Thursday 18 October 2007

Training People: How to Bring Out the Best in Your Human by Tess of Helena with Brian Kahn. Photographs by Gretchen Lemaistre

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketPublished by Chronicle Books
Distributed by Raincoast Books

This is a training book with a difference. It's written for dogs, by a dog and discusses how to bring out the best in their human companions. Subjects covered in this book are: How to Choose a Human, Male Female or Both?, Basic Training, Discipline, Getting the Food You Want, Advanced Training, The Human Pup, and When They Get Old. Each subject is accompanied by many photographs to make it more simple to follow the techniques included.

This book is by far my favourite training book ever. I couldn't help but laugh out loud while reading it and I know I must have been constantly grinning. It reminded me of books I read as a child by Sheila Hocken (Emma's Story, Emma and I, Emma VIP - I so need to track these down and buy them again!) in which the books are written in the hand of Emma, a puppy learning to be a guide dog. Though it has been twenty years since I read those books, I still remember Emma's first experience with snow. It still makes me smile.

In this book, Tess provides a number of techniques designed to help dogs around the world with the training of their humans. A section that made me laugh the most I think, was the section on dealing with cats who share the household. As a pet lover who shares our home with both a dog, and cats, I found that highly amusing.

A great read that makes it fun to learn about life with dogs. I learned so much more from this than I did reading many other pet training books and it's certainly easier to remember the content. Who said pet training can't be fun?

Photographer's site: http://www.gretchenlemaistre.com/

6 comments:

Jeane said...

That sounds like the flip side of one of my favorite books "The Silent Miaow" by Paul Gallico. It's an instruction manual written by a cat, on how to win over a household, deal with children, and teach humans to do everything you want. I've got to get my hands on "Training People" it sounds great!

Charlene Martel said...

Oooh! I will have to look that one up too. I am pretty new to sharing a house with cats and they are a neverending bundle of surprises. It would be neat to get a fun, whimsical look at how they act and why.

Thanks again!

Jeane said...

You're welcome!

brian kahn for Tess of Helena said...

Charlene,

Tess is pleased you like her book.

She's amused that people find it funny, since she only told the truth about them.

Best,

Brian Kahn (Tess' typist)

Charlene Martel said...

Thank you so much for taking the time to pass along the message Brian!

Best wishes
Charlene

Anonymous said...

I first saw this book at Thanksgiving, and read it recently. It is one of the funniest, wittiest books I've read. Has Tess of Helena written others?
My black lab, Skipper, loved it, too!