Customer Reviews

What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage: Lessons for People from Animals and Their Trainers

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

There is hope! After reading this, you will slap your forehead and think "Of course, why didn't I see that before"? This book gives some really good, practical advice on applying basic animal training techniques to improve our interactions with human animals. It makes you look at your own actions and behavior in a new light. And this book is a fun, light-hearted read; not some soul-searching, introspective quagmire. It's fast, it's fun and it's helpful (I hope)!

I thought this was a lot of fun--a funny story about how being around animal trainers helped the author learn to live more peacefully with the other animals in her life--her humans. As long as you're not looking for some kind of "12 steps to the perfect marriage" I'd recommend this book to anyone. Sutherland's light-hearted, and often self-deprecating, approach to the relationships in her life made me think about my husband, my friends, and especially my kids--I related to so many of the anecdotes--"Shamu" definitely made me see animal behavior and human nature through a new lens. A great late night read. Terrific book for your next book group!

This is a fast and fun read, but also thought provoking. The author uses her experience with animal trainers to illumine our interactions with humans. Ms. Sutherland is a good story teller and provides insights on how not to take everything so personally and make our relationships more relaxed. Some former reviews seem to be taking the premise of this book a bit literally. The author doesn't suggest that we treat people like animals. Just that teaching techniques can overlap. This is a funny, light-hearted and enjoyable read! It will provide great discussion for your book club.

Ms. Sutherland isn't suggesting we dehumanize people! A positive reinforcement system is a GOOD thing. We use it all the time without thinking about it: when we give kids gold stars, when we give a big hug to someone for a favor they did, or even when we pat ourselves on the back for a good job. Ms. Sutherland is simply saying that these methods work better than punishing a child for not doing his homework, nagging someone to do something, or negative self-talk. She is suggesting that using them in more areas of our lives can have a very positive effect, and can make our relationships with people better. And she suggests that instead of rewarding negative behavior or nagging about it, we just ignore it, and that behavior will often decrease. It just so happens that animal trainers discovered this method and use it to increase behaviors they want in animals (and lets not forget that people ARE members of the animal kingdom). I feel like the people who gave a one star either didn't read the book at all, or went into it with a closed mind and completely missed the point. This is a great book, and highly recommended!

Forget the negative reviews on this book. I have read all kinds of books purporting to give away the secret to lasting relationships and understanding men. This book is more about self-discovery, and navigating the world (and reacting) in ways that are more positive than negative, and don't flare situations. If you read it as that, you will love the book. Plus, the author (though a bit self-absorbed) throws in funny stories about her husband and animals to keep things going. Its a very enjoyable book, and will keep your attention. :)

As the jacket advertises, this book was inspired by an incredibly popular article the author wrote for the New York Times last year. I happened to read the article myself, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I was very interested to see what other insights the author had regarding our own human behavior. Unfortunately, like many books inspired by articles, there's not much here beyond what Sutherland originally wrote.

I symphathize to some degree with the author, because there was probably a lot of pressure to capitalize on her 15 minutes of fame. However, if you want to save some money, just pop on over to the new york times online archives and read the original piece. You'll get just as much from that (for free) as from reading this book. In a nutshell, Sutherland worked as a journalist with an elite school for animal trainers in California, which inspired another book "Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched." I hate to say that I can't recommend that book either. In any case, she discovered that some of the techniques used to guide animal behavior can be used on people. This provided the basis for her highly entertaining NYTimes article, in which she described how she improved her relationship with her husband. When he engaged in an "undesirable behavior", such as getting angry about lost keys, she stayed out of it ("starve the behavior"). Instead of nagging him to pick up after himself, she started thanking him for the rare times when he did it unprompted ("catch the animal doing something good").

These are good ideas, but as Sutherland herself acknowledges, they are primarily lifted from Kathleen Pryor, a brilliant animal trainer and an accomplished author herself. As much as I hate to pan Sutherland's books, I strongly encourage readers interested in these topics to direct their attention to Pryor's original works. She's written a short, funny training manual ("Don't Shoot the Dog!"), as well as a fascinating account about her experiences training dolphins in Hawaii ("Lads Before The Wind").

I feel like this particular book could have been a real gem with more time and reflection on the part of the author. Unfortunately, there's no particular insight, except perhaps that she returns phone calls more reliably. That's fair enough, but I was looking for more. For instance, she describes using these new methods she learned with students in her classes. However, she doesn't talk about helping failing students, or inspiring average ones to brilliance. Instead, she figures out a way to avoid a student who bursts into tears whenever they are alone together. It actually seemed a bit mean-spirited. I don't particularly want to spend time with crying people either, but how did this really help the girl, or even in cold, practical terms, modify her behavior? There are some other trivial examples, such as her interaction with a rude postal clerk who may or may not have been slightly more polite because of Sutherland's techniques.

The book also skims over some of the points Sutherland herself made in her earlier book. Sutherland describes a student trainer who spent an entire year working with a skittish animal. In this book, it's described as a success - one day, the animal eats out of the trainer's hand. In Sutherland's earlier book, it's actually described as a failure. The animal only eats out of the trainer's hand once, and the trainer does not reach her ultimate goal, to actually touch the animal.

In short, it's fairly easy to tell this book is written by a journalist. The books skims the surface of a deep topic, with a perhaps a dozen casual anecdotes. There are a bunch of "don'ts" (don't punish, don't take behavior personally), then there are a bunch of possibly contradictory "don'ts" (punish if you really need to, but you probably don't need to), and then you probably don't know what behavior you're encouraging anyway because timing and rewards are very tricky. I'm not sure what's left, beyond the thought that if a casual glance at animal training is this confusing, perhaps it's not appropriate to haphazardly try this on an infinitely more complicated animal, the human being.

What a brilliant combination of smart, witty narrative and life-changing advice! Sutherland is to be congratulated for having the vision and incredible patience to bring about these transformations in herself in order to improve her relationships. Imagine what a peaceful world it would be if we were all able to approach our relationships with such positive communication skills. My teenage son would be overjoyed if I could develop these techniques!

Put on your laughing hat and get ready to bust your seed! I didn't just like this book, I LOVED it!

So insightful to see how I, as a broth swilling man of distinction, can be trainable like the bear (GRR) I am.

I would love to have the author over for a night of java logs and Iphone Scrabble and hopefully end the date with a lovely pink sock!

This book feels like a journalist capitalizing on a successful newspaper article. I didn't like the author as a person and found her people stories repetitive, petty, and sometimes mean-spirited.
Here's all you need to know from this book:
Ch. 2 - Reward good behavior. Ignore bad behavior.
Ch. 3 - Train yourself in appropriate responses. Look at your own actions/reactions first.
Ch. 4 - Don't try to change what can't be changed. Accept the quirks. Pick your battles.
Ch. 5 - Same as Ch. 2
Ch. 6 - Timing of positive reinforcement is important. Send prompt RSVPs/Thank Yous.
Ch. 7 - Keep expectations low. Do not respond with "Thanks, but.....".

I loved the column Amy Sutherland wrote for the New York Times so I ordered the book for myself and two more to give away to friends. The book is the same column but streched out to fill a whole book with it. Disappointing.