The ABC’s of Dog Language: Learn How Dogs Communicate
Anders Hallgrens’s book “The ABC’s of Dog Language” is the best primer on dog language I’ve found to date. It explores how dogs communicate through body signals and movements, sounds, smells, and touch. With clear text and illustrative photographs, the author explains the nuances of dog language, including body postures, facial expressions, and the vocal language of dogs.
If you only have time to read one book on dog language, this is the book to get. Originally written in Swedish and translated into English by Mogens Eliasen and Pauline Kesteven, “The ABC’s of Dog Language” is currently hard to find unless you go to K9Joy.com (Mogens Eliasen’s website) to purchase it.
This booklet (a little more than 50 pages) offers practical training advice for improving the behavior of “feisty” dogs who growl, lunge, or bark at other dogs when on leash. Authors Patricia McConnell and Karen London explain how to teach essential skills, including “Watch” (”a little exercise with big results”), “U-Turn” (”to leave trouble behind”), and the “Emergency Sit/Stay (”and other useful panic buttons”). Also included: “training tips worth remembering” and a section on prevention and management. The “Special Cases” chapter provides some solutions for dogs who are so afraid of other dogs they won’t even look at them (until they get too close, which can cause an explosion) and information on “Abandonment Training” which can be helpful with dogs who are a bit clingy and insecure and with dogs who may be possessive of their owners.
This booklet (about 40 pages — 52 pages in the new expanded edition) by Karen London and Patricia McConnell provides sound advice on how to manage and train multiple dogs. Topics covered include “Laying a Foundation” (life skills to teach the dogs individually and together, such as come, sit or down, and stay), “Getting Practical” (real solutions to controlling your dogs’ behavior, including body blocks, the Group Wait, and the Group Off), “Staying Away From Trouble” (ways to prevent fights and how to handle them if they happen), and “Coming and Going” (introducing new dogs, rehoming dogs if there’s trouble that just isn’t managable). The information and training advice is sound and clear and helpful to anyone with two or more dogs.
In For the Love of a Dog Patricia McConnell explores emotions in dogs and people. Our mammalian biology and neurology are remarkably similar, and I believe that we share similar emotions. This book delves into the science of emotions and supports that belief. But it does so with prose that draws out emotion in the reader as effectively as it educates. Just flipping through the book as I compose this review, I find myself drawn into various passages, especially the accounts of Patricia’s own experiences and cases she’s known that illustrate the personal side of these scientific concepts so well. It’s hard to put the book down, but I must, if only to pick up my handkerchief!
