Customer Reviews

Don't Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've read quite a few dog behavior, training and intelligence books and always had this on the to read list because of its reputation of being the "bible" of dog training. But I didn't really want to read it because of the title, and hey, the cover isn't too imaginitive either. I know don't judge a book by a cover, but to be honest, reading has a sensual side too -- good clean lines, fits nice in the hands, smooth paper. You bookaholics know what I'm saying.

So, I finally got around to reading this and I can see why people say this book is life-changing. Pryor spent very little time talking about dogs specifically but showed many examples on how these methods could be used with people with disabilities, your own kids, spouse, cat etc.

I'm a trainer's assistant at a dog obedience school, and as I read this, it all looked familiar. It is basically the foundation philosophy of our school. It's a method of communication. A way to build a relationship and communicate what you want from your dog in a positive, punishment-free manner. Reading this book helped me clarify why we at the school do things as we do. And as I finished the book, I was thinking of one of the comments a woman made at a trainer's funeral. The gist was that she had learned from his gentle approach to the dogs, and this had spread to the way she approached people as well.

It's true. "Clicker training" as some people call this training philosophy will spill outside of your doggy life and into other areas... if you come to this as a dog trainer. As a dog trainer, your dog doesn't sit when you say sit. Instead of getting mad and saying sit sit sit! jerking on the collar or pushing on the butt, first you think "does my dog understand 'sit?'" Then you'd break it down into it's components -- sit is an action (head goes up, butt goes down) and responding to the command requires that 1. the dog knows the action 2. the dog knows the word is connected to the action. Then you'd find a way to get your dog past whatever is hanging him up. So, if this is your habitual style of response to other's "mistakes," you will start to develop patience, compassion and clear communication. And those skills will take you far in life.

And extra bonus -- besides learning training methods, you'll read alot of funny anecdotes about frisbee-playing elephants and bell-ringing hermit crabs too.

All of the reader reviews currently on the page deal with the first edition. I just received the new edition.

First, for those who are looking for a cook book to solve specific problems, this may not be it -- as a response to people who felt mislead by the title.

This ISN'T a dog training book, what it is, is a manual and a philosophy for solving the problems in your life caused by other's behavior, whether it is your husband, your children, your pets, or your co-workers.

The new edition brings in our new research and our ideas. Anecodotes are more relative and talk about people we all know and have met through the click-l list and other internet interactions.

This is definately the definitive book on behavior modification, and it is infinitely readable.

<CLICK> Good job Karen!

I recently bought this book on the advice of a doggy foster "parent", as a prelude to adopting from a local rescue organization. While this is not a how-to or step by step guide for training your dog, it is an excellent and clear book about behavior and how to shape it in a positive way. I was surprised at how much information I found useful for understanding my own relationship with my parents and how to be a better manager. The anecdotes help clarify the concepts, as well as making for very entertaining reading, and I especially appreciated the series of charts comparing different training methods and showing what can work best for a slew of different behavior problems. My next purchase will be a clicker training instruction manual, and I think it will be all the more valuable because Pryor's book has helped me understand WHY positive reinforcement works. Her book really explains the philosophy behind the methodology. Kudos.

"Don't Shoot the Dog" is the best comprehensive guide I know of that encourages the use of Positive Reinforcement. There is no question that PR goes a long way and should always be used as a first option (with both animals and people). Karen Pryor's honesty in this book is to be applauded. While she champions using PR as far as it works to produce the desired result, she realistically acknowledges that PR does not always work. As a dog trainer and author using a balanced approach, I find her candor and her desire to make the world a better place for dogs and people quite noble. If all we needed in our relationships with dogs and people was to find the right reward, this would be the only book we would need.

The structure of the book is easy to follow, and along with emphasizing PR, also gives excellent advice about the crucial element of timing in training. I also find this book useful as a tool to help people decide NOT to use muzzle restraining devices. If a dog training student of mine is thinking of using a muzzle restraining device on a dog, I have the student read Karen's comments about restraint as the bottom of page 101. Her clearly stated explanation hits the nail right on the head. Restraining has its place, but it isn't training.

Karen's comments about rewarding the wrong behavior also makes a lot of sense. Our leaders in government would benefit from her political applications of her principles.

Believe me when I tell you that those that criticized this book never read it and integrated its principles. Instead, these are people that might have vast experience with different systems that give them good results. The techniques they use have become second nature to them. They conclude: my system is different, my system works, therefore every thing else is crap. One reviewer rambled about how it mainly applies to dolphins because they are confined to a tank. The kindest thing I can say about him is that he never read DON'T SHOOT THE DOG. If he did, I would have to insult his reading comprehension. Little of what he rants about is even in the book. Instead of ranting about hearsay on the somewhat different topic of clicker training, allow me to tell you about "Don't Shoot the Dog". This book teaches far reaching techniques with universal application. I have trained dogs, horses, and wild caught birds of prey (which were flown free daily not confined to pools or tanks). Though I understand alpha dog training, use negative reinforcement, and have employed many successful techniques, this is one of my all time top 10 books on any subject and it is a MUST READ even for those that will never own a pet. Karen Pryor was in fact a trainer at Sea World but contrary to the title this book is not about the specifics of animal training. It is instead a handbook on behavioral modification complete with an introduction written by B.F. Skinner, the father of behavioral psychology. While he was not a man without faults, he was a huge contributor to some profoundly simplified techniques for modifying behavior. While an easy read (one long afternoon) the power of this book lies in studying the principles and then training yourself to modify behavior. In an entraining and practical manner Karen explains a principle, explains its applications and LIMITATIONS and then gives a scenario that illustrates how to apply this principle with an animal, an adult, and a child. A lay person soon learns that most instinctive responses to unwanted behavior are non productive. We have many roles in life and it is a rare person in which some of these roles don't require us to influence behavior. While people are not animals, behavior modification is behavior modification and we all use it. Unfortunately, more often than not we make critical mistakes that result in the opposite result we want and expect. I read this book 10 years ago. As soon as I did I wished I had read it about 25 years sooner. It brought greater success to training at opposite ends of the animal kingdom. It worked on free flying wild birds of prey that are not social creatures and interpret any negative reinforcement as a death threat. These wild animals can easily leave the trainer and return to the wild to fend for themselves. They get this chance every day. In fact it is nothing but unnatural that they will return from being a tiny speck in the sky just from operant conditioning and positive reinforcement. More amazing, they can be properly trained to do this within 10 days of being trapped from the wild, so much for the hilarious comment about it won't work on things that can run loose like dogs. Speaking of dogs, I have used it on Setters and Springer's not to mention a very strong willed, male Jack Russell Terrier, with a well developed alpha dog mentality. Karen never implies that negative reinforcement is not a legitimate tool. She simply fine tunes its use, timing, and consistency to give you an even more powerful tool. The principles in this book have greatly enhanced what was decades of successful training. Finally, don't under estimate these principles when it comes to inter- personal relationships. If you do, you missed a great part of what makes this a must read.

As a social worker specializing in child abuse and neglect, I have relied on Don't Shoot the Dog for years to teach harsh and punitive parents benign and positive behavioral alternatives. Parents learn more readily, and even enjoy learning, from the anecdotes about animal behavior, and don't feel criticized themselves because they have not had prior bad or abusive experiences with a chicken or a cat. They begin to see that all small creatures do some annoying things, and that their child is not singularly persecuting them. They feel less victimized by their child and suddenly become empowered to bring about change. The revised edition is especially welcome because of its expanded discussion of punishment, primarily why it doesn't work and what would be safer, kinder and more effective in its place, and for the information about clicker training, an enormous aid to angry or ineffective parents. Don't Shoot the Dog! is a must for all social workers, and for anyone interested in more enjoyable and productive dealings with other living creatures.

"Don't Shoot the Dog" is only marginally about dog training, (although the dog was reccomened to me by noted dog trainer Sarah Wilson, a fine dog training book author in her own right). What it is about is using postive reinforcement for all training purposes. Postive reinforcement does not mean NEVER correcting the subject, but doing so in a postive way, mostly by rewarding correct behavior. Ms. Pryor shows, by using certain common situations, (kids making too much noise in the car on long trips, dog barking in the back yard all night, etc) how different methods would work or not work, and further adds other examples, with animals that are not usually thought of as "trainable", how certain behaviors were be easily taught. The author is a big advocate of "clicker training" (as is Sarah Wilson, who I mentioned earlier) but even after reading the book, I really don't understand the "why and how it works" aspect of it, which is why only 4 stars, her explantion just doesn't seem clear enough for someone who is new to the concept. (If half star ratings were allowed, this book would have 4 and a half, since I consider this a minor flaw...) This is a wonderful book which should be on the bookshelf of everyone who does animal training, or for that matter, parents as well...

What I found so valuable about this book was that it didn't spend endless pages discussing fashionable theories about the harm of being spanked in public, or how to get in touch with your little inner brat. It's a straightforward plan on how to help people do what they want to do. It's not a charade. It's not tricking people. It's giving feedback about what are better and worse behaviors.

I wish the book wasn't so closely associated with animal training because most of its discussion concerns human relationships. It seems like most people who know about this book are animal people. In my case, I obtained a rottweiler who wouldn't let anyone touch him. Instead of trying to *force* him to let me touch him, or *try* to touch him and back away when he recoiled (thereby rewarding the bad behavior), I used Pryor's clicker training. The closer he came to me, the more I clicked. If he brushed by me, I clicked. In one day he was diving into my chest, twisting his head into my chest, and looking for the click. And leading up to this, as he was preoccupied with touching me, he lost any concern that I was touching him.

There's *no* other training method that builds the kind of secure enviornment where things move only as fast as the trainee wants it to, that rewards exploration and where nothing's really the "wrong answer," and everything is learning.

This should be required reading in school.

it is about behavior modification and not dog training per se.
Don't Shoot the Dog! is the best fundamental description of behaviorism I have ever read. My husband and I have used its principles in training our extremely submissive and abused by a former owner Jack Russell terrier to develop some mental health. This is not a cookbook, it is a philosophy. Pryor does not endorse pure behaviorism; in her work with dolphins described in Lads Before the Wind, she writes extensively about her philosophy falling between that of Konrad Lorenz, the ethologist, and B.F. Skinner. There are hard wired behavior traits present in all species and using operant conditioning via a method like clicker training actually uses those traits to the trainer's advantage, never forgetting that there are some instincts that are so hard wired that they are impossible to overcome. This training is not necessarily an easy to do BECAUSE IT REQUIRES REAL INSIGHT, PATIENCE AND SENSITIVITY ON THE PART OF THE TRAINER! Our dog had been beaten for being a submissive urinator which -- gues what!! -- made her more of a submissive urinator. Three months of hard work following the philosophy of this book have helped immensely. This book has applications in all of our dealings with other sensient beings.

Fun and clever, this book should be compulsory reading in every high school! It is not so much about training dogs as it is about general behaviour and how to treat your fellow people and animals, with the method of Positive Reinforcement. Karen Pryor explains with clear and simple language HOW and WHEN it came about (dolphin training) and WHY it actually works. (Later on, it was adopted by the dog training community as "clicker-training".) The theories and the training methods are supported by memorable anecdotes. Most importantly, this book is not about any hokus-pokus, but simply an explanation of why we (humans and animals) behave the way we do and how we can go about changing each other's behaviour without using force.
After having read the book, I couldn't wait to try out Positive Reinforcement on my cats, my husband, my sons and my mother - and it works really well! The more copies that are sold of this book, the better a place the world would be.
If you get hooked on this book and you have a dog, I recommend that you follow up with the more detailed "The Power of Positive Dog Training" by Pat Miller.