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Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog

Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog
By Dr. Ian Dunbar

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Product Description

Combining two popular titles in one value-priced edition, Before and After Getting Your Puppy is a simple, practical guide for anyone bringing a new puppy into the home. In clear steps, with helpful photos and easy-to-follow training deadlines, Dr. Ian Dunbar, who pioneered puppy classes and a loving style of dog training in the 1970s, presents a structured yet playful and humorous plan for raising a wonderful dog. The guide is based on six developmental deadlines: completing owner education and preparation, assessing a puppy's prior socialization and education, teaching errorless house-training and chewtoy-training, completing a socialization program of meeting strange dogs and people, learning bite inhibition, and continuing a program of ongoing training. In the first half of the book, Dr. Dunbar focuses on what the owner needs to know to select a great puppy. In the second half, he presents the crucial lessons the puppy must be taught during its impressionable early development — using a kind, positive approach that, over time, has been proven the most effective.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #9639 in Books
  • Published on: 2004-04-29
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 224 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The star of the British television show Dogs with Dunbar has been teaching pet owners to train their dogs humanely and thoroughly for over 30 years. In this compassionate and honest volume, the veterinarian shares his definitive opinions about the way dogs should be trained. This is a great tool that anyone who wants to get a dog should peruse before they bring their pup home because, as the author points out, owning a dog is a big responsibility, and "millions of dogs are euthanized each year simply because their owners did not know how to housetrain or chewtoy-train them." Dunbar includes information that prospective dog owners should know before they select a puppy, and he also explains how to meet his proscribed series of important Developmental Deadlines (two of which come up even before the dog reaches its new home!). In addition to a step-by-step guide to every stage of puppyhood, the book includes practical services, such as a pre-puppy shopping list and lists of the best dog training books and videos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Library Journal, Spring 2004
this edition belongs... alongside such classics as Dog Training in 10 Minutes and The Power of Positive Dog Training.

About the Author
Dr. Ian Dunbar is a veterinarian, animal behaviorist, and dog trainer. He has given over 750 full-day seminars and workshops for dog trainers and veterinarians around the world. A columnist, the star of the British television show Dogs With Dunbar, and author, he has written numerous books and hosted a dozen videos about puppy/dog behavior and training. He received his veterinary degree and a Special Honors degree in Physiology & Biochemistry from the Royal Veterinary College (London University) and a doctorate in animal behavior from the University of California in Berkeley. He is the founder of many dog-training organizations, including the Center for Applied Animal Behavior; the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, the largest and most influential worldwide association of professional dog trainers; and Sirius Puppy Training, the leading provider of puppy classes in the San Francisco Bay Area. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

Customer Reviews

Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog5
A must read for anyone considering getting a new puppy. The best book I've read on selecting, caring and training a puppy.

The housetraining instructions were especially helpful and my 11 week old puppy is doing beautifully and is even letting me know when she needs to go outside.

Some people just don't get it....4
I checked this book out at the library and have been impressed thus far. I think the people who are writing negative reviews because of the "deadlines" are not really getting what he's saying. He's not saying you're going to ruin your dog for life, but it will be more difficult to train and live with your dog if you don't establish certain routines and habits by a certain time frame. I'm a firm believer that a dog can be trained at any point in their life, but I think every dog trainer can agree that dogs are creatures of habit. Establishing good habits early is better and easier then trying to break bad ones later on. Plus these bad habits are what cause dogs to become nuisances to everybody. And this is why there are so many dogs who are at shelters.

I don't agree with everything in his book, especially feeding your dog through kongs throughout the day. I don't see how this is beneficial to give a dog food all day while you are potty training him. A set schedule of feeding seems to be more inline so you know exactly when your dog needs to go.

The best positive training puppy book5
This is the best puppy training book out there. ALL new puppy owners should be required to read this book before taking their puppy home. Easy to read, easy to understand, realistic positive puppy training!