Puppies For Dummies [Paperback]

Sarah Hodgson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2006

Features a new 8-page color section



The bestselling guide to making the most of puppy's first year

Bringing home a puppy? This fun, friendly guide to puppyhood prepares you for this tough but terrific time. From the basics -- housebreaking, feeding, training -- to the latest on doggie day care, traveling with a puppy, and the new designer breeds, you get everything you need to help your puppy grow up to be a healthy, playful, well-mannered dog.

Discover how to
* Choose the perfect puppy for you
* Socialize your puppy
* Stimulate your puppy's growing mind
* Use the latest training tools
* Keep peace between kids and puppies

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Features a new 8-page color section

The bestselling guide to making the most of puppy's first year

Bringing home a puppy? This fun, friendly guide to puppyhood prepares you for this tough but terrific time. From the basics — housebreaking, feeding, training — to the latest on doggie day care, traveling with a puppy, and the new designer breeds, you get everything you need to help your puppy grow up to be a healthy, playful, well-mannered dog.

Discover how to

• Choose the perfect puppy for you
• Socialize your puppy
• Stimulate your puppy's growing mind
• Use the latest training tools
• Keep peace between kids and puppies

About the Author

Sarah Hodgson has been a trainer of dogs and their people for over 20 years. She has had many famous clients, including TV personality Katie Couric, actors/actresses Richard Gere, Glenn Close, Chazz Palminteri, Chevy Chase, and Lucie Arnez, business moguls George Soros, Tommy Hilfiger, Tommy Mottola, and Michael Fuchs, and sports greats Bobby Valentine and Alan Houston.
Sarah is the author of eight dog training books, including Teach Yourself Visually, Dog Training; Dog Tricks For Dummies; DogPerfect; and PuppyPerfect. Soon to be released: Miss Sarah’s Book of Etiquette for Dogs.

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 2 edition (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470037172
• ISBN-13: 978-0470037171
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah Hodgson has been a dog trainer for twenty years and owns Simply Sarah, Inc., a dog training school in Westchester, New York. She has written five books about dogs, including the bestselling DogPerfect and Puppies For Dummies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

172 of 190 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars You can do better, October 12, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Puppies for Dummies (Paperback)

If you want a book that lays a guilt trip on you because you feed your puppy anything less than holistic food (that you can nibble on yourself in an emergency!)or because you allow your baby to play satanic tug-of-war or wrestling games, then you might like this book, but I doubt that you'll like your puppy. I'm a new puppy owner, and found much in here frustrating -- she doesn't talk much about crate training, for instance, because it makes her cry to see a dog in a cage, so she suggests you just tie your pup to yourself all day. Do yourself a favor: the information in How to Raise a Puppy You Can Live With is far more helpful and complete, and the writing in The Art of Raising a Puppy is far more readable and enlightening. I can't vouch for the other puppy books, but the two books I mentioned are worth your time and money; this one is, well, for dummies.

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible book -- not enough detail and too superficial, May 26, 2006

By 

Mahlers2nd "Mom of Many Interests" - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Puppies for Dummies (Paperback)

When I adopted my puppy, this book was recommended to me. I dutifully went out and bought it. As I was reading it, it had many suggestions for what you should do but no tangible examples of implementing those suggestions. For example, they might say "don't hit your puppy with a rolled up newspaper" however they don't necessarily give you a reasonable alternative. I believe this to be more of a function of the editing by the "dummies" staff than a reflection on the author. In what I can only interpret as his own editorial comment on the book, my puppy proceeded to pee on this book -- needless to say, after that we threw it out.

I went back to the bookstore and picked up:

"You and Your Puppy" by James DeBitetto, Sarah Hodgson

Sarah Hodgson is the author of this puppy book but somehow, with the addition of James DeBitetto, there are much more real-world suggestions for how to train your puppy. Many of the passages are word for word the same as the dummies book. However, instead of having just one paragraph about a topic, they expand on it and give you additional detail so that you can translate their "theory" into practice.

In short -- the Puppies for Dummies is not really very good for people who are truly interested in learning a humane and positive way to raise their puppy. It is basically the USA Today of puppy books -- just scratching the surface without providing any meaningful information.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Useless!, January 16, 2003

By 

SBL (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Puppies for Dummies (Paperback)

This book was truly useless. I read it and sold it because I knew that I would never want to look at it again. It's very elementary (hence the name, "For Dummies) and many sections are not very helpful when it comes to training. I had many questions after I read this book. Maybe I made the mistakes to read other books before this one which just blew me away so that when I read this book, I wasn't very impressed....In addition to the somewhat inferior content of the dummy book, it also lacked the many black and white photographs that I came to appreciate in the other readings which really drove home the points that these readings made (Pictures are worth a thousand words - when I see a "sit" sequence, that does a lot more for me than being told "pinch this, push there, and pull that). If you are on a budget and want to save money for dog toys, quality dog food etc for your puppy/dog, don't get this book. Spend your $ more wisely by getting Kilcommon's Good owners, great dogs. That book will be your friend and advisor, while this one will just end up on your book shelf, because it doesn't have the info you need on a daily basis to really help you and your dog. Think of yourself more highly and don't get a dummy book.