Brenda Aloff

What an excellent resource. When I grabbed this, I wasn’t sure if I would just page through or give it a thorough read. I’m glad I decided to go through it carefully from start to finish. Aloff’s photo essays wonderfully depict her instruction on canine body language. There’s a lot of repetition, which I found helpful for fixing this information in my brain, and the photos really help. There’s even a quiz at the end. She has a memorable, often humorous way of describing dog behavior. A couple of my favorites were when she described a dog in a photo as just wanting the other dog to “go be bizarre somewhere else,” and when she described the more intrusive, impolite version of butt-sniffing as a “Proctology Exam.”
She doesn’t go deeply into training philosophy or methodology, but the quality of her work in this book makes me want to explore other things she’s written.
I felt like I learned some new things, and I’ll be paying more attention and trying to apply what I learned to my own bizarre-acting dog.… (mer)