’ The Art of Raising a Puppy. They’re the most detailed, complete guides to all aspects of living with a puppy. Dunbar’s book is slightly more clinical in tone (he is a vet, after all), while the Monks’ book stresses the more spiritually uplifting aspects (without getting preachy) of living with a dog along with the practical. Both books dovetail nicely and make them a fairly complete dog primer.

Katz on Dogs and Stanley Coren’s The Intelligence of Dogs are entertaining general reads that don’t touch on the nuts and bolts of training much (and thus make them perfectly suitable for non dog owners as well). Most of the other books are purely instructional training books, and thus by nature useful, if not terribly interesting.

I disliked Cesar’s Way, both in style and content (much too much detail about Millan’s life and celebrity friends). I acknowledge that his methods might be useful in extreme behavioural cases, but it’s definitely not appropriate for young puppies.