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Summary: It is the truest dog psychology/training book out there.
Review: I have owned, bred, trained, and shown many breeds, and I'm telling you, you simply cannot find a better book for getting into your dog's mind and understanding what makes them tick. All this makes for VAST better training. I have read so many 'understanding your dog' books it would make your head spin but this book puts them all to shame. For example, I was having trouble getting a real fast down from my Golden Retrvr. in obedience competition. After having read Jean's book,in a matter of minutes, we had the problem licked. Finished her title w/ a 1st place to boot.
However, this book in not just for people in competition, it is for everyone who owns a dog. There are so many nuggets of truth on how your dog thinks and so many training tips, that you wonder why you hadn't perceived them on your own.
This is the only book I recommend to my dog friends. Some may have difficulty getting past the psycho-lingo but it is so well, well worth the effort.
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Summary: Repeating what's already been said...
Review: ... but it's worth saying again. This is a very good book made almost useless by the lack of an index. I keep thinking, "O.K., now that I've got all of this backgound to build on I'll sit down and outline a plan of action..." but after about 10 minutes flipping back and forth to try and find what I want to include in that plan I sigh and put the book back on the shelf. Donaldson's a skilled and insightful writer, but "Culture Clash" doesn't really help you to act on that insight. I'd recommend it anyway, but not as a sole choice.
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Summary: Not a great book
Review: I personally didn't agree with the ideas in the book. It really isn't what I thought it would be. Very disappointed.
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Summary: an arrogant and narrow-minded presentation
Review: I have to admit that I could not get past the first 30 pages. I was so turned off by the arrogant tone of this book that I simply stopped. Perhaps there is useful information further on, but I just don't see the point in subjecting myself to such 'stuff'. I doubt if Donaldson has ever lived with a Siberian Husky, but if she had she would never have dismissed the native intelligence and problem-solving abilities of dogs. Perhaps I just hate being told that I'm stupid. Perhaps I simply don't believe that my dogs are stupid. I just can't buy this book. I got much more useful information from William Campbell's 'Behavior Problems in Dogs', Patricia Gail Burnham's 'Play Training your dog' and 'On Talking Terms With Dogs : Calming Signals'by Turid Rugaas. Ian Dunbar has some great information as well. I'd simply avoid Donaldson and Diane Bauman as well unless you have a passive, easily motivated, eager-to-please, dependant canine shadow-dog. I've never lived with one of those.
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Summary: A "must have it" type of book
Review: This is a definite plus for the librarty of any serious dog trainer or dog owner. Jean Donaldson just makes good sense, dog or otherwise!
Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: I had this book recommended by a flyball trainer. I have read this book and found lots of great and useful information in it. However there are bits which I find completely wrong and just ignored those bits. Even so it is definately worth buying.
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Summary: The Culture Clash
Review: I have read many books on dogs. This is by far the worst. It may have some good information in it if you can stomach reading through all the negativity. I grew very tired of reading how "stupid" us people are. She literally repeatedly used the word stupid and I found it insulting to the point that I quit reading the book and I am returning it to the bookstore. Any useful information would be difficult to refer back to due to the fact that the table of contents is so vague. You have to read through information that I found tiresome because I don't have any interest, for example, in reading in detail how to teach my dogs to play tug of war. Jean Donaldson has very strong opinions, and as you can see, I have very strong opinions about the negative way that she chose to write her book.
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Summary: A Great Resource
Review: This book has quickly become one of the bibles of the Dog Training profession. Put very simply, the author ties to dispel human notions about what makes dogs tick. The theme that runs throught the book is basically don't assume the dog has human emotions....She proposes an alternate approach in an incredible affective fashion.
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Summary: Reflect on human behavior through canine eyes
Review: "Culture Clash" has absolutely changed an anthropomorphic perception of dogs I accumulated during childhood. Jean Donaldson walks the reader through a dogs eye view of human behaviors, and it is liberating to dispose of classic mistakes that people make.Though I'm sure behaviorism can't explain the full richness of dog-human relationships, it is certainly a useful training model. The style is colloquial, but charming once you get the rhythm. Jean, my future dog thanks you.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic that needs re-editing
Review: Culture Clash is a good example of a classic that really needs to be recast, re-edited in some aggressive ways. This book gets an incredible number of word-of-mouth recommendations from within the dog world, and for good reason. It's also somewhat exasperating, also for good reason. An updated edition might turn into a sort of Dr. Spock guide for dogs; as it is, even for its few blemishes, if you're interested in training at all -- you have a dog, you should be interested -- you need to read this one. The book is basically an engagingly-written set of essays on positive-reinforcement, operant-conditioning dog training. (In a nutshell, that means concentrating on setting a dog up to succeed, and then on rewarding it when it does succeed, rather than on punishing the dog for mistakes.) Culture Clash does two things: it gives you a broad sense of why positive reinforcement techniques work, and it really, REALLY lays into old-style, aversive, leash-jerking training methods. The reason it gets recommended so much is that it's GREAT for people who have only a vague idea of how to train a dog based on what they see others doing, and who might end up with a miserable dog and a sore arm from tugging at a choke collar. Donaldson does a truly excellent job of showing you how and why positive reinforcement will help you communicate with your dog. She does a great job showing you how happy that can feel, and showing you the broad outline of how it works. What she DOESN'T do especially well in this book is give you a specific, basic training regimen for your dog. That's where my editing objection comes in. As I said, the chapters in this book are almost more like stand-alone essays. They don't really flow into one another as well as you might expect. Other, how-to training guides will structure themselves around common issues -- a chapter about housetraining, or sections based on a puppy's age or something. Culture Clash doesn't do that. It reads more like Jean Donaldson -- a lively, agile writer whose style and sense of humor is a delight to read -- sat down and decided to write a set of thematic articles, and like those got packaged together in the form of the book. Each essay is trying to do both the book's jobs at the same time, so we're talking about treats and clickers AND ripping into the "Bad Dog" school of thought simultaneously. That means the level of detail in the text varies pretty dramatically from page to page. So, for example, you'll be reading about how to train a "down stay" or something, and suddenly Ms. Donaldson is skewering leash-jerking in a long aside. She delivers her barbs with obvious relish and skill, she's a heck of a writer, but when you're reading to pick up practical tips, that's a somewhat frustrating style to work through. So, the chapters in Culture Clash are this sort of mishmash of different material, but it's well-written and you enjoyed reading it through. Now, you remember some clever idea about how to train that "down stay" that Rex just can't "get." You turn to the index... and there isn't one. The single easiest thing the publisher of this book NEEDS to do is include a thorough index. Argh! Frustration! The other irony, of course, is that the book doesn't use positive reinforcement on the reader all that well. When Donaldson goes after the leash-jerkers, or talks about ear pinching at obedience schools, she's saying "BAD DOG" to the old school of dog obedience in about as loud a voice as anyone can write in. You can see why a few people take this book as a sort of personal affront. She sure isn't luring THEM along, she's just plain scolding... If you're already sold on the idea of a rewards-based training regimen for your dog, I still think you'll get a lot out of this book. You might want to avoid dealing with a lot of the hard-hitting criticism, though, and choose a simpler how-to guide. "The Power of Positive Dog Training" by Ms. Donaldson and Pat Miller, is a more practical guide than Culture Clash. It gives you a specific, six-week training regimen. Also, Karen Pryor would be a good author for you; she has a great puppy book, and a nice little book-with-two-clickers-and-some-treats kit that sells in pet stores. Pryor spends almost no time on dissing the "bad trainers," she's all about the positives. (If you've got kids, you may want to go with something a little more accessible for them; there are guides specifically written for the whole family that way, but you should probably judge those by age by seeing them in a store.)
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