Playtraining Your Dog Paperback – December 15, 1985

This book was originally written by the woman who put the first utility dog title on "untrainable" greyhounds. This is the revolutionary book that suggested making training fun for your dog and training for their attention span instead of a human one. I was introduced to this book when I was 17 and it changed my life.I trained my Afghan puppy using the techniques in this book and after meeting my dog, was offered a job by the breeder of the top AKC conformation ranked Afghan breeder in the country. She read the book and then trained her dogs too! It was revolutionary.I have now been a part of training almost 100 service dogs, most of them sighthound, all because of this book. I can not say enough about this author or how many lives have been made richer because of her understanding that a dog is a partner that likes to be entertained, and not a military recruit in need of discipline. The trust between partners this technique generates has been life saving in both sides... Can you tell she is one of my heroes?

This is a GREAT book on motivational dog training. I just purchased my third copy (I "loaned" out my other two, you know how that goes...). The author obviously understands dog behavior and offers great tools, processes and procedures to help your dog learn new behaviors. Although a Golden Retriever is on the cover, this book is primarily about the author training greyhounds for obedience work (basic to advanced). This is a good thing, because (I know from personal experience), greyhound's are thinking dogs and understand the concept of WIIFM (what's in it for me). Compulsion training mostly shuts them down so positive training is the way to go.But, this type of training works with any breed (I used a lot of what's in her book to train my high-drive, intense, dominant, male Doberman Pinscher. Yes, greyhound lovers, I left greyhounds and went over to the Dark Side - Dobermans. :)If you want to have more fun training your dog, I suggest you get this book and use the principles and remember to be patient!

The reason I say the above is because the concepts are great and before their time (this book is over 30 years old), BUT the methods are not current. While some of the methods can still be used, and are less harsh than other ways of training, obedience has evolved and even better methods are available now. The first and last chapters were hard to keep reading, but they were packed with insights. Throughout the book the author gives great examples and stories. Over-all a good book if you ENJOY reading training books (as I do) regardless of if you actually get anything usable. It was far from the worst training book I've read.

This book is probably great if you are trying to train a show dog. I just want to be able to have my dog trained for fun activities outside to work out her energy. This book was more technical and focused on show techniques instead of motivational tricks to get me and my dog to work better together.

One of my all-time favorite dog trng books. I've given away many copies. I think there's a new edition which emphasized food rewards more but the original is still terrific. IIRC, this was written as a kind of antitode to Koehler and other somewhat harsher approaches.

Lots of ideas to incorporate into your daily life with your dog/puppy. This is one I will hang onto for a long long time and I re-visit it when thing are getting a bit stale, I always find something new to utilize.

If you are interested in the dry technical aspects of training it's a good book, but as an educational tool to be read by the whole family, it was not the book of choice. The New Complete Dog Training Manual was read by the whole family (ages 7 to 18) numerous times and served as a guide.

One of the best books I've read on dog training. Have had great success with her techniques!