The Book Your Dog Wishes You Would Read

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Most dog trainers focus on the dog, but Louise focuses on you, the owner, giving you the skills and confidence to interpret your dog's needs and behaviour and build a better, happier relationship for life.

Then, after a stint working with street dogs in India, Glazebrook started running the Dogs Trust’s Take the Lead programme, working with young offenders and rescue dogs. I remember there was this young kid who I was talking to about how would we start trying to get this particular rescue dog to drop a ball. I would definitely recommend it to people who don’t have a dog yet, or to people who want to learn more about their dog’s attitude and behaviour.

The first section talks about Your Dog especially dealing with the different ways a dog learns about the world, and Understanding Breeds and Behaviour. I have read a lot of books about dogs, and this is the most helpful, loving , supportive book I have found. Most dog trainers focus on the dog, but Louise focuses on you, giving you the skills and confidence to interpret your dog’s needs and behaviour. With one three year old labradoodle and a new puppy imminent, I thought this book looked like a good read.

Spending time under the skin of a dog-person relationship can be intense, whether it’s young offenders or A-listers.The unbearably sad, but necessary, last chapter of the book on end of life, touches on the heart-rending decision to have Cookie put to sleep. I appreciate and understand my doggy so much more and look forward to growing our relationship every day. Puppies made it clear that A Lot of people adopt puppies without really thinking it through and clearly Glazebrook felt a lot of pressure to educate those kinds of owners. Most dog trainers focus on the dog, but Louise focuses on you , the owner, giving you the skills and confidence to interpret your dog's needs and behaviour and build a better, happier relationship for life.

It’s just very well written by someone with a lot of knowledge and who has had to deal with a lot of badly behaving dogs throughout her career. A very nice entry level book to dog ownership with a very kind and common sense approach to dog keeping. Glazebrook gets instantly caught up in working out a gentle play routine for my ball-obsessed old man who can’t manage the frenetic fetching he used to love. But for every wholesome dog and owner in matching onesies on Instagram, or adorably clever TikTok trick, there’s an ankle punctured by razor-sharp puppy teeth, a rug heading for the bin, a shoe concealing an unpleasant surprise or a neighbour grimly purchasing a value pack of earplugs. Her solutions can be as simple as giving a dog a quiet space away from the overload of family life or making sure a puppy is getting enough sleep.A canine-human Esther Perel, she’s adept at unpicking how we misunderstand each other, then offering compassionate, sensible solutions and strategies. I found the parts about play, really valuable and have started to try some of the games out with my three year old. If every new own read this before choosing a dog, there would be less puppy farms, less dogs in rehousing centers and less dogs being put to sleep. Very informative around how bad breeders get you off to such a bad and sometimes irredeemable situation with your puppy. Having a rescue German shepherd, who’s behaviour has been very challenging, led me on a quest to better understand dogs to try to solve her issues.

Photograph: Dan Burn-Forti/The Observer ‘With every dog you learn something new’: Louise Glazebrook with her own dog Pip (by her left hand) and Rebel and Bowie.There were many useful chapters and reminders on what we can do to give our dogs the best life possible. They have been together since they were 17 and his childhood spaniels also formed part of Glazebrook’s doggy education. In The Book Your Dog Wishes You Would Read, Louise tackles everything from bringing the right dog home, understanding body language and breed behaviour, responding to common behavioural issues, to the toys and games that you and your dog will both love. As others have said, it skews a bit towards puppies and the whole choosing process, and as someone with a rescue dog I would have loved a longer section on that.