Before and After You Get Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog »

Combining two popular titles in one value-priced edition, Before and After Getting Your Puppy is a simple, practical guide for anyone bringing a new puppy into the home. In clear steps, with helpful photos and easy-to-follow training deadlines, Dr. Ian Dunbar, who pioneered puppy classes and a loving style of dog training in the 1970s, presents a structured yet playful and humorous plan for raising a wonderful dog. The guide is based on six developmental deadlines: completing owner education and preparation, assessing a puppy's prior socialization and education, teaching errorless house-training and chewtoy-training, completing a socialization program of meeting strange dogs and people, learning bite inhibition, and continuing a program of ongoing training. In the first half of the book, Dr. Dunbar focuses on what the owner needs to know to select a great puppy. In the second half, he presents the crucial lessons the puppy must be taught during its impressionable early development — using a kind, positive approach that, over time, has been proven the most effective.

Library Journal

In the 1970s, veterinarian and animal behaviorist Dunbar revolutionized the world of dog training with an approach that eschewed punishment for fun, reward, and motivation. In this summary of his system for novice owners, he explains that turning a puppy into a pleasant companion actually begins before it is brought home; he describes how to evaluate and select a puppy and then discusses the crucial aspects of a puppy's education, including house training and chew-toy training, socialization, bite inhibition, and maintenance of socialization through adolescence and adulthood. Consistency, confinement, short training periods integrated into daily routines, and the use of a stuffed Kong (a hard, rubber chew toy) are other hallmarks of his system. Although this was previously published as two separate volumes by a small press, James and Kenneth Publishers (2001), the books were not widely distributed. Free of jargon, sprinkled with humor, and copiously illustrated, this one-volume edition belongs on public library shelves alongside such classics as Carol Lea Benjamin's Dog Training in 10 Minutes and Pat Miller's The Power of Positive Dog Training.-Florence Scarinci, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.