from Amazon: Book Description
How to Right a Dog Gone Wrong will help anyone with a dog that has aggressive tendencies, whether it is a young dog that shows aggression when you remove the food bowl, a dog-aggressive dog that you are afraid to walk in the park, or a dog that is aggressive towards family and friends. Readers will gain an understanding of the causes of aggression and the various ways of dealing with it. Finally, they will learn a step by step program of rehabilitation that has been used successfully on hundreds of dogs, large and small, in all breeds.
From the Inside Flap
Pam Dennison's naturalness and blue-collar training approach tackles the signature symptoms of canine aggressiveness head-on. Written with a crisp, seamless approach, this briskly-paced manual gives you the tools with which to douse the fires of frustration on a combustible relationship lacking trust and control. The lessons you can take from "How to Right a Dog Gone Wrong" can potentially save a dog's life and leave you feeling mighty proud. Does pet ownership get any better than that? (Ranny Green,Seattle Times)
Outwitting Dogs by Terry Ryan and Kirsten Mortensen (also has great tips on training in general)
from Amazon: Book Description
Training dogs has traditionally been done by using negative reinforcement and brute force (take the choke collar as an example). But the tide is turning, and Terry Ryan, well-known dog trainer, is at the forefront of a revolution. OUTWITTING DOGS draws on her twentyfive years of hands-on experience helping people understand and train dogs, and solve dog behavior problems using kinder, gentler methods. OUTWITTING DOGS uses more brain than brawn to motivate dog behavior with positive training techniques, and helps readers truly understand the minds of their canine friends (and even enemies).
Chapters cover: . outwitting puppies . housebreaking . curing the chronic chewer . how to cure the leash puller, the dog that jumps on people, the dog that hates to be left alone, the dog that won't come, the dog that barks too much, the biter, the aggressor . how to outwit the neighbor's dog . how to teach your dog tricks . how to outwit dog trainers . and even a chapter on outwitting dogs and kids at the same time, and much more.
No sensible dog owner will want to be without a copy.
Scaredy Dog! Understanding and Rehabilitating Your Reactive Dog by Ali Brown
from Amazon: Book Description
When dogs growl at other dogs, lunge at people, and bark at everything it's often mislabeled as "aggression." But most aggression is fear-based and should be treated as such. The appropriate term for this constellation of behaviors is "reactivity."
This book helps the trainer and dedicated dog owner to understand the reactive dog and help him change for the better. The process is not an easy one, but once the changes begin to take shape, owners become so encouraged that the rest of the process suddenly becomes easy!
All training methods and classroom techniques are based on fun and on the development of a ‘working relationship’ with your dog. 125 pages, with over 50 photographs and illustrations to help you recognize and solve problems.
The Canine Aggression Workbook 3rd Edition by James O'Heare
from Dogwise: *New 3nd edition! An exploration of the etiology, diagnosis and systematic treatment of aggression in pet dogs. Written for owners of aggressive dogs and professional dog behavior counselors, it offers detailed and comprehensive advice on dealing with aggression in pet dogs. Chapters include: Understanding Aggression, Preventing Aggression, Diagnosing Aggression, Treating Aggression, Children and Dog Aggression. Well-written and understandable.
Mine! A Practical Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs by Jean Donaldson
from Dogwise: *Award Winner, Dog Writer's Assn. of America, 2002, Training and Behavior Book. A practical how-to guide on resource guarding/aggression - food bowl, object, bed, crate, owner, etc. - in dogs. Contents include: aggression basics, nature of resource guarding, kinds of resource guarding, Behaviorist vs. medical models, recognizing guarding, prognosis, safety tools, treatment overview, management, desensitization and counterconditioning, resource sample hierarchies, generalization, troubleshooting, body handling desensitization, operant conditioning.
Fight! A Practical Guide to the Treatment of Dog-Dog Aggression by Jean Donaldson
from Dogwise: From the award-winning author of Culture Clash and MINE! A practical guide to the treatment of dog-dog aggression. This down-to-earth manual will teach you how to use behavior modification to retrain a dog that bullies other dogs, or becomes fearful when approached by other dogs. Includes descriptions of common types of aggression, assessing prognosis, remedial socialization, on-leash manners training, proximity sensitivity, play style and skills, resource guarding, and prevention.
other books:
Animals in Translation -- Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behaviour by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson
from Amazon: From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Philosophers and scientists have long wondered what goes on in the minds of animals, and this fascinating study gives a wealth of illuminating insights into that mystery. Grandin, an animal behavior expert specializing in the design of humane slaughter systems, is autistic, and she contends that animals resemble autistic people in that they think visually rather than linguistically and perceive the world as a jumble of mesmerizing details rather than a coherent whole. Animals—cows, say, on their way through a chute—are thus easily spooked by novelties that humans see as trivialities, such as high-pitched noises, drafts and dangling clothes. Other animals accomplish feats of obsessive concentration; squirrels really do remember where each acorn is buried. The portrait she paints of the mammalian mind is both alien and familiar; she shows that beasts are capable of sadistic cruelty, remorse, superstition and surprising discernment (in one experiment, pigeons were taught to distinguish between early period Picasso and Monet). Grandin (Thinking in Pictures) and Johnson (coauthor of Shadow Syndromes) deploy a simple, lucid style to synthesize a vast amount of research in neurology, cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology, supplementing it with Grandin's firsthand observations of animal behavior and her own experiences with autism, engaging anecdotes about how animals interact with each other and their masters, and tips on how to pick and train house pets. The result is a lively and absorbing look at the world from animals' point of view.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Scientific American
Temple Grandin has been known to crawl through slaughterhouses to get a sense of what the animals there are experiencing. An autistic woman who as a child was recommended for institutionalization, Grandin has managed not only to enter society’s mainstream but ultimately to become prominent in animal research. An associate professor at Colorado State University, she designs facilities used worldwide for humane handling of livestock. She also invented a "hug machine" (based on a cattle-holding chute) that calms autistic children. In Animals in Translation, co-authored with science writer Catherine Johnson, Grandin makes an intriguing argument that, psychologically, animals and autistic people have a great deal in common—and that both have mental abilities typically underestimated by normal people. The book is a valuable, if speculative, contribution to the discussion of both autism and animal intelligence, two subjects on which there is little scientific consensus. Autistics, in Grandin’s view, represent a "way station" between average people, with all their verbal and conceptual abilities, and animals. In touring animal facilities, Grandin often spots details—a rattling chain, say, or a fluttering piece of cloth—that disturb the animals but have been overlooked by the people in charge. She also draws on psychological studies to show how oblivious humans can be to their surroundings. Ordinary humans seem to be less detail-oriented than animals and autistics. Grandin argues that animals have formidable cognitive capabilities, albeit specialized ones, whereas humans are cognitive generalists. Dogs are smell experts, birds are migration specialists, and so on. In her view, some animals have a form of genius—much as autistic savants can perform feats of memory and calculation far beyond the abilities of average people. Some dogs, for example, can predict when their owner is about to have a seizure. Delving into animal emotion, aggression and suffering, Grandin gives tips that may be useful for caretakers of pets and farm animals. She also notes that humans seem to need, and thrive on, the proximity of animals. Indeed, she states provocatively, in the process of becoming human we gave up something primal, and being around animals helps us get a measure of that back.
Kenneth Silber --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
For the Love of a Dog -- Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend by Patricia B. McConnell
from Amazon: From Publishers Weekly
Animal behaviorist, dog trainer, syndicated radio talk show host and prolific author on all things canine, McConnell (The Other End of the Leash) presents a compelling combination of stories, science and practical advice to show how understanding emotions in both people and dogs can improve owners' relationships with their pets. This is more than a simple dog-training book: much of what McConnell discusses concerns how dog owners can learn "the language" of dog by recognizing important signals and reading them correctly. She provides numerous helpful examples of how owners can observe dog behavior, especially differences in posture and facial expressions, in order to help dogs be better behaved and help dog owners to be better handlers; her discussion of the meaning of a dog's "tongue flicks" is alone worth the price of the book. Her overall goal is to help owners provide their pets with "a sense of calm, peaceful benevolence," and she skewers current dog-training fads that emphasize "dominance" over a dog. "Don't fool yourself: if you yell at your dog for something he did twenty seconds ago, you're not training him; you're merely expressing your own anger." (On sale Aug. 15)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Understanding what drives the behavior of our pet dogs is McConnell's goal. She teaches readers to understand the emotional environment of their dogs' actions and helps them to reprogram undesirable behaviors. This is not a book on how to train dogs, but McConnell's examination of cases from her veterinary practice, backed up by her scientific study of animal behavior, will help readers better understand their closest companions. Whether discussing separation anxiety, fear biting, or simple canine happiness, McConnell explains the emotional state of each dog and how this drives the observed behavior. One gentle Labrador was traumatized by an aggressive boy and had begun to growl and snap at all human males--he was cured by simple therapy involving habituation to nice behavior and treats from men and boys. A dog that was terrified of thunder was trained to go to his safe place--a heavily insulated, very quiet doghouse. McConnell's main message is for readers to observe their own dogs and to understand the emotions behind their actions, both good and bad. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
All of these books can be found through either http://www.amazon.com or http://www.dogwise.com
I am partway through most of these books right now and I've found information that I think is wonderful and some information that I don't care for, but I've enjoyed the learning process.