How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend: The Classic Training Manual for Dog Owners (Revised & Updated Edition) - Hardcover

Monks Of New Skete

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316610003 ISBN 13: 9780316610001

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2002

Synopsis

For more than a quarter century, How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend has been the standard against which all other dog-training books have been measured. This expanded edition preserves the best features of the original classic while bringing the book fully up-to-date. The result: the ultimate training manual for a new generation of dog owners--and, of course, for their canine best friends.

The Monks of New Skete have achieved international renown as breeders of German shepherds and as outstanding trainers of dogs of all breeds. Their unique approach to canine training, developed and refined over four decades, is based on the philosophy that "understanding is the key to communication, compassion, and communion" with your dog.

How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend covers virtually every aspect of living with and caring for your dog, including:

• Selecting a dog (what breed? male? female? puppy or older dog?) to fit your lifestyle
• Where to get--and where not to get--a dog
• Reading a pedigree
• Training your dog or puppy--when, where, and how
• The proper use of praise and discipline
• Feeding, grooming, and ensuring your dog's physical fitness
• Recognizing and correcting canine behavioral problems
• The particular challenges of raising a dog where you live - in the city, country, or suburb
• The proper techniques for complete care of your pet at every stage of his or her life

In its scope, its clarity, and its authority, How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend remains unrivaled as a basic training guide for dog owners. Like no other book, this guide can help you understand and appreciate your dog's nature as well as his or her distinct personality--and in so doing, it can significantly enrich the life you share with your dog.

About this title

About the Author

The Monks of New Skete have lived as a community in Cambridge, New York, for more than 30 years. They support themselves by breeding, raising, and training dogs at their monastery. They are also the authors also of In the Spirit of Happiness: Spiritual Wisdom for Living.

Reviews

The Monks of New Skete have been raising and training dogs for over 30 years at their Cambridge, New York, monastery, and this volume-updated from the 1978 version-offers solid insights on dog training, behavior, grooming, feeding and a host of other topics. Whether discussing country, city or suburban dogs, the monks dispense good advice on humane care, such as admonishing owners to avoid "canine incarceration," i.e., leaving a dog confined alone for long periods of time. While the book does contain many useful, tried-and-true techniques for obedience-stay, heel, down-stay, recall and the like-its unique value lies in the monks' insights and thoughts about the human-canine bond. Concepts such as discipline and praise are more than merely a means to an end, the monks maintain: they are extensions of a caring attitude and real communication with a canine companion. Without devolving into New Age psychobabble, the monks make philosophical and spiritual observations that no dog lover could resist, and which just might make a convert of the uninitiated. 87 b&w photos.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Having sold a half-million copies since its publication in 1978, this classic dog-training manual should attract a big audience with its revision.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316610003
• ISBN 13: 9780316610001
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336