The Dog Whisperer: A Compassionate, Nonviolent Approach to Dog Training

By Paul Owens (with Norma Eckroate), Foreword by Michael Fox, D.V.M.

Description from Author’s website: In The Dog Whisperer (2nd Edition), Paul Owens offers more in-depth training with additional notes, tips, and problem-solving to make training even easier! This new edition includes updated material on the power of positive training and why training methods that use physical force, physical punishment, and so-called dominance training are both unnecessary and potentially harmful. Fifteen years in print. Over 300,000 copies sold.

Note: Whenever possible, I have supplied link to the author’s “book store” (click on book’s image). If not available from author’s store, I have linked to Amazon. Most of the books included in our recommendations are also available from Dogwise. If you shop at Amazon, don’t forget to check out their AmazonSmile program where Amazon donates a portion of the purchase price to your favorite charitable organization.

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Basically, there are two ways to train an animal – with physical force and coercion, which is often aversive, or with rewards, which is certainly easier on both the dog and the human and actually personifies kindness. It’s the age-old idea of getting an animal to do something by beating her with a stick or rewarding her with a carrot. I tell people that the choice they have to make is to either jerk, hit, shock, and/or shake their dog to get the desired behaviors – or give rewards. Which is more humane? Which is easier, quicker, and, in the long long, more effective?

Over the last few decades, thousands of trainers have discovered that the use of positive training answers these questions. In addition, there are many positive behavior modification programs now in use at the leading veterinary schools of behavior at The University of Pennsylvania, Tufts University, Cornell, University of California at Davis, and many others. They have found negative training to be unsafe, unnecessary, and ineffective in the long run. 

PAUL OWENS