Teaching the Dog to Think

by Kimberly Davis

Teaching the Dog to Think is Kimberly Davis' engaging memoir about her crash introduction to the sport of dog agility with its jumps, tunnels, balance beams, and weave poles. An award-winning poet and blogger, Davis vividly describes her frustrations trying to get her dog to "mind." Davis takes us to the time when her first steely-eyed agility coach shamed her into giving up choke collars and scruff shakes in favor of the "positive" training methods used by agility instructors. Davis' breezy, often humorous account describes how these positive techniques allow her to communicate with the "alien" mind of a dog. Positive training also helps to transform her unruly yearling collie, Willow, into a loyal, hardworking teammate.

Davis ultimately carries the lessons she has mastered in dog training into other areas of her life, particularly into parenting and teaching creative writing. In the end, this memoir becomes a soul-searching exploration of how to get others to do what we want without bullying or cruelty—using our heads and forcing ourselves to be a little smarter instead.

An enjoyable and thought-proving book about dealing responsibly with those less powerful than us, Teaching the Dog to Think speaks not only to dog lovers, but also to anyone who has ever felt helpless, angry, or frustrated as a parent, teacher, or pet owner.

"An interesting story of how switching to clicker training vastly improved one agility fan's dog and also changed her own approach to family life."--Karen Pryor