The big news this month is the publication of my new book, Click to Win, Clicker Training [0] for the Show Ring. This is a collection of my articles from the AKC Gazette on using the clicker [0] to give your dog the skills to do its very best in the show ring, time after time. It also includes three articles on the experimental master class I taught here in Boston, an article on clicking puppies in the litter, and more.

AKC Gazette publisher George Berger wrote a glowing foreword for the book. The book is full of wonderful color photos from the AKC files, showing people and dogs looking great and having fun at dog shows. Our great designers, Karen LeDuc and Matt Kanaracus, of CoDesign, Boston, have made this a truly gorgeous book.

From a behavior [0] standpoint, the most amazing thing to me was the change in the handling. Even three years ago a self-stacking dog was a rarity, and 90% of the handlers fiddled with the dogs constantly. Now, maybe 50% of the dogs self-stacked. While some handlers still knelt by their dogs and manually forced them to hold still during the times they were waiting in the ring, many, many others interacted with their dogs face to face --playing little games, reinforcing a stack and eye contact with an occasional word and tossed treat. They were keeping the dogs busy and focused, just as I had suggested in the Gazette (you can read how to do it in Click to Win.)