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The collection of books below provide a great resources for all phases of life, in a wide variety of situations. I believe that in this selection of books, one can learn how to provide a happy and healthy life for their canine besties.
My personal favorite book to hit the shelves within the past year is The Forever Dog Life written by Rodney Habib and Dr Karen Shaw Becker. This book highlights a multitude of ways in which you can make little changes that can improve your dogs overall health. It discusses specific foods and their stand alone health benefits, provides recipes for meal toppers along with recipes to home cook meals. It talks about enriching ways to give treats, and also provides alternative recipes with which to clean your home instead of using conventional cleaners, which have been known to be loaded with toxic chemicals. I have been suggesting this book and sharing things I have learned from it with all my friends. In addition to being a wealth of information, there are beautiful illustrations that help support the text and make some of the concepts easier to understand.
The best part about this book is that I was encouraged to just start by trying something. It didn’t have to be reinventing the wheel; I discovered that the addition of anything could start to have an impact on Apollo’s health. I started out by simply adding some foods that I already had because of my own diet to Apollo’s meals, and with time, I have started incorporating more and more of the concepts I learned from The Forever Dog Life. Apollo has looked more alert and my sister and nephew even claim he has “reverse aged”. I know he can’t get enough of his meal times, and that makes it all worth it for me.
Just brought your puppy home and realizing – oh shoot, this isn’t as easy as I had first thought? Don’t worry! It happens to all of us eventually. Each dog is different – just like people – and some are easier when they are puppies than others. Take it from me, my girl, Stella, was a total velociraptor when she was young, but my boy, Apollo was super chill. He couldn’t even be used as a demonstration dog in puppy class because he simply didn’t jump. The Puppy Primer by Patricia McConnel is an awesome resource for your puppy. Whether it’s your first or fifth puppy, it’s good to have a resource at hand because while dog trainers like to hear updates on their clients, they might not want to hear from you at 10:30pm on a Sunday night? This book can help you regain some confidence that yes, you got this! It’s so good, in fact, that a lot of dog trainers use the contents of this book as a guide for their own puppy classes! You need to check it out and have it on hand for back up with your puppy!
Do you have a Dog in Need of Space (DINOS)? You have to check out The Official Guide to Living with DINOS, by Jessica Dole. When Apollo was younger, I arranged a play date with some of his littermates and they attacked him. I left his brother’s house with a bloody palm from protecting him. Ever since then Apollo has not exactly loved the company of strange dogs. He needs some space! This book helps readers understand that it’s okay to have a DINOS; there’s nothing wrong with it, and, in fact, it isn’t abnormal either! Just like I won’t enjoy the company of every human being that I meet, I can’t expect my dog to enjoy the company of every dog he meets. Have a look at this book (it’s SUPER affordable!) and I’m sure it’ll relieve you and change your perspective.
Don’t Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor looks at training from an updated perspective; if your dog is positively reinforced with force free training, the whole experience is likely to be fun for your pup, which in turn makes the training faster. Traditional training in which we use prong collars and quickly punish dogs for incorrect behavior is outdated. We know so much more about shaping behavior than we did when those training methods were popularized. We can do so much better for our dogs now in providing a save and happy method for them to learn, which will make your dog eager to figure out whatever it is you are asking them to learn.
Another amazing resource for dog training and behavior modification comes from The New Click to Calm, written by Emma Parsons. Dogs need structure and they need to be able to trust us as their providers. Once we understand what that can look like, we can then lay the groundwork by using clicker training to effectively communicate and encourage desired behaviors. This book also covers strategies for when we encounter trouble with our dogs, such a reactivity, and ways to humanely discourage that behavior. Like I said, it’s an amazing resource that I hope to do a deep dive on my blog about. I can say from personal experience of years of working with Apollo, who does not always feel comfortable with other dogs, especially new ones, that using her methods work. Instead of intensely eyeballing other dogs and setting them off, he now acknowledged their existence and then looks to me for his treat. He’s not perfect, and I don’t need him to be. We will always be working on this preferred reaction, but now I feel very confident that we are safe around other dogs, and that I know how to manage the situation to set us up for success.
What happens when our expectations conflict with our dogs behavior? How often have you seen someone expect their dog to read their mind? The owner expects the dog to turn a corner on a path without giving the dog a single verbal queue, and the dog is yanked by the neck and leash in the direction the owner wants to go in. Or the owner is on their phone, not paying attention to their dog while on a walk, and the dog stops to sniff something. The owner wants to keep the dog moving and once more, tugs on the leash to keep the dog moving with them without saying anything. The Culture Clash, by Jean Donaldson is the perfect read to explore these topics. I have not yet read this book, but it is on my list to read this year because I feel that this is one of the reasons why people will look at their dog and say “my dog isn’t smart enough to do xyz” when in reality it’s a matter of understanding our own expectations, setting a clear expectation for the dog, and working with them to achieve the goal.
Did you know that your dog is constantly telling you how the feel? They just aren’t speaking in a language that most of us are fluent in. I believe that one of the most important scenarios in which we owe it to our dogs to understand their body language is when they are being introduced to either new dogs, or other animals, or new people. So many times we have made our dogs do something that they are asking us not to do with their body language, but many of us simply do not understand what they are saying to us. We want to bring them to the dog park where we think they want to be, but really they are nervous and anxious about the entire experience, then when they snap at another dog because they just can’t take it anymore, you think (and maybe proclaim to the other owners) “well he’s never done that before I don’t know why he just did that!” Meanwhile, had you understood what your dog was saying to you, you might never have put him in that situation to begin with. Canine Body Language, by Brenda Aloff is one of the best resources I have seen so far, with hundreds of pages of pictures of dogs in different positions with explanations accompanying them. I think my favorite pages are the ones where she talks about how our dogs say they love us.
Another body language book that I recommend is Doggie Language, by Lili Chin. These are more than just cute cartoons of dogs, they are informative cute pictures of dogs! Each picture has the dog in a state of emotion and is accompanied by some explanations and visual clues to help us understand what the dog’s body is trying to communicate to us. This is a very affordable book and a very interesting look at body language.