129 of 132 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Author's method gets fast results, December 5, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Dog Training in 10 Minutes (Howell Reference Books) (Paperback)
My dog, Rascal, is, indeed, a rascal. First impressions can be deceiving, and Rascal deceived me. At the shelter, he calmly gazed at me with the biggest, brownest set of puppy eyes. He looked so sad, and I'm a sucker for the underdog, people or animals. No one wanted him. Week after week, the shelter brought him back again. No one was interested in this calm little white and brown terrier. So I brought him home to love him and live happily ever after.
The first day I let him out alone into my fenced in back yard, he jumped the fence, and bounded down the street in a raging snow storm. I found him. I was also late for work. He also decided that carpeted basements were a good place to relieve himself. That is when I went out and got Ms. Benjamin's book. I don't want to train dogs. I want them to behave. I want to train the dog now and I want it to take.
My Rascal no longer jumps fences. Ms. Benjamin taught me to give Rascal praise when he comes in the house when I call. He loves being praised for coming in so much that he doesn't think about going out and exploring any more. The author also taught me to hold his head in my hands for one minute and tell him what I think of his relieving himself on my carpet. Then I let him think about it for a half hour alone in my kitchen. He thinks twice now about misbehaving.
We also learned some fun things. I cannot get him to howl as the author suggests (he rarely even barks). But he will sneeze on command, and I've only had the book for a couple of weeks. I am teaching him to scour the house for treats I have hidden so I can get busy doing other things. A busy dog is a happy dog.
For anyone who wants to train a dog easily and fast, using a method that is practical and down to earth, I highly recommend this book.
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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to Read, Easy to Understand, Easy to Follow, May 3, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Dog Training in 10 Minutes (Howell Reference Books) (Paperback)
Carol Lea Benjamin's dog books are for the average person who wants a well behaved house pet. Nothing fancy, just straight and to the point. Her training methods are easy to apply and neither the dog or it's master are confused about the expected outcomes. I liked it enough, that I am buying another book by the same author. BT
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16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some Good Advice, with an Unfortunate Streak of Meanness, March 3, 2007
This review is from: Dog Training in 10 Minutes (Howell Reference Books) (Paperback)
I like Carol Lea Benjamin. Back in the 1980s, when I first became interested in dog training, and the alpha theory still held sway, she was the least brutal of the popular dominance mavens of the time. (i.e., "How hard should you hit your dog? If she doesn't yelp in pain, you haven't hit her hard enough." -The Monks of New Skete.) Since those days Benjamin has become a mystery novelist, and I really liked her first foray into detective fiction. (See my review of THIS DOG FOR HIRE.) I also share some of her antipathy for the methods espoused by so-called positive trainers. As a result I'm hesitant to write a negative review of this book.
So I'll start by saying there are good bits or advice sprinkled here and there, like not giving a pup more freedom than he can handle, or that more vigorous daily exercise means less nervous tension. Or the idea that aggression is usually the result of excess tension (which is partially true; it's based on fear). And I have to tell you that many of Benjamin's training exercises are very, very good ones. But unfortunately, readers are told repeatedly that it all comes down to showing the dog that you're alpha. How do you deal with an aggressive dog? "You must become alpha." Over and over she says this kind of thing. But given the recent evidence showing that wild wolves don't really form dominance hierarchies, that the pack is actually more of a cooperative society than was previously believed, it's hard to know how and why Carol Lea Benjamin would still be hanging onto this ridiculous, bone-dead belief. As a result of her alpha mindset there's a streak of meanness throughout this and, come to think of it, throughout all her training books. Granted, she's not as brutal as the Monks or Bash Dibra or Cesar Millan, but one passage in DOG TRAINING IN 10 MINUTES really points out a major character flaw.
Benjamin says that it's all right to really yell your head off at the dog for certain types of what she believes to be "deliberate" misbehavior (dogs don't do anything deliberately, Ms. Benjamin; they act on instinct and impulse, not careful planning). To deal with such behaviors she recommends grabbing the dog by the cheeks and collar and screaming in his face for a minimum of ten seconds. "In those ten seconds," she writes, "your justifiable anger is pointing right at your dog, and because you are holding his rotten face, he can't turn away."
His rotten face? This is not dog training, it's venting. And, as I try to gently tell my clients, "If you can't control your OWN emotions, how can you expect your dog to control HIS?"
As stated above, there are a couple of sections where Benjamin decries the "modern" approach of not saying "No!", which she views as coddling the dog due to some kind of political correctness. I agree that "positive" methods are misguided and not as scientific as most +R trainers constantly claim they are. On the other hand, I've been dissuading my clients from using the word "No!" for nearly fifteen years, long before it was politically correct to do so, simply because dogs can't learn a negative, and because it sets up an adversarial relationship between you and your best friend. And I TOTALLY disagree with Benjamin's method of using leash corrections, which she says should always be followed by a sharp "No!" The truth is, leash corrections work best if they're immediately followed by praise, or a command, given in a positive tone of voice. The way Benjamin applies them results in a double punishment, and one that actually punishes GOOD behavior!
Here's what I mean: if a dog isn't focused on you, or he ignores a command, and you give him a leash correction (which should always be done with the absolute minimum of force necessary to get his attention, by the way), he'll usually stop what he was doing and focus on you, if only for a second. So he's just done a good thing, right? Okay, so then why in the world would you shout "No!" at him? It makes no sense.
And finally, here's where Benjamin's mean streak lets her down; here's where her love of punishment and being alpha gets in the way of true control: "When you want your dog to come to you from a distance, you want to project that you are friendly." Yes, that's absolutely true. That's excellent advice. But in Benjamin's world what that means is that you want your dog to suddenly forget that you're in the habit of saying "No!", punishing him for good behavior, and screaming in his "rotten face" when you can't control your own emotions.
Ms. Benjamin, THIS is why you don't use "No!", this is why you don't punish a dog, this is why "being alpha" is a bad idea. Not because it's politically incorrect, but because it's just bad dog training.
4 stars for some training techniques, 0 stars for meanness = 2 stars.
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