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Summary: Expert at "reading" dogs
Review: The book and the video of the same title are excellent for anyone who has contact with dogs. Short, easy to read (and watch), her examples are clear and you can practice some of the calming signals and see that they work. She is one of the leaders in the field, internationally known and respected. It should be required reading (and watching) for everyone. Even advanced instructors can benefit by being reminded to teach this.
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Summary: On Talking Terms Wtih Dogs: Calming Signals
Review: The knowledge gained from reading "On Talking Terms" has enabled me to save the lives of dogs that would have been destroyed. As a Dachshund rescuer I have encountered dogs from terrible situations. The worst was Willie, a small, gorgious chocolate and tan, long haired Doxie. He had been a stud dog in a puppy mill with the only human interaction being of a negative nature. A fear biter, Willie was very difficult to handle when he came to our home. Unable to touch him we literally had to hurd him into the house and out of the house to potty. The only life he had known was in a cage and life in a house with humans was an extreme shock to him. Desperate to help Willie I ordered several books in search of information which would enable me to break through the wall of fear surrounding him. By using the body language outlined by Turid Rugaas, which Willie understood, I was able to put him at ease and touch him for the very first time. Honestly the boy seemed so surprized that I knew his language. Four months later we were able to place Willie with a special family who understood how far he had come from his puppy mill days. No longer frightened, he knew the kindness of and the love to be found in a dog loving home. He was and is a dog who owes his life to Turid Rugaas.
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Summary: This is a wonderful resource!
Review: This an exceptional book that should be mandatory reading for all dog owners. If you have a problem dog, or just want to understand why dogs do what they do, this book is for you. This book will make for more happy owners and dogs. It is a great book for those of you who dont like to or simply dont have the time to read a lot. It is a to-the-point, no-nonsense and easy to read introduction to canine communication that explains dog behavior and interpreting dog communication signals in an easy to understand way. This a a short but very enlightening volume, filled with a ton of great information. A bit off-beat and quirky at times, it is a wonderful resource no dog owners library should be without. And the affordable price makes it even more worth while! I will continue to buy it as a gift for my dog-training friends and students.
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Summary: Amazing...
Review: This book is fantastic. We just adopted an older female dog who is afraid of men. As soon as we received this very short (and easy to read) book, my husband started using the techniques. The results were immediate and truly amazing! We can't get over it. Our dog no longer cowers or runs when my husband enters the room. She will actually approach him now. The techniques really make sense and are so simple to use. I highly recommend this book to help with any dog.
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Summary: Splendid!
Review: This book is less than 40 pages long yet covers areas books many hundreds of pages miss. I don't know how many people I've heard say that their dogs are stubborn because they look away when given a command, or sneaky because they waste time sniffing the ground on walks, or stupid because they sit instead of coming when called. Dog motives are not that complex, and they're so easy to understand when you read this book! Turid Rugaas teaches you to work with your dog instead of unteaching him the valuable language he already knows.
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Summary: Calming Signals
Review: This book was amazing! Not only interesting and easy to read, the techniques actually worked! Useful for anyone who works with animals, has a pet, or who is just plain curious! Wonderful results (personally) in shelters, kennels, veterinary hospitals, and with my own pets!
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Summary: DogRead book of the month
Review: This book was chose to be on the prestigious 'DogRead' as a book selection of the month. We only do 12 books a year and this was March 2000. The author comes on line for the whole month to answer questions on the book. It was very well received by our 3000 member email group. The author was very knowledgeable and easy to understand even though also very in depth. treshell owner DogRead
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Summary: Helps you to communicate much better with your dog!
Review: This is a simple little book. It's cheap and doesn't look like much, but the content can revolutionize your communication with your dog. It's about dog language, but not about the "big" wolf postures of dominance or submission that many of us already know about. This book is about the wide range of subtle signals (about 28, I think) that dogs use to communicate "please calm down" towards other dogs - or their owners. Because owners stress their dogs a lot, unintentionally. Like when we practice obedience exercises. In the middle of training, the dog starts looking away, yawning or sniffing the grass! Bored? Stubborn? Dominant? No, it's probably sending you signals to ask you to calm down! I attended a weekend seminar with Turid Rugaas last year which opened my eyes and I know that this works. Since then, and also since looking at video recordings from dog meetings, I now understand that dogs "talk" all the time. When meeting us or another dog, every single move or glance can carry a meaning. The other dog understands, if he has been allowed to "practice" dog language in lots of meetings with other dogs, but we, the humans, the supposed alphas, don't understand. Instead we try to teach the dog OUR verbal language. How frustrating for the dog! Shouldn't we first learn the dog's language? This is a book that makes you understand that dog language is so much more than where the tail or the ears are. It's about signals that our own pets send to us daily. With this book we can start looking at our own dog and see much, much more than we saw before. We will actually start to understand what our dog tells us. And, even more thrilling, we can use the dog's language ourselves and be understood by the dog! We can use the same calming signals to help the dog for example in a stressful situation. There is a cultural diffence between the European look on dog training and the American look. In America there is much focus on teaching a dog through reinforcing behaviors, like operant conditioning. Clicker training is very good, and I'm all for it. But when "Culture Clash" by Jean Donaldson came, it was considered to be a revolution, because some Americans had actually forgotten that dogs are dogs, with dogs' needs and drives and motivations! In Europe, we've always been interested in dog behavior. Konrad Lorenz is a good example. Swedish "dog psychologist" Anders Hallgren wrote about a dog's calming signals more than ten years ago, inspired by Ms Rugaas. Unfortunately his books are not spred in the US. Turid is Norwegian and also represents the European way: to look at the dog as a dog and try to understand how it thinks and feels and acts in a pack. So therefore I think that this is a very good book for every single dog owner, but especially (no offense) for American clicker-trainers. This book will make them even better trainers, because it will probably give them an important missing piece in the training puzzle. I think I can make a promise: If you read this book and use it, you'll never be able to look at a dog again the way you did before. It's a simple little book, but, at best, it's breath-taking!
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Summary: Very useful and easy to understand
Review: this is a very light read, this book contains only 30 pages of material. it is written is an easy style, easy to read and easy to understand. the basic of this book is to tell us that dogs have their own language. the author has spent 1.5 years studying this 'dog language' and has compiled them here as 'calming signals'. ie she has listed those signals that dogs show when trying to calm things down. she would list all the signals in a chapter. describing each and giving an example on when they're used. the next chapter gives a few case studies. this is followed by a chapter about stress on dogs and how knowing these calming signals can help such dogs that are in stress. what is suggested is that we learn these signals, so that we can see how how dogs interact with others. also, it will also allow is to calm our dogs or other dogs with these signals. very useful information for people who interact with dogs. it's a short book and easy to read, so it'd be good to have the knowledge to better interact with dogs.
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Summary: A must read!
Review: This is the book I always recommend to people who want to better understand their dogs. You will see your dog's behavior in a whole new light.
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