Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog
- ISBN13: 9781577314554
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Combining two popular titles in one value-priced edition, Before and After Getting Your Puppy is a simple, practical guide for anyone bringing a new puppy into the home. In clear steps, with helpful photos and easy-to-follow training deadlines, Dr. Ian Dunbar, who pioneered puppy classes and a loving style of dog training in the 1970s, presents a structured yet playful and humorous plan for raising a wonderful dog. The guide is based on six developmental deadlines: completing owner education and preparation, assessing a puppy’s prior socialization and education, teaching errorless house-training and chewtoy-training, completing a socialization program of meeting strange dogs and people, learning bite inhibition, and continuing a program of ongoing training. In the first half of the book, Dr. Dunbar focuses on what the owner needs to know to select a great puppy. In the second half, he presents the crucial lessons the puppy must be taught during its impressionable early development - using a kind, positive approach that, over time, has been proven the most effective.
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We must remember that just because some one has a Dr. in front of their name does not mean they are experts. When raising and training puppies common sense must prevail. All dogs regardless of pedigree are trainable.
I found the author to be very authoritarian in his view and advice. I got the sense that it was all or nothing. That if you failed to do one of his recommendations or do it at the wrong time, that you were doomed to have a puppy that would become a great problem later. Also advice such as take two weeks off of work to work with the puppy once you had brought them home is beyond the pail, especially given the current economic times. Do not waste you time with this book. Go get one of Ceasar Milan’s books, you will be better off.
Rating: 1 / 5
Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog
Wow, just reading the first few pages of this book, and Dr. Dunbar is trying to make me feel like my dog is no different than a cow, really his words. Evidently my first mistake was adopting an abandoned puppy from the pound and not from a breeder. I was already offended. Yes, if I paid big bucks for a puppy from a breeder I would expect an exceptional breeder, but according to Dunbar, I have no other choice. Does he not care about rescue/shelter dogs and their impending euthanization?!
I also have to disagree with Dunbar regarding having a paper/pad potty place in the house if you intend to have your dog go outside. Before I purchased this book, we thought we’d go that route. And we are paying for it now. For a while, the dog thought the entire floor = toilet. He’d use the pad maybe 50% of the time. However, I do believe the rewarding the dog with a treat for going where you want him is beneficial. But I was doing that before I read the book.
He gives some decent advice. I will give him that. But no one needs to hear their dog is a hopeless case even before 3 mos. of age! Your puppy can be “rehabilitated!” And if you take away all the talking-down-to-you, your-dog-is-forever-doomed-because-because-you-let-one-accident-happen gibberish then all you really have left is advice you can find in abundance online. It’s just positive reinforcement approach.
Rating: 2 / 5
Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog
Fortunately I did not purchase this book I only borrowed it from my local library. I dislike Dr. Dunbar’s approach as I found it discouraging as well as frightening. He made me feel like I was already behind the eight ball with an 8 week old puppy. That if I did not follow what the book said I would ruin my dog for life. Sorry, Doc…not the approach that speaks to me. So glad I can return it to the library. There are many other good dog training books out there and this is NOT one of them.
Rating: 1 / 5
Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog
While this book contains some valuable and useful information, Dr. Ian Dunbar and his “errorless training” approach would lead the inexperienced puppy owner to believe that a single error will permanently destroy any chance of raising a well-adjusted, happy companion. This could certainly be true when taking into account the level of anxiety one can feel taking his approach. I would worry about transferring this anxiety to my brand new puppy during its formative training weeks and months. Dunbar’s tone often takes on the flavor of unforgiving, performance-obsessed parents who push their children too hard to excel.
Word to the wise: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ERROR-FREE DOG TRAINING!!! One accident won’t doom your dog to a lifetime of horrible house manners if you’re prepared to accept that accidents and errors WILL happen no matter what you do. If this is a problem, do yourself a favor and adopt a goldfish instead. Much of the other information contained in this book — especially the chapter on doing your research — would be more effective if not presented in such an arrogant and melodramatic manner.
I checked out this book from my local library along with Sopia Yin’s superior “How To Behave So Your Dog Behaves.” I’ll be purchasing a copy of the Yin title. While I would recommend some of the information contained in Dunbar’s book, I definitely could not recommend the book itself.
Rating: 1 / 5
Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog
This book contained a lot of useful information I found it helpful.
Rating: 4 / 5
Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog