48 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Thirty years old, and showing its age..., October 31, 2005
This review is from: Playtraining Your Dog (Paperback)
This was one of the first books on training that mentions prey/play drive, and is an interesting casual read for the dog obedience enthusiast.
In essence, training in play (or prey) drive means rewarding the obedient dog with a tug or chase game, instead of a food treat. This system is very useful when training breeds that have little desire to work for their dinner, but have a strong instinct to chase - breeds like the author's greyhounds. However, Ms Burnham isn't a pure play drive trainer; she also utilises food rewards for some exercises, as well as a certain degree of punishment and negative reinforcement.
"Playtraining your dog" is directed towards competition obedience, instead of day-to-day manners. Obedience exercises from novice to open are covered, including sit, down, heel, stay, send outs, retrieve, and scent discrimination.
The methods and techniques presented here are fairly haphazard. One gets the impression that the author has no real understanding of learning theory or conditioning: she has merely trained her own dogs by trial-and-error, and is now sharing her results with us. The result is that the methods discussed here are all useable, but they are rarely the most sophisticated or effective methods that modern dog training has to offer. They are also relatively chaotic in presentation - there is no particular section about building drive, for example, although Ms Burnham touches on this topic several times throughout the course of the book.
Ms Burnham also uses rather a lot of punishment by today's standards, including during the teaching of several exercises - heeling, retrieving and recalls, to name a few examples. The worry with using punishment while teaching an exercise is that the dog could easily develop a resentful or fearful attitude towards either these particular exercises or towards training as a whole, as he has no idea how to avoid the corrections. To preserve a dog's willing attitude towards work, I personally feel that you are better off using modern "positive" methods to teach an exercise, relying on corrections only if necessary to proof the exercise.
This was a revolutionary book in 1980 - but dog training has come a long way since then. Ms Burnham pushes her dogs into a sit - today we can choose between this method and either luring the dog into a sit with a food treat, or capturing the sitting action with a clicker. Ms Burnham teaches attention heeling with a choke chain - it is more easily shaped off leash, with animation achieved through regular food or prey drive rewards. In short, there are better training books out there.
This book is certainly worth a read if you're interested in competition obedience - some of the suggestions are worthwhile, and the photos of the greyhounds are lovely. If you're a beginner trainer who is after a practical book to teach your dog manners or basic obedience, then give this one a miss.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Dogs Deserve This Book!, June 2, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Playtraining Your Dog (Paperback)
When I first bought this little book I was simply impressed by the author's greyhounds. I figured anyone who had that much success with a greyhound must have something interesting to say! Little did I know I was getting a treasury of dog training information.
Play Training Your Dog has wonderful motivational techniques, fully explained. Most dogs turn into wonderful 'rag' dogs and for those who don't it's easy to turn her methods into one using food, or another toy. More valuable though than even the training information, are the chapters on having fun with your dog, showing, and anger management. The entire book is also smattered with stories making it an easy fun read.
Overall EVERYONE should have this book. It's the one I consistently go back to. And the only one that I agree with completely except for one minor item (the forced retrieve as written in the book). That aside though, the books lends itself to many situations and training methods including clicker training. It truly is a great book.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a great approach to training 'independant' breeds, February 1, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Playtraining Your Dog (Paperback)
I really appreciated the insights into finding 'motivators' for independant breeds such as sighthounds and in my case, Siberian Huskies. This book is a mainstay on my dog training shelf. In addition, I recommend William Campbell's 'Behavior Training in Dogs' (at least the edition I purchased in the 70's).
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