[Cymba's friend]

I would truly like to recommend the book by Jan Fennell, the dog listener. She has many years of experience in dog psychology, dog language, training, dominance and hierarchy issues and the results of a mis-match between the actual position of the dog versus their natural profile within the hierarchy. The book is prefaced and encouraged by Monty Roberts, who initiated the new approach to horse training using the horse's own language, and she has taken the same approach to dogs, observing both wolves and dogs in their language to establish hierarchy. She does NOT insinuate that alpha dogs who dominate are automatically aggressive, she DOES however show through years of examples, how mis-communication in this area can result in either behavioral problems, or even high stress in the dog if they feel they must be the leader and are not up to it. She also shows how establishing this hierarchy using dog language and not human thinking, is an essential ground work to all subsequent training, respect and affection.

She also provides ample examples of dogs who were "put down" due to such mis-understandings that resulted in behavioral problems, where they could have been resolved by her methods. In fact she also provides examples of her intervention and training in this area that saved many dogs from such fate, and resulted in good family-dog-pack harmony.

It would be hard for me to try to reflect an entire book in a note on this board, but I would really recommend her books as very important and also very interesting reading!