The Art of Raising a Puppy | The Monks of New Skete | The Best Puppy "How To" Book for Intellectuals

The Art of Raising a Puppy | The Monks of New Skete | Outstanding guide to understanding and training your puppy

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The Art of Raising...

	The Art of Raising a Puppy The Monks of New Skete Little, Brown and Company, 1991 - 274 pages average customer review:based on 182 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Best Puppy "How To" Book for Intellectuals

If you are past the point in your life where "Puppies for Dummies" is of any use to you, if you have had a dog and understand the basics, if you are ready for the more advanced tutorial in really understanding your relationship with your puppy from the first minute he/she is born, if you know that "picking a puppy" is more important than choosing "the cute one," then this book is for you. It is not a training tool, and there are no chapters on teaching sit, stay or come. This will give you a critical understanding of the dog's mental development and what to expect at different stages of the dog's life from birth forward. Get this book AND READ IT before you decide on your next puppy. Also, there is an appendix with "exercises" to do with your puppy prospects to help you choose the puppy with the right personality for you or your family, and it REALLY works!

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Outstanding guide to understanding and training your puppy

The monks of the New Skete Monastary in upstate New York have produced an excellent guide for puppy owners of all experience levels. Their training philosophy is based on using the dog's pack instincts to establish the owner as the "pack leader" who must be obeyed and looked to for leadership. I saw two main areas where the monk's recommendations differ from the other training techniques commonly advocated today. First, they advocate using praise and affection as a reward for behaviors (rather than food treats). Second, while they advocate positive reinforcement of desired behaviors, they differ from other common contemporary training methods when it comes to dealing with unwanted behaviors. The monks advocate humane correction rather than the ignoring of undesired behavior. We found this to be absolutely essential with our 12 week old German Shepherd puppy when the "ignore" method advocated by other trainers failed utterly.

The book is laced with many helpful photos to illustrate the training points and contains an excellent chart of of dog facial expressions for various states of mental condition (thus helping you understand your dog's state of mind: very important in effective training).

Overall this book is a must-read for anyone who has a puppy or is considering acquiring one.

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A Real Dog Book

The comments in this book are GREAT! I have been around dogs for 50 years and this book is dead on. If you want a well trained dog, then this is the starting point. Be the Alpha Dog and order this book...you
will begin the journey of a well trained pet in your family.

A must read for all puppy owners

I wish i read this before i got my dog. It was so helpful in correcting some of his behavior problems.

Puppy raising DOGma from the Monks...

Let me begin by saying that I am not an expert on this topic, but I love my puppy... and feel I need to be.

The merits of this book is that it documents the THINKING, experience and methodology of a group of monks who've dedicated their lives to raising German Shephards... the downside is that it ONLY discusses their method, and does not take into account any others - - of course, this is not a fault of the book - - they are simply describing their approach (which they feel happens to be right, and all others wrong), but while their method is not "radical", I'm wondering if the method is really for everybody and all dogs... (The method, incidentally is somewhat orthodox leash training - - and does not use treats as rewards... I worry that some people might get out of hand with the POP-no's, and it may not be for PEOPLE who might confuse the corrective associations with acts of utter dominance and intimidation! Unfortunately, in reading a book, how can a person's leash technique be corrected. In the end, at one extreme of the scale the monks warn against coddling and spoiling the dog... but on the other hand, we don't want to traumatize it either!)
another point: their writing style is easy to understand, but at the same time a bit dry (no warm and funny anecdotes, or as another reviewer elsewhere said "psychobabble") - - again, a plus or minus depending upon how you look at it.

In the end, the fact that this book does DOCUMENT in detail the process of how they raise their pups makes it GREAT reading... however I think the key caveat is that it should be supplemented with other reading...

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