This book is clearly written by a man immensely fond of dogs and with a very clear idea of how they can be conditioned to be well-socialised and impeccably behaved. However it reminded me of an American diet book, as there was a large amount of background, waffle, and repetition, and actual concrete advice and instructions for training your dog have to be dug out of the text like nuggets. He also sets some pretty daunting standards: For the purposes of socialisation, he insists, your puppy should meet 100 people by the time it is three months old. We got our dog, like many people, at 10 weeks of age... that gives us about three weeks to invite 100 people over to our house ( until a puppy has had its shots it's tricky to take it anywhere else). Who does he think I am, Tara Palmer Tomkinson, with a contacts book like the OED? Offer them beer and pizza and sports TV, he says. Yeah right. I live in London. Half of the blokes will think I'm trying to pick them up.
And anyway it's not just any hundred people. These people have to be shown (he actually uses the term trained) to train your dog - ie you cannot allow them to interact with it until they can make it sit, lie down and roll over. Which I haven't managed myself yet. If you don't do this, he warns, they will 'ruin' your puppy. He uses the word 'ruin' over and over. Make no errors in housetraining! One mistake will lead to many more! If guests won't conform, you must ask them to leave! Time is running out! You may already be too late!
He comes across like the Ayatollah of dog training. You feel that if your dog can't be told to turn cartwheels and happily let a thousand people feel up its dangly parts by the time it's three months old you may as well give up - and shoot yourself, not the dog, because clearly it's your fault. He implies there is no such thing as an intrinsically mean or naughty dog, but that all behaviour is purely conditioning. Hmm...
The cover of the book shows a series of misbehaved dogs, snarling, chewing clothes, and peeing in the wrong places. It's appropriate, because the whole book seems to be rather short on joy and encouragement and long on doom and gloom. But for all that I do approve of his strict no-cruelty approach, hence the four stars. He's just that he seems rather more forgiving and tolerant of his dogs than his readers.
