The Other End of the Leash

By Patricia B. McConnell PhD

Patricia McConnell is an expert on dog behavior, especially on dogs who are troubled. She looks at dog training from a different point of view, that our human tendencies get in the way of communication with our dogs. In her advice on how to handle your dog, she points out that our human instinct is at variance with the canine instinct, since we come from different biological backgrounds. The things we do instinctively are not well received or maybe not understood by the dogs in our lives. For instance, dogs don't hug. Hugging is one of humankind's favorite ways to express caring. But for dogs, it just isn't natural. In fact, dogs may find hugging rather threatening.
Another thing dogs do is they are very good at reading body language. They not only read body language, but it is a huge part of their communication, so learning to understand your dog's body language is very helpful in understanding your dog.
She also discusses the importance of consistency in training and in using verbal commands. She describes how to train your dog using rewards, both food, praise, and play rewards to let your dog know he has performed correctly. She also debunks the idea that you have to physically dominate your dog to win its respect. As she points out, a dog displays its tummy voluntarily to a dominate dog, but the dominate dog doesn't roll the other dog over and force it to display its tummy. She says that doing this to a dog is humiliating and unnatural for the dog and, according to McConnell, totally unnecessary. Your dog comes to recognize your authority through proper training, not by putting the dog on its back.

This is a really interesting book not only about dog behavior but also about human behavior and about how our instincts thwart our good communication with our dogs. It has lots of great tips on training dogs and on having a happy, loving, safe relationship with them.