_Brain Games for Dogs_ by Claire Arrowsmith

I read this while waiting to start a lesson earlier this week. The topic of ‘games’ came up during the lesson, and the student said “So, are there really games?” My reply was something along the lines of, “Well, to be blunt, I think we put the word ‘Games’ with activities to make people like them better.”

I thought this book would be filled with various games… but it was primarily dog tricks. The format was like most of the picture-oriented training books. Carefully cropped pictures and 1-2 sentence blocks here and there.

The whole thing was about positive reinforcement, some clicker use, and some luring. It was fairly well done and it was the first time I’d seen a paragraph on record keeping in this type of book!

On the other hand, nothing stood out to really make it different from so many other tricks or ‘games’ books.

I would pass this on to what types of people…? Someone wanting an easy to read trick book.
Will I re-read this? No.
Favorite part? The paragraph on record keeping. It’s existence made me very happy.
Least favorite part: Not so many games.

Categories: Uncategorized

2 Comments

Megan · September 12, 2010 at 5:34 pm

I think many people get too caught up in "precise behaviors" or attempts of, and forget about silly games you can play. I'll remember not to check that book out now.

Kristen · September 13, 2010 at 1:08 am

Well… it didn't appear that precision was the goal with many of the tricks. It wasn't written for professionals or those wanting super precise behaviors.

Comments are closed.