Description
Price: $17.99 - $15.69
(as of Mar 02, 2025 11:33:01 UTC – Details)
“I’ve known Paul personally for many years and have faithfully followed his training advice with wonderful results. I can’t recommend him highly enough.” Jeff Probst, host of Survivor
“This is basically a ‘perfect book’…with this knowledge there should be many more well-adjusted canine companions and far fewer dogs being relinquished to shelters. This book is an admirable accomplishment.” The APDT Chronicle of the Dog (The publication for professional dog trainers)
Following the success of his book The Dog Whisperer, Paul Owens turns his attention to puppies. In this book, Owens and his protégé Terence Cranendonk offer a compassionate step-by-step guide to all things puppy, including how to:Evaluate temperamentChoose the right pup personality for your familyMonitor diet, play, and exerciseTrain and problem solve Provide early socialization and positive trainingPotty train, step-by-stepEnsure safety and health care, including the latest on vaccinations Puppies can be a lot of work, but they can also be a furry bundle of joy. If you’re thinking of bringing a puppy into your home, The Puppy Whisperer is your must-have guide.
Publisher : Adams Media; 1st edition (October 1, 2007)
Language : English
Paperback : 256 pages
ISBN-10 : 1593375972
ISBN-13 : 978-1593375973
Item Weight : 12 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.44 inches
Customers say
Customers find the book helpful for working with dogs. They describe it as informative and easy to follow. The reward system encourages positive behavior and kindness.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Snoosh –
Highly recommended, very effective.
This book comes highly recommended by multiple sources (shelters, trainers, veterinarian, etc.), so it’s a “heavy hitter”, good info that works and works well. We just got a new puppy, this provides a lot of insight and guidance on how to use the early, formative time to produce a good pet and not a pain in the butt or a terror. Many people think they inherently know how to deal with dogs, but often they are mistaken and the dog does not behave as well as it should or is not as well-off as it should be, this is a “must read”. We also have our puppy (11-weeks old) at a formal training course at a local, leading animal shelter in the area, and learning even more, so that is highly recommended for every puppy, but eat course and this book do not conflict, they complement each other well, and this book does not require you to head over to the class!It has a lot of useful and effective, specific guidance on care and training of puppies, but to me the major message it delivers, as they do at our in-person course, is that being “strict” or forceful is ineffective at best and often just does not work as well as the techniques given here. When you see someone shouting at their dog or pulling hard on the leash, they have failed and please give them a copy of this book so they don’t ruin the dog physically or behaviorally! Easier is also more effective, amazingly so.I think our dog is pretty smart, but certainly much of the credit for how well behaved she is and how fast she has learned things are from this book.
Jill McCullough –
Read this book and know what to expect and how to respond to your puppy!
Read (most) of this book and listened to all the audiobook. have been using the positive reinforcement strategies and find it MUCH more effective and humane/gratifying than the âoldâ dominance theory of dog training. My puppy is so much more responsive and attentive/trainable than my prior dogsâ¦.but itâs not the dogâ¦itâs the positive reinforcement approach!
Kindle Customer –
Very Good
Paul Owens addresses just about every topic concerning a new dog’s needs – but some of them only very superficially. His play and exercise discussions in particular were quite lightweight on content. Not a comprehensive puppy-rearing guide by any means.I have no problem with food rewards for early training (why are people more eager to scold a dog than to give her a piece of food?). That said, I HATE his overuse of food for socialization. Puppies should be encouraged to approach the world on their own. If they balk at something, it is best to lead by example by quietly interacting with that object yourself, allowing your puppy to approach at her own pace and giving her praise and support when she freely interacts (“what a brave, good puppy!”). Covering the world in food is not instilling the puppy with confidence. It is also a terrible way for puppies to view people. They lose their interest in interacting, and focus on begging or demanding food. Unless the pup has a big problem that requires counterconditioning, plying them with food in social situations is unnecessary. Calm confidence on your part will send the needed message.I do like his training section. I love his description of “capturing” as “the magnet game” – good behavior draws good things. Easy to remember and enact. His methods are common for positive reinforcement, but they are well presented. His troubleshooting section is slight, but in truth, most common behavior issues can be addressed by redirecting the puppy into a preferred response. “Do this instead of doing that.”It is boring visually, but having tried to read “How to Raise a Puppy You Can Live With” (talk about BORING), at least I wasn’t lulled to sleep by it. Still, I found Gwen Bailey’s Perfect Puppy-Newly Revised & Updated: How to Raise a Well-Behaved Dog more enjoyable and thorough, and it remains my #1 choice among puppy books.
Lyn S. –
What every new puppy owner needs to know.
Pauls Owens offers wonderful advice for any new puppy owner in his book, The Puppy Whisperer. He gives detailed information about everything from potty training to to leash training, socialzation to diet and even learning games to play with the new addition to your family. The information in this book is what every puppy would want his new owner to know about him or her. One of the things that I like best about Owens approach is that he breaks the training down into components labled “kindergarten”, “grade school”, and “high school” to help guarantee sucess for both the puppy and the owner. The other thing that I like about the info in this book is that it is all based on positive reinforcement. I highly recommend it!
Fox Lancaster –
Good book to get BEFORE you buy a puppy
About a third of the information in this book is about trying to find the right puppy for your family and making sure you have the right kind of environment for the puppy you’re going to get. If, like me, you already have a puppy then about a third of this book is useless to you. The actual training section of the book is not bad, there are some details that one might miss when it comes to teaching the basic commands, but the gist of the entire thing is just that you should condition your puppy using rewards and the occasional (but not severe) punishment. The “compassionate” part of the book is that it encourages the conditioning to be about the right kind of reward and claims that if done right this will allow you to use little to no punishment. But the training part of the book seems to assume you’ve followed the advice in the first part of the book and bought a puppy with the right kind of temperament. If you have a puppy who is acting aggressively, biting or nipping there is not a ton of advice for you in this book. Also, like most puppy books, there is not a ton of advice on puppies and children (except, again, in the buying a puppy section). Overall, not a bad book, but one I would probably only recommend to someone who was going to buy a puppy, not someone who already had one.
Amazon Customer –
This was a good read and provided a lot of information that was very helpful, but with the amount of information given for free on the internet it did not tell me anything different that I hadn’t already learned through online.
Mary W –
This arrived yesterday afternoon and already I’m seeing results. I have a strong willed, clever 11 week old Jack Russell Terrier and though I haven’t had a chance to read this book from cover to cover I’ve started to apply a couple of the tecniques for the problems we’ve had and am happy to see an improvement already. If you are getting a puppy or already own one I would strongly recommend this book. I only wish I had got the book before the puppy!
Anne from Nailsea –
The book arrived very quickly.I know little about dog training and ordered it for my daughter.She had just bought a very lively cocker spaniel puppy who was leaping round the house terrifying her cats and her two children alike. Within 2 months, he has become very responsive to commands and she has found the book very useful, although she backs it up with puppy training classes once a week.I wish more people would buy this sort of book and actually train their dogs properly!
Kindle Customer –
It is quite intersting and there are some useful sections. Very American though and talks about dog parks etc. we don’t generally have over here.
Janey J –
A great book which was well worth buying. It is fifteen years since we have had a puppy and a lot of ideas have changed. For the better I must say. For anyone who has a new puppy this book will tell them all they need to know. Thank you to the authors.