Member Reviews

''How to Train Your Dog with Love + Science: A Dog Lover's Guide to Animal Behavior and Positive Reinforcement Training'' is an informative book with examples of how to train your dog by understanding them first.

The author provides loads of examples from her personal experience and from the bibliography to connect with the reader and make things simple and understandable.

The exercises that she gave were also resourceful and one of them actually worked on my dog! (haven't tried them all out yet).

However, the book is kind of long and has the exercises spread out throughout it, thus, it gets tiring to read after a while. But, I enjoyed its tone and the examples.

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I found the book to be helpful in learning positive reinforcement training with a good breakdown of steps. The baby steps are probably helpful for a lot of newbies. The author was persuasive in trying to help the reader understand things more in a dog’s POV.

I wish there was more of this in the beginning instead of halfway through the book. Also, I felt like people could be persuaded to try the positive reinforcement method without the blatant and repetitive bashing of other methods.

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Full Disclosure: I received an Advanced Reader's Copy of How to Train Your Dog with Love + Science: A Dog Lover's Guide to Animal Behavior and Positive Reinforcement Training by Annie Grossman from Sourcebooks via NetGalley. It should be available to the public on September 10, 2024

How to Train Your Dog with Love + Science: A Dog Lover's Guide to Animal Behavior and Positive Reinforcement Training by Annie Grossman is a good introduction to dog training. There are some basic exercises you can do to start a foundation for training your dog. More than anything, this book provides a good description of positive reinforcement training and how it differs from other dog training methods. This is really great for people who might be new to dog training or might be struggling to train a dog. Even though my dog has been through training, I picked up a few tips.

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This book came at a fortuitous time as we just got a rescue puppy in June. I love the author's approach of loving your dog through training rather than using punishment and scare tactics to get your dog to behave. We are still working on the techniques and lessons the book provides in addition to our dog's puppy class. Recall seems to be the most challenging for us right now. I feel Ms. Grossman does indeed have a solid background and experience in dog training to make this an excellent resource for those looking for help in training a new puppy. It certainly has provided our family with another set of tools for Maisy, our puppy. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. I was so happy when I saw it available to download and would recommend it to others.

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We have a family-owned dog training business, so I look at books about dog training with a close eye. This one was really good. It goes along with what we teach, but she also put some life into it, by giving us some stories about dogs, doesn't get too heavy, and makes it a good read. I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for a digital copy of this title in exchange

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Great depiction and wonderfully worded way of how to use both science and a love for that to train a dog. Found a lot of what was said matched up with what I was already doing via our trainer and it was really encouraging.

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This was a super cute and lovely book! I definitely struggled with training my first ever puppy (part Husky, part Pitbull), but this book and a few others helped reassure me that I was on the right track.

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I thought this book was gonna have a lot of information on dog training, but turns out it gave out more than just training. It also had some stories about dogs in history and also everything you need if you’re looking to own one. I would recommend this book to some first time dog owners.

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This was such an informative book that remained digestible and fun to read throughout!

I loved the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, it was a nice touch. Also Annie is such an excellent narrator, it felt like a friend guiding me along the confusing and complicated world of dog training. The introduction to classical conditioning and history of dog training was really informative and a really good foundation to any dog owner. Learning about Millan's techniques and some of the other shocking ways dogs have been 'trained' in the past was really eye opening.

The rest of the book was a glorious deep dive into the science of behaviourism and it felt like there were no stones left unturned when it comes to how thorough Annie is in explaining the origins of all the theories, practices and science side of things. I loved that this book is perfect for any level, it felt like nothing was over or under explained so even those with an existing knowledge could benefit from it.

Structurally, I would've liked a list of key bullet points/lessons from each chapter just to help consolidate the knowledge as it did feel like a lot to take in at times. Similarly, there was a lot of theory so it would've been nice to get a few more practical tips to help but knowledge more into context.

Overall, a great book and so wonderfully written by a true dog lover!

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By using the easy to follow techniques based on science, you can learn to train your dog to be happier, calmer, and better behaved. A must read for those who love dogs!

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In hindsight I might not have been the target audience for this, I pretty much knew all of this already from doing my own research with my dog . However, this would be a great resource for someone starting out or looking to change their training style because positive reinforcement really is the best way

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I’m a pet sitter and fear free certified but have little knowledge when it comes to training - oh and I recently got a GSD puppy who I know will need training- this book was it for me. This book is highly digestible and realistic!

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This book has some great information none of which I found revolutionary. Maybe for your boomer parents getting a puppy this book would convince them you can train a dog with kindness. If you like lots of story's and examples with your information this is a great one.

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