Through a Dog's Eyes (Enhanced Edition)

Book excerpt: This enhanced eBook includes the full text of the book plus 40 minutes of video*: • Eight “Dogism” Training Tips: Jennifer Arnold teaches you how to better understand your dog and offers some quick training tips you can use right away. • Seventeen Audio and Visual Cues for Your Dog: Learn simple cues and commands you can teach your dog to help them make the right behavioral choices. • Canine Assistants Documentary: Discover how Jennifer Arnold and her special dogs at Canine Assistants help people with disabilities. *Video may not play on all readers. Check your user manual for details. A stirring, inspiring book with the power to change the way we understand and communicate with our dogs. Few people are more qualified to speak about the abilities and potential of dogs than Jennifer Arnold, who for the past twenty years has trained service dogs for people with physical disabilities and special needs. Arnold has developed a unique understanding of dogs' capabilities, intelligence, sensitivity, and extra-sensory skills. Her training method is based on teaching dogs to make choices—as opposed to following commands—through kindness and encouragement rather than fear and submission, and her results are extraordinary. To Arnold, dogs are neither wolves in need of a pack leader nor babies in need of coddling; rather, they are extremely trusting beings attuned to their owners' needs and they aim to please. Relationships between dogs and humans go awry when we fail to understand our dogs and when we send them confusing, mixed signals. Arnold's firsthand experience—from what moved her to start her exemplary nonprofit and how she developed her methodology—guides this book and gives it a powerful emotional heft. Stories drawn from Arnold's life and the lives of the dogs who were her greatest teachers are convincing, unforgettable, and compelling testimony and make this book a heart-warming, captivating read that will forever change the way you see your dog by showing you the way your dog sees the world.