****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I am 100% satisfied with this dog training book. I don't understand why it's not more popular. I'm using Dr. Yin's techniques and they're working on my problematic, but improving, rescue dog. If you want a dog training book that is written by a true expert and utilizes evidence-based techniques, rather than opinion and conjecture, this one is perfect.What are evidenced-based techniques? Techniques tested by scientists in enough trials to determine which perform the best. Full disclosure, I'm a scientist, but animal training is not my specialty. I do have free access to all of those dry scientific manuscripts that hide behind paywalls to the tune of $35 per article. I've read several of them, and I can't find one published in the last 10 years indicating that punishment is a superior training technique.I grew up with a dog and we had a choke chain for her. I had a dog in the past 10 years, and I used a choke chain. For my present rescue dog, I considered trying an e-collar. It's really hard to find good information on training your dog because there's so much information out there and you need no training or credentials to be a dog trainer. Example 1: Cesar Millan. Sure, his techniques work, but they don't work as well as those outlined by Dr. Yin. Punishing your dog by poking is easy, but it is more likely to cause additional problems than just removing your dog from the situation and working them up to handing the situation better in the first place. If you don't like the idea of choke chains, e-collars, prong collars, poking and shushing your dog to make them behave well, then this is the book for you. Punishment is administered by withholding your attention. If a dog is misbehaving, you remove the dog from the situation. If you do want to use punishment, you can still learn how to properly use rewards from this book.I like this book because it's easy to identify a chapter to address an issue, then flip to that chapter and easily find the meat. By meat, I mean the part about actually training your dog. Sure, each chapter begins with a few paragraphs that set the mood for those who read dog training books for entertainment, but I generally skip over that. I use this book as a resource, and it's good for that. I also like that it's written by an accomplished scientist, and that I can trust the content. Lastly, the ultimate goal is to wean your dog off the treats and several strategies are provided to accomplish this.I'd be remiss in not pointing out that Dr. Yin's demonstration videos on youtube help and fit well with the book. Additionally, the Treat & Train manual is a cliff notes version of this book.
