In 2021, perhaps there’s no better time to understand the four-legged friend in your house a little better. And with so many good books on dog behavior out there, you’re literally spoilt for choice. To help the selection, we’ve narrowed it down to five books from four authors: each of these guides has something unique to offer, and all of them can be purchased off Amazon. So whether you like to read a hard copy or relax with your Kindle, a great deal of reading time awaits you. Let’s take a look at the books we’ve picked.
Cesar Millan’s Short Guide to a Happy Dog: 98 Essential Tips and Techniques
As one of the leading dog behaviourists in the world, Cesar Millan has pioneered techniques to forge a closer bond with your animal. His 2014 manual – the Short Guide to a Happy Dog – features nearly 100 tips you can apply in your home, and at 200 pages, it won’t take weeks to digest the information. One of the central themes of the book is learning to become the pack leader; that is, letting your dog know you’re the man/woman of the house.
Another good choice, if you enjoy Millan’s way of thinking, is his seminal guide Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems. Released in 2008, this book is still valuable today, and it helps you to correct behaviors you’re employing that are confusing your dog – behaviors that arise from the fact that you’re speaking to your animal to like a person, not an animal.
Max the Miracle Dog: The Heart-warming Tale of a Life-saving Friendshipby Kerry Irving is a slight change of pace. It tells the story of a bond between an animal and an owner, and how the former helps the latter get over severe depression brought on by a debilitating injury.
If you’re looking for an encyclopaedic rundown of all the dog breeds out there, you could do far worse than Nancy Hajeski’s Every Dog: A Book of Over 450 Breeds, which is stuffed full of research covering our four-legged friends the world over.
Finally, if you’re searching the scientific perspective, Alexandra Horowitz’s Inside of a Dogtries to illuminate what dogs actually see, smell and understand when they’re surrounded by other dogs – and perhaps more importantly, us. Though not a formal training guide per se, it will give you practical tools you can use to forge a stronger bond with your animal, and if nothing else, understand them a little better.
