This book has been on my table for a year now. It’s a giant book with chapters on everything from cars to noises to muzzle training. There are chapters on almost everything that a dog could be nervous about and chapters on all the training and management strategies/tools that a dog owner may need.
The chapters allow dog owners to easily pick out the relevant chapters and read through just those parts without having to read the whole entire book. The size also makes the book somewhat overwhelming! The training is all positive reinforcement with a lot of counter conditioning and desensitization and some clicker training. Most of the activities have enough explanation and training steps for the beginner owner to understand what to do and yet be simple enough for practical use.
There are a few places where there is some weird uses of food to lure dogs towards scary things or to keep the dog still during handling and other events. It’s not in every activity and I suspect that dogs are amazing enough that the training would still “work” without backfiring in many situations.
My sometimes fearful dog.
Is this a book I’ll be recommending? To beginner enthusiasts, yes. It gives a lot of ideas and gives pretty simple training plans for so many different challenges that it will give a lot of practical advice. To dog owners? Possibly. It’s long and the training will contradict some things we do in class, owners would feel more successful using the food to prompt the dog near scary things. But of a handful of books on shy dogs, it’s by far my favorite and it’s comprehensive enough that most information needed can be found in the book.