I was just on the radio!

That was awesome — I just did a radio interview about Outwitting Dogs for WBER, Rochester’s alt music radio station. What a kick. Thanks Joey & Sgt. Pepper!

Anybody who stops by, the book is available on Amazon.

Other resources I mentioned on the interview. If you’re looking for a Rochester area trainer, Cindy Harrison at SeeSpotThink is terrific. (Many of the photos in 101 Dog Training Tips were taken during classes at her training facility here in Roch.)

Terry Ryan, the trainer who was the real brains behind Outwitting Dogs, is online at Legacy Canine.

If you want to polish those dog training skills

Terry Ryan, the most excellent professional dog training who I collaborated with on Outwitting Dogs, has asked me to help spread the word that she’s got openings in a couple of the courses she teaches.

She writes that there are a few openings in her two-day survey courses in June.

She’s also got openings in August in a couple of courses she teaches with Bob Bailey. These are the famous “chicken training” courses that Bob ran with his late wife for years. Terry’s got some background on them on her website here.

Bob’s the person who introduced me to Terry as well :-)

[tags] dog training, Bob Bailey, chicken training [/tags]

It really IS her dog!

outwitting dogs cover

When someone wrote an Amazon review that she’d bought Outwitting Dogs because her dog was on the cover, I assumed she meant she owned a Jack Russell terrier and bought the book because there’s a Jack Russell on the front.

Doh!!!

It really IS her dog on the cover!!!

camilla, the dog on the cover of Outwitting DogsSusan has sent me some more pics of Camilla to post here. Look at that sweetie! She doesn’t look at all like a dog who would chew a slipper now, does she!

And isn’t this cool? Turns out the book’s cover model is a hard-working industry professional with a massive portfolio — who hobnobs with some of the most famous dogs in the biz!!! Lassie!!! Beethoven! The Taco Bell chihuahua!!! Air Bud! And that’s Bullseye, the Target Bull Terrier, in the sunglasses, right?

camilla, the dog on the cover of Outwitting Dogs

And look at this one — you can see why this dog works a lot. Doesn’t that make your heart just melt?

camilla, the dog on the cover of Outwitting Dogs

Love that word of mouth, too

It’s a thrill when the dog training book I co-wrote gets a mention in the press, of course, but I also love when someone says something like this, which I just found in a dog training forum (Terry Ryan is the trainer I teamed up with to write Outwitting Dogs):

I second Sandra on the Terry Ryan book, i just bought it and im hooked.

It’s hard to assign a value to writing quality, and it happens that Terry (her website is here) is a gifted and experienced dog trainer; there’s no question that the enthusiasm shown by people who read it are in large part due to the quality of the content. The lady knows what she’s doing when it comes to dogs!

But I like to think that my contribution — in terms of the organization, clarity of the writing, and tone of the book — are playing a part in the book’s success as well ;-)

/end shameless self-promotion

Another reason I love the British

As if I needed any more — I just found out that this fellow (bloke??? lol) Michael Wright mentioned Outwitting Dogs in a February piece in the Telegraph [Update: link no longer good…] and what a delightful piece — I got a wonderful belly laugh from it, which was all I needed, I’ve just ordered his book, C’est la folie, more of that please, sir!

But is a bark ever just a bark?

In England, that country’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is now offering a course in barking for dog owners, reports Nicola Woolcock for the London Times.

The course doesn’t teach people to bark. It teaches people how to interpret their dogs’ vocalizations.

The different noises made by dogs have been identified as grunts, whines, yelps, screams, howls, growls, coughs, barks, tooth snapping and panting.

While this cacophony might sound overwhelming to the untrained ear, dog owners will learn whether the sounds mean that their pet wants a walk, a wee or a fresh can of food.

The authorities hope that if people understand what their dogs are trying to tell them, they’ll find ways to keep their dogs quiet, and thereby reduce noise complaints.

The training is being offered by Peterborough City Council in an attempt to cut down on complaints about antisocial noise. The council’s pollution control team receives more than 1,300 noise complaints a year. Of those, 15 per cent relate to the barking of dogs.

Nationally, the figure is even higher at 25 per cent of all complaints.

Whether this training will help is debatable, although not because the idea doesn’t have merit. It does, in theory. It’s a topic covered in Outwitting Dogs, the dog training book I co-wrote, in fact. Dogs bark for different reasons, and sometimes you can figure out the cause by paying attention to everything from the bark’s pitch to how repetitive it is, to whether there are identifiable triggers that get it started. Then, once you know the cause, you can take steps to eliminate it, or train an alternative behavior.

But the real problem is: how do you get the people who have “problem dogs” to attend the class?

Maybe it will be mandated if a dog’s noise has resulted in a formal complaint.

But if not, it’s a good solution — to the wrong problem.

A lonely, poorly-socialized, or poorly-trained dog often ends up that way because his human is ignorant, busy, or clueless.

And ignorant, busy, clueless humans aren’t going to be the ones who show up to take a class in interpreting barks . . .

They liked it (Outwitting Dogs review)

Another nice review of Outwitting Dogs, in this PUW Prints newsletter from Green Acres Kennel Shop in Bangor, Maine (pdf file).

Except:

So, what exactly do the authors mean by “outwitting” dogs? Basically, the key to successfully outwitting a dog lies in recognizing the fact that we as dog owners do have bigger brains (proven once again by the fact that you reading this book re-view and your dog is not), and then choosing to use our brains to manage, train, and shape our dogs to fit appropriately into our worlds.

The review was originally published last year, however, so I don’t think it explains last week’s Amazon bump.

Interpreting the Amazon oracle

For some reason, the Amazon sales rank of Outwitting Dogs has been bobbing along above the 10,000 mark for several days.

Since it fluctuates hourly your results may vary, but as I write this, it’s hit 2,357 which is damn near champagne-worthy. Not that my champagne standards are all that stringent. Okay, okay, it’s not even close to champagne-worthy, it’s 11:00 on a Sunday night already, sheesh.

But still. What in Tarnation is Going On?

Has there been a print review somewhere that hasn’t been picked up by Google’s crawler yet?

Anyone have any idea?

This kind of thing doesn’t just happen. This book, The Impatient Gardener, is number 100 in Amazon’s Home and Garden ranking and it’s at 2300 right now. A couple more copies of Outwitting sell, and it’s . . . it’s made a List.

(Actually, it’s already made one list. The Dogwise Top 10 for 2005, but I didn’t find that out until the day before yesterday.) (So I didn’t even get a chance to wonder whether that was champagne-worthy.)

Seriously, if anyone reading this has an idea of what might have raised the book’s profile in the last few days, drop me a comment or an email! Thanks!

Dog book news

Over the weekend, I finished reviewing the page proofs for 101 Dog Training Tips, which is coming out in June.

The book is substantially different from Outwitting Dogs, which I co-wrote with Terry Ryan, a professional trainer. Tips is shorter — 12,000 words — and includes 50 photos, most of which I took myself. Outwitting Dogs came in at around 90,000 words, if I remember correctly.

So I was a bit taken aback when I read my publisher’s description of the new book. They’ve made it sound like it’s a comprehensive training book. It’s not. It’s . . . tips. Sigh. Outwitting Dogs is a comprehensive training book. Tips, on the other hand, is something you’d pick up when you need just a quick idea, or to brush up on your training. It’s more like a checklist. A good checklist, mind you ;-)

It’s funny to feel uneasy and excited at the same time. I’ll be awfully happy when I am actually holding a bound copy in my hand. I remember the thrill when my copies of Outwitting Dogs got here, and somehow, I don’t think that thrill ever goes away.