Customer Reviews

The Toolbox for Remodeling Your Problem Dog

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Toolbox for Remodeling Your Problem Dog is fun, reader-friendly, and is packed full of great information! Despite the book's title, your dog doesn't have to be a problem to benefit greatly from the training suggestions in this book. It also contains a wealth of behaviorial info and creative solutions rarely found in most other dog training books. Excellent for both puppies and mature dogs. I highly recommend it!

Terry Ryan is a true gem, and her book is as good as she is! *Toolbox* goes through a number of common behavior problems in dogs and offers proactive solutions for them. Management, desensitization, counter-conditioning, and teaching alternative behaviors are all covered. If you would like a *humane,* positive, proactive approach to dog problems, instead of a punishment-based one, this is the book for you! Ryan explains when a problem is too much for the owner and recommends, in those cases, that a professional trainer or behaviorist be consulted. But many behavior problems are easily remedied by the right approach, and this book gives you the tools you need.

This book is describes gentle training techniques to work with difficult problems in dogs. The training takes time and work, no book can do the work for us. But you can feel more in control and see better behavior in your dog if you follow the author's instructions. We use this book with Jean Donaldson's Culture Clash and Dogs are from Neptune. They helped us more than any of the many books and classes we tried. We're still working with our very difficult puppy but we see improvement as a result of using the methods described in this book.

This book gives some good training advice. For many problems, the author says to see a professional dog behaviorist. My dog was showing signs of mild aggression, and this book was not much help for my situation.

"Good Owners, Great Dogs" by Brian Kilcommons and Sara Wilson addresses more problems and gives solutions that work.

I gained very little from reading this book. I'm sure it has helped others, but the solutions I tried weren't helpful in my dog's situation. I've had much better luck with other authors, specifically Sarah Hodgson.