Playtraining Your Dog (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Dog owners are like other people..." (more)
Key Phrases: heel cue, scent board, scented article, Kitty Hawk (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

At last, an inexpensive paperback edition of a book that has been acclaimed as one of the most useful and reliable guides to training your dog.

Obedience training does not have to resemble Marine boot camp, with the dog as the recruit and the trainer as the drill instructor. Nor does it have to be work. Rather, as the title of this comprehensive guide suggests, it can be playful fun for both -- with a few rules thrown in to shape the game itno an obedience exercise.

Playtraining Your Dog provides an alternative to the violence that conventional training methods inflict on the minds and bodies of dogs. Using widely known, standardized exercises from the American Kennel Club, and written in a clear, informative style, this book contributes to realizing the full potential of both the dog and the dog/owner relationship.

Topics covered include:
- instructors & training classes
- training time
- motivation
- advice for showing a dog
- cues & body language

Playtraining Your Dog is an essential addtion to every dog-owner's -- and dog-lover's -- library.

About the Author

Patricia Gail Burnham currnetly shows and trains greyhounds. Ms. Burnham also contributes to numerous periodicals, including the American Kennel Club Gazette, Off-Lead, Field Advisory News, The Windhownd, and The Sighthound Review. She lives in Fair Oaks, California

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (December 15, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312616910
• ISBN-13: 978-0312616915
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #394,288 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

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

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.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still Relevant After All These Years, August 11, 2005

By	Lee Charles Kelley "dog trainer/mystery novelist" (New York City) - See all my reviews

One of the innovations of PLAYTRAINING YOUR DOG was the idea of using tug-of-war as both inducement and reinforcement for learning obedience skills. I think this book was actually first published in 1980 or 82, when the idea of playing tug was strictly verboten in most dog training circles. In fact, I'd venture to say that nearly all dog trainers at the time, particularly pet dog trainers, would've told you not to play it with your dog. Now here we are, 23 years later (in 2005), and I can't tell you how many of my potential clients, when I ask them during a phone consultation if they play tug with their pups, still say no, they don't because they heard it causes aggression. Or they say, yes, they do, but they were told to never let the dog win because winning will make him think he's alpha.

WRONG: tug-of-war doesn't cause aggression; it's actually a safe outlet for it. Plus, truly aggressive dogs don't even like to play tug. And the truth is, if you can finally get them to play with you, you'll find that they're much less aggressive if not over their aggression entirely! (It's kinda funny how that's just the opposite of what we've all been told, huh?) And then there's the fact that it's one of the best training tools ever invented because it stimulates a dog's desire to learn and obey to the highest possible level.

As for a dog thinking he's alpha, that's bunk. To quote ex-cop turned dog trainer Jack Field (who's the fictional narrator of my detective novels), "Dogs don't care who's alpha and who's not. Only emotionally dysfunctional owners and trainers do." (Jack's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder about this topic. . .) And if you think Jack's nuts to say that, recent studies done on wild wolf packs prove his point; certain top wolf researchers don't even like to use the word alpha anymore because, as Dr. L. David Mech puts it, "it falsely implies a hierarchical system in which each wolf assumes a place in a linear pecking order," (Canadian Journal of Zoology, 2002).

The other innovation Pat Burnham introduced was teaching a dog to jump up on command in order to increase the dog's focus on you, to increase the dog's drive to obey, and to reinforce other behaviors like the recall, the stay, and the heel. How many other training books can you think of that recommend using jumping up on command this way? (I only know of one: NATURAL DOG TRAINING, by Kevin Behan.) And remember, back in the early 80s we were told that a dog who jumped up on people was supposedly showing dominance and trying to be alpha! (Not this again...)

So if you think this book is behind the times, I'm sorry, but you've got it backwards.

Oh, and yes, Pat Burnham does make the mistake of promulgating the now-discredited alpha theory in her book. That's why I've only given it four stars. (If they had half stars, it would've been four and a half; no one was that far ahead of the times in 1982, not even Pat Burnham.)

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Thirty years old, and showing its age..., October 31, 2005

By	A reader (New Zealand) - See all my reviews

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.