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One of the reasons we share our lives with dogs is to enjoy their companyI LOVE DOGS!– while they help us loosen our grip on this no-nonsense, career-driven world. Once you and your canine pal have serious training (for obedience, basic good behavior, and so on) under the belt, you can take the edge off by injecting the whole training process with some fun tricks and games.
Tricks and games are open to dogs of all sizes, shapes, and ages. Every dog can learn to do something they’ll enjoy. A Poodle, for example, can learn to dance. A retriever needs to fetch. Bichon Frises love their parlor tricks. Huskies want to pull a sled, herders love to herd, and so on. As for you, the dog owner, youI LOVE DOGS! need to be sure your pooch knows who’s in charge. You need to be the trainer, not the trained, before you and your dog can move on to tricks and games.
Dog Tricks For Dummies makes trick training fun for you and your dog. You can teach simple tricks, like wagging the tail on command, and more complex ones, like fetching a soda from the refrigerator. This handy guide also shows you how to

• Use basic commands such as Sit, Stay, Down, and Go.
• Teach good manners: Potty in one place, settle in one spot, pick up toys
• Identify your dog's personality: Eager Beaver, Comedian, Bully, and more
• Keep injuries at bay with a health plan
• Teach jumps (and when not to jump)
• Have fun in the snow: Sledding, skijoring, and tunneling
• Go hiking, backpacking, or carting with your dog
• Train your dog to run an agility course
• Play Frisbee and flyballParticipate in pet therapy and at kids' parties

Sharing your life with a dog shouldn’t be a militaristic venture, selfishly designed around what you want your dog to do. Owning a dog is about joining two different species, two different spirits, in a way that will make the world better for both.
Customer Review: A good book
I'm teaching my dog some of the tricks from this book. The book helps you understand how dogs learn and develops the tricks quicker than I thought my dog was willing to learn. The only disagreement I have is the author uses a clicker, but nothing in the book says you really have to have one
Customer Review: Great book, bad editor!
Sarah Hodgson does a great job of giving step-by-step instructions for training tricks, something that is harder to do than it looks! Everything in here is dog friendly and fun. I taught my dogs several of these tricks, and we made up a few new ones based on what we'd learned. I wish that there was more content to the book, though. Perhaps 75% of it is filler. There are whole chapters on feeding, medical care and basics like sit, down and stay. Certainly, all of these topics are important, but they have only tangential relevance to trick training. There are several other filler chapters about dog sports. Why fill 50-odd pages with brief overviews of skijoring, carting and flyball? Each of these sports has more than a few good books that readers can refer to if they're interested. Being a Border Collie owner in Texas, I have no use for info on the Iditarod! I would much rather have a smaller volume filled with stuff that I want to read. All of this filler dilutes the book, and makes it harder to pick out the valuable info.


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