Last week I stopped at the used book store to get a few more copies of my favorite trick book to donate to a 4-H raffle. I ended up finding someone’s dog sport book collection and couldn’t -not- buy some of the books.
I greatly respect Richard Curtis. He’s been doing very proficient training for a really long time. He came to central Ohio for a seminar ~ 7 years ago and I really regret that I wasn’t able to attend. He’s been competing in freestyle for a long time, with quite a few dogs and he was a judge this year at the Crufts dog show for freestyle and heelwork to music. Take a look at his website, look at his videos page, and look at how motivated his dogs are to work! Search for him on youtube and you’ll see some really well done routines, they’re entertaining and the training is just really nice.
So I was really surprised when the book has a lot of holding the collar and pulling/pushing/holding the dog in position to get behaviors. The photos usually don’t show that, but the text does describe that process. It just doesn’t seem like it would work all that well. Amazon says the book was published in 2003, which is really old in dog training book years and that may have something to do with it.
I liked that the book had him working with lots of very different dogs and other people working with their dogs.
So… not a book that I’m impressed with, but I still think Richard Curtis is great! His dogs consistently are so happy about working and it’s especially great that he works with so many different breeds (it looks like his newest is some sort of terrier-chihuahuaish breed) .