Before and After Getting Your Puppy

The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog

By: Ian Dunbar

Narrated by: Michael Page

Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Before and After Getting Your Puppy is a simple, practical guide for anyone bringing a new puppy into the family. In clear steps, with easy-to-follow training deadlines, Dr. Ian Dunbar, who pioneered puppy classes and a loving style of dog training in the 1970s, presents a structured yet playful and humorous plan for raising a wonderful dog.

The guide is based on six developmental deadlines:

• Completing owner education and preparation
• Assessing a puppy's prior socialization and education
• Teaching errorless house-training and chew-toy training
• Completing a socialization program of meeting strange dogs and people
• Learning bite inhibition
• A continuing program of ongoing training

In the first half of the book, Dr. Dunbar focuses on what the owner needs to know to select a great puppy. In the second half, he presents the crucial lessons the puppy must be taught during its impressionable early development. Over time, Dr. Dunbar's kind, positive program has been proven the most effective.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2004 Dr. Ian Dunbar (P)2016 Tantor

Disappointing

Ian Dunbar is one of my favorites when it comes to trainers. He helped promote the bond between dog and owner.
However, this book was very disappointing.
It lacked training methods, just vague concepts. It constantly relied on talking poorly on owners who missed the socialization period with their dog and said that your dog would be "mentally retarded" for the rest of his life if you didn't socialize by 12 weeks.
As a dog trainer, I think these broad, negative statements only make people fear training their dog.

I would not recommend as a book for owners looking for training advice.

Not enough substance

Too much repetition and not enough substance. Some good pointers, but the repetition gets monotonous.

Most read

I loved this book because it is writing with knowledge and heart.
The writer has a lot of love and respect for dogs, and he knows what he is talking about. I think that is wonderful.

Essential listening for puppy-dog owners!

Excellent book, excellent narration. Should be required reading or listening before anyone is allowed to own a puppy or dog! I cannot emphasize enough how important the information in this book is if you want to have a well adjusted dog who is a joy to be around and is a happy member of your family.

Lovely narration of a harsh book

First of all let me say that the narrator fits this book perfectly. With his lovely British accent it is a joy to listen to. I read several websites which referred me to this book regarding training a new puppy. Fully half the book is dedicated to work you should do before getting a puppy but by the time I got the book the puppy was already in our home. And this makes you feel behind the eight ball from the very beginning. Throughout the book he emphasizes “errorless training”. Nothing is errorless in life — especially puppy training! It makes you feel terrible for every accident or slip. Furthermore he has deadlines and time tables by which things must be done in a puppies life. I’m sure there are ideals and goals but puppy development is not black-and-white and good training can continue past his artificial deadlines. All in all I think this is a very judgmental and harsh book which has some good ideas that I will take away. The prevailing feeling is fear and anxiety so if you want that go ahead and get this book.

Fantastically Informative

I have searched far and wide for someone/information that not only makes sense to me, but resonates with me.

I think that Dr Ian Dunbar’s training methods and techniques are the way of the future.

I would recommend this book to any pet owner who wants to be the best pet parent they can. This book gave me a lot of confidence on how to approach my dog, and dogs to come, in terms of their training and integration of our lifestyles.

Repetitive / Boring / Unrealistic

This was well intended, but most of the ideas expressed in this book are far reaching and unrealistic. Overall, this was hard to listen to due to the constant repetitive points and ideas, causing boredom.
I did like some of the humor and that made it a little more bearable, but not really very much.

Must read for new puppy owners!

This book was a fantastic guide for my husband and i who are first time dog owners. I feel a lot more prepared knowing these tips and tools. I highly recommend listening/reading this book BEFORE you adopt! There is so much I did not know and I wish we were a little more prepared from day one. I highly recommend it!

very helpful

I can not believe how much I've learned from this book and how much more prepared I feel to own a dog.

Extraordinarily helpful, despite Author's tone

I highly recommend this book. The concepts it presents have been overwhelmingly practical and resonate with my own knowledge of Behavioral Psychology (my focus during my undergraduate education) be and my experience in training practical skills in adults (in the field of emergency medical response). The concepts that I successfully integrated into my puppy raising / training over our first month together have been effective and have been paying dividends.

I will warn others that the author's tone is often extremely critical or even catastrophizing in regards to the average dog owner or failure to address certain puppy matters effectively. Regardless of how true the importance of the concepts he presents are, it can at times be off-putting. If you can forgive the author's his tone, however, you will find most of what he writes to be incredibly valuable and worth the listen.

I definitely recommend this book to puppy owners who will be one of their primary caretakers.

Very useful information

So glad I bought this book. Good info for someone who's never had a dog before. Will read it a few more times before getting my puppy and will refer to it afterwards. Pity that it was written by an American as it often referred to 'dog parks' and gave out US phone numbers which wouldn't be useful to someone living in the UK.

Excellent for training

I thought I would read several books on training a puppy.
This is the best one.

The way to bring up your puppy

Gives a logical regime for socialising and producing a well behaved and happy dog. All based on up to date scientific evidence.
I needed to listen to each chapter a couple of times, to embed the recommendations, but it was worth it!

practical advice and thorough

I would definitely recommend this as a prerequisite to purchasing or adopting a puppy. Some basic and we'll reasoned methods of training and great to get an idea of timings on certain skills training.

Author assumes all prospective dog owners are idiots

This book was really hard going. Everything was approached from a negative standpoint, assuming the prospective owner has no common sense or intelligence. Full of sarcasm with a condescending tone throughout.

Lessons could be summarised into ten minutes or key points - socialise, bite training, toilet training.

Would not recommend.

Covers all the basics.

This short book covers all the basics of puppy training. If you don't have too much time, this one should be enough to raise a well behaved pet dog. Logical, ethical, simple. Highly recommended.

a must for anyone getting a puppy.

this book is written by someone who has studied dogs, trained dogs and above all owned dogs for many years.
it makes starting out with a puppy easy to understand and stresses the most important requirements to get you and your puppy off to the best start.

excellent

a must for puppy owners that want to have a well mannered dog. training is crucial

Best book on puppy training

I have found this book most instructive. We have really enjoying our puppy as a result.

Good guide

Good guide for training with useful and essentially easy tips for getting the results you and your dog deserve.