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| Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog | 
 enlarge | Author: Dr. Ian Dunbar
Publisher: New World Library
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy Used: $1.19
You Save: $18.76 (94%)
New (53) Used (32) from $1.19
Avg. Customer Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 35559
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 1577314557
Dewey Decimal Number: 636.70887
EAN: 9781577314554
ASIN: 1577314557
Publication Date: April 29, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Some wear on book from reading, we guarantee all purchases and ship all items via USPS mail.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Can I unread this book? August 30, 2006
21 out of 34 found this review helpful
Unless you can spend every waking moment training your dog please do not read this book. (And by training I mean following this book to the letter, there is no room for mistakes says Mr. Dunbar! Allowing even one will make your dog untrainable and horrendous!)
Consider this review a warning. I read this book and after six days with my 12 week old pup I felt like an utter failure. Mr. Dunbar's book is completely unrealistic and rather extreme. (What if I cannot make my dog meet 100 people in my home in the first three months of his life at multiple 'meet-the-puppy parties'?! Then, says Mr. Dunbar, your dog will be unsocialised and you will eventually abandon him and he will die.) Unless you can devote every moment of your time to the Dunbar method of training your puppy you will be unable to follow any of his methods. (Don't let him *ever* doo in the house. If he doos in the house ONCE then he'll FOREVER doo in the house!! And be sure that you have at least fifty Kong toys. Kong. It's very important that they are Kong. Say it with me. *Kong*)
My main concern is that this book forces concrete deadlines and his make-believe concept of 'errorless house-training' down your throat. Honestly, I felt that every little normal natural puppy behavior (chewing, having accidents on the carpet, barking - things puppies are famous for doing!) was due to the fact that I was an unfit puppy mother. The book leads you to believe that all of these things are bad bad bad and the dog only does so because you have not trained him properly. That it's your *fault*, when in truth he's behaving like a normal puppy! And once he has gotten a taste of such odious misbehavior you'll never be able to make him be good again. This book is all meticulous, unrealistic prevention. Not ways to curb unwanted behaviors, which would be much more beneficial.
Bottom line, if you have a job or another being in your life besides your new puppy (and your puppy wasn't already partially trained by its breeder before you got him - yeah right. What if your puppy isn't a high dollar pure-bred pre-trained dog? Is he then hopeless?) you will be unable to train your dog according to this book. So please, don't read it. You'll only make yourself feel terrible and inept. Your very young animal will make natural, normal mistakes. It's ok.
Well worth the effort to Read August 6, 2006
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
One of the better books I've read on training. Most of the ideas presented are very good, although the average person will have a difficult time fully adhering to some of his suggestions. There's a little too much "My approach will work every time." My experience is that dogs are a little like people in that they have their own personality, and what works with one will not necessarily work with another. These are really small "complaints" and most of the book provides very practical and good approaches to training your dog.
 Worth reading but there's a but. June 17, 2006
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
I'm usually not that motivated to write a review but in this case I am. I'm glad I read the book however it's about 200 pages and organized and indexed very poorly. It is also extremely wordy and repetitive and found at least one spelling error. It can be condsensed into a 46 page bullet chart!
The advice is good but a lot of it way over the top and it gives you the sense that if you don't follow the advice completely your puppy will be unmanageable inevitably wind up in a shelter where no one will want to adopt it. And frankly some of the advice is really overdoing it. For example, having the puppy parties and making all your guests wash their hands and take off their shoes prior to working with the puppy. While you really decrease your chances of the dog becoming ill that way, it really harps on the need to do it when it could spend more pages addressing the issue of what to do when the puppy doesn't want the chewtoys.
It also tells you to avoid breeders who don't teach the puppy basic commands and sorry to say that most breeders don't do this. Its just not a realistic expectation especially if its a rare breed or there was a waiting list which was the case for my dog.
It doesn't tell you what to do in many common scenarios such as the puppy not eating right and it doesn't discuss whining and crying through the night and that was the information that I found myself needing the most and it wasn't in the book.
I also found that it takes time to get the puppy to want to play with chew toys. Mine was not immediately drawn to them and still doesn't have much interest in them apparently. And again, it does not say what to do in that instance.
When I read that the goal is to have zero accidents I was excited and thought I could do it. But it's really really difficult to get through with zero accidents. Heck my puppy has even gone in his crate twice and came back to find him laying in his mess. Again no backup plan. I take the puppy out 12-15 times a day but that is unrealistic for most people.
And experienced trainers I have talked to advise against the long term confinement potty area because you really dont want the pup going in the house at all and it prolongs the houstraining big time. Not to mention the smell takes hours to get aired out!!!
The book also says to stuff kibble into the chewtoys thus giving the puppy access to food all day. This is a really bad idea in my opinion and everyone else I have talked to because it makes housetraining more difficult and sets the puppy up for not eating at appropriate times.
 One of the BEST puppy books ever! April 22, 2006
33 out of 36 found this review helpful
I've read every dog training and behavior book out there since 1982. And I've raised six puppies as my own pets over the years. When I found myself in a bind with a challenging, rambunctious new challenge, I read everything looking for help- CESAR MILAN, GOOD OWNERS/GREAT DOGS by Kilcommons, PERFECT PUPPY Gwen Bailey , MOTHER KNOWS BEST by Carol Lea Benjamin, HOW TO RAISE A PUPPY YOU CAN LIVE WITH, SARAH HODGSON, THE ART OF RAISING A PUPPY, Jan Fennel'S DOG LISTENER, UNCLE MATTY.... you name it. I'd spend hours reading looking for suggestions. Far and away the #1 book that helped me the most and offered me the most practical advice was IAN DUNBAR'S BEFORE & AFTER YOU GET YOUR PUPPY- mostly the 'after' part! The book contains short and sweet, easy to read and apply how to's for raising a well-behaved, well-adjusted puppy. You know the kind that goes potty outside, is quiet through the night, will go into her crate and stay quietly without whining. After all these years, I thought I knew it all. I didn't. When I needed help, IAN DUNBAR provided it. The best advice ever, 1-2-3 housetraining, confinement, rules, restrictions, 'sssshhh', etc.
ONE (1) complaint: my puppy can't get the stuffing out of the Kong - any size - and whines terribly over it in frustration.
Also recommended: MOTHER KNOWS BEST, Carol Lea Benjamin/ THE ART OF RAISING A PUPPY, Monks of New Skete/ NO BAD DOGS Barbara Woodhouse/ TV Show: Cesar Milan's DOG WHISPERER on National Geographic.
Before & After Getting Your Puppy March 13, 2006
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book contained a lot of useful information I found it helpful.
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