Customer Reviews

Making Friends: Training Your Dog Positively

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Of all the dog training books I have ever read-- this one is my favorite--
it's the book I recommend most to anyone who is getting a new dog-- It is extremely well written with excellent advice, easy to follow training methods- In her book she not only teaches owners how to train their dog -- but how to understand how your dog thinks and learns, and why dogs do the things they do. I followed her instructions for teaching my puppy to sit, stay, and also house training and it made training my puppy easy and fun for the both of us. On top of all that- the book is full of entertaining stories about people and their dogs (so its fun reading her book). I can't say enough good things about her book. Anyone who has a dog should read it! (by the way: another person on this site wrote a review of linda's book and said it had typical advice about choke train methods- who ever wrote that must be confusing Making Friends with another book- because Linda Colflesh's book argues against choke chain methods of training- so someone should take that review off the site- the person who wrote it didnt read the book.

This seems in general a very sensibly written dog training book. The commands given are pretty standard, and the instructions are clear and logical. My only real gripe is that the title implies positive training, which this is not. This book teaches very traditional training, with leash corrections and other such, not the positive training method espoused by Karen Pryor (Don't Shoot the Dog). The author does place a welcome emphasis on not punishing your dog for what he doesn't yet understand, and on praising and rewarding good behavior, but positive training is a method, not an attitude. Adding more praise to traditional training gives you a kinder gentler traditional training, not positive training.

That said, if you're more comfortable with traditional methods than with click and treat, this is a good book to work from.

This book is an excellent one for new and inexperienced trainers as well as a good review for those with experience in old training techniques. It emphasizes positive training techniques and truly does help one make friends with ones dog. It clearly comes from a trainer and writer whose love of dogs and their ability to fit comfortably into our lives is first and foremost.

Makin Friends:Training Your Dog Positively is an excellent manual for dog owners be they new puppy owners or owners desperate for a solution to training problems. It is written in a down to earth and easy to put into use style. The advice given is sensible and easy to implement in any home situation. If you are tired of textbook style training manuals that only serve to confuse not assist this is the book for you. It is definately the best dog training manual around

This is a great book. I highly recomend it to any dog owner. It is a great way to help understand your dog and a great tool in training. We now refer to it as our dogs hand book!! Great read and it helped so much!

Hi Linda! This is so ironic, I recently purchased a White Alaskan Eskimo and I borrowed your book from a friend of mine not knowing that you were the author. Well I read it and I think it is going to be quite helpful while raising this little monster. You should see him, I could not resist. Well, again the book was and is super! Won't bore you. Drop me a line at Taurkus@aol.com. That would be nice. G-

I found the ifnormation in this book to be very general. It seems the tried to cram a lot of information in this book however, all the information is just a breif summary. While there were a few good tips to use in the book, I found the training advice to be way too breif. This book would have been a lot better if they would have been more detailed about the training and cut out some other information that just made the book seem cluttered and unfocused.