Gail Burnham is well-known for her first book, Playtraining Your Dog (1980), and hundreds of articles in various dog magazines. She was one of the first (in modern times) to promote positive-reinforcement rewards-based training, long before it became a studied science or popular methodology.
This book is not a step-by-step How-To. Though it does have some lists of steps, it's more like a collection of helpful tips and good advice. It's all about dogs (particularly greyhounds) and training (light on home manners, heavy on AKC competitions), written by a dog-loving owner/breeder/trainer with about 50 years of practical experience. It's an enjoyable and rewarding read, and afterward you'll know a lot more about dogs and training than you might have expected. It's all woven together with loving relationships, not dry training theory.
Yes, her dogs are greyhounds, so the examples are about greyhounds, but it's applicable to most breeds, so don't let that deter you. She writes about what she knows best, rather than generalizing to broaden appeal. And any trainer that can take 5 generations of sensitive, independent-minded greyhounds to champion levels surely knows what they're talking about. She's also an AKC judge, so she knows a lot more than just greyhounds.
Her writing style is pleasant and informal, but not sloppy. The content has good depth and breadth. It's informative, organized, practical, and occasionally humorous. The editing is also quite good. Overall, the book is fairly information-dense and requires thoughtful reading. There is very little repetition or fluff. The frequent personal stories used as examples are mostly short and to the point.
Her training style is positive reinforcement with lots of love, play, praise, and treats. And while she does allow that corrections are sometimes necessary, they must never be painful or abusive (she even teaches methods to control your temper). By "corrections" she means do-overs with more guidance, not punishment. She's firmly against force-training (in all but the worst cases), but doesn't dwell on it, and she avoids the immature "my way only" bias seen in many dog-training circles nowadays. Rather, she wisely states that no single training method is right for all dogs; one needs to devise and adjust methods that work for each dog, according to how the dog responds. One might call it "positive-balanced-adaptive" training, with emphasis on relationship, communication, and fun.
It starts out with basic puppy training, then chapter 2 covers house manners. Chapter 3 is a brief but interesting history of dog training, 4 is about dog personality, and 5 is about bite prevention. Chapters 6-11 (about half the book) are mostly about AKC obedience training, which may not be of interest to most, but does provide an overview of competitions, with lots of good stories and tips for any owner/trainer whether they go into competition or not. It concludes with a chapter on old-age and euthanasia, followed by a little heartfelt poetry. The appendices provide optional reading on competition titles.
You'll like this book if you:
* really love and enjoy dogs and dog training
* want to know more about how dogs think, communicate, relate, and learn
* want to know more about dog training from a mature and balanced perspective
* enjoy learning from examples and experience
You'll probably not like this book if you:
* are expecting a quick problem-fixer or detailed "how-to" procedures
* are expecting a bunch of scientific blather
* have narrow dogmatic views (either way) on dog training
* don't appreciate the author's experience and accomplishments
I really enjoyed it! It's well-written, with enough depth and breadth for the casual owner/trainer that wants to go deeper into the whole subject. It's not the only dog training book you'll ever need, but it's one of the best.
How it might be better: The level of detail is inconsistent. Some training lessons are sufficiently detailed, others are not. More home-pet training procedures and less AKC competition stories would be more beneficial to most readers.
In the Kindle version the pictures are way too small, almost useless. But that's an ongoing Kindle app problem (pictures don't zoom). As screens go to ever higher resolutions, low-res images get really small. The pictures in this book are not essential, just decorative.
--KV5R
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