I've been reading "Control Unleashed" by Leslie McDevitt. My library is piled high with dog books, and this is my all-time favorite. I've never found another book that does as good a job as McDevitt does in helping handlers understand and successfully train highly distractable dogs. As the title indicates, this book is about getting your dog under off-leash control, and what makes it especially interesting for me is that it's laid out as a series of classes that Leslie offers to her "CU" students.
Leslie does a great job of laying out exercises that can help dog owners better understand and thus connect with their dogs, and her exercises help students understand the why (as well as the how and what) of training strong foundation behaviors.
She's a real clicker trainer's clicker trainer, applying her understanding of operant and classical conditioning at a very deep level, and using her understanding to achieve high performance with reactive dogs. She answers all my lingering questions about how to deal with my young dog's prey and dog and moving object reactivity, and how to keep criteria advancing in her self control skills, and how to help students prepare and deal with (as Leslie terms them) "Sudden Environmental Changes." Finally I feel like I have found the trainer who understands not only my dogs, but also me and my students! Leslie responded to online accolades saying, "I wrote it from the heart," and that is so clear. This is advanced clicker training, developed through heartfelt yet also keenly scientific observations of human/canine behaviors. Read it, and grow!
