The Midnight Dog Walkers: Positive Training and Practical Advice for Living with Reactive and Aggressive Dogs

Help your dog recover from fear, anxiety, and aggression!

• Training program and plans for managing and rehabilitating a reactive or aggressive dog
• Real stories of Midnight Dog Walkers, detailing the extreme measures they've taken to manage their dogs' behavior around others
• The author's experiences, successes, and heartbreaks with her own aggressive and fearful dogs
• Positive reinforcement, its history, and the qualities of a good dog trainer
• Proper socialization and good breeding, and their importance in forming a dog's adult personality and temperament
• Why punishment fails and negative training only worsens a dog's behavior and destroys the human–canine bond

What is the Midnight Dog Walkers' Club? If you have a reactive or aggressive dog, and you find yourself walking him in the middle of the night or at the break of dawn to avoid meeting other people and dogs, you are already a member of this exclusive club to which nobody wants to belong.

Aggression is a subject that no dog owner wants to talk about, but one that many must face. Statistics show that aggression is not only the most serious problem in dogs but also the top reason for owners to seek out professional help for their pets. Left unchecked, an aggressive dog can become a dangerous dog, and this informative volume comes to the aid of many heartbroken owners who feel that they have tried everything to correct their dogs' unpredictable and inappropriate behavior.

Author and certified dog trainer Annie Phenix shares her belief that many reactive dogs can be rehabilitated with the right training, and she offers her expertise in positive, force-free training methods to desperate owners who have resorted to extreme measures to keep their dogs away from other people and animals. Inside this book, Phenix addresses the often-taboo topics of reactivity and aggression in canines, speaking to owners honestly and candidly from the vantage point of her own experiences, successes, and even heartbreaks. Using reward-centered, scientifically based techniques with a focus on the all-important human–canine bond, Phenix introduces owners to training methods to help their dogs recover from fear, anxiety, and aggression in collaboration with a professional trainer or behaviorist.

Inside The Midnight Dog Walkers, you'll find stories and practical examples from the author based on aggressive dogs she's trained and owned; behavioral warning signs that owners should recognize; definitions of different types of aggression and why they occur; tips on how to handle a potentially aggressive or aggressive dog; the author's force-free training philosophy and how she applies it with her clients to effect positive changes; popular myths and misconceptions about training these "grumpy growlers"; how to open communication and cooperation between owners, trainers, and veterinarians; and more.

Learn how to strengthen the bond between you and your dog, and help your dog become calm, well-adjusted, and happy, with The Midnight Dog Walkers!

Annie Phenix, CPDT-KA, is a professional force-free dog trainer from Durango, Colorado, specializing in canine behavior. Phenix is a popular writer for Dogster and BARKS magazines, and she is the resident trainer for Dogster.com. She is an award-winning journalist with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin. She was named the Austin Communicator of the Year by Women in Communication in 2000. You can visit her training website at phenixdogs.com.