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How Dogs Learn  By  cover art

How Dogs Learn

By: Mary R. Burch, Jon S. Bailey
Narrated by: Christopher Solimene
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Publisher's summary

This book explores the fascinating science of operant conditioning, where science and dog training meet. How Dogs Learn discusses the basic principles of behavior and how they can be used to teach your dog new skills, diagnose problems, and eliminate unwanted behaviors. It's for anyone who wants to better understand the learning process in dogs. Every concept is laid out clearly and precisely, and its relevance to your dog and how you train is explained.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

An Audible for Dogs Pick: Make your dog's day. Cesar Millan shares how audiobooks can make dogs happier and calmer. Learn more.

©1999 Mary R. Burch and Jon S. Bailey (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"This book should be on every animal trainer's bookshelf...it is practical and very useful without sacrificing scientific and technical accuracy." (Jack Michael, PhD, Department of Psychology, Western Michigan University)

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Great for overall knowledge

Great for overall knowledge. This will get more then one reread. I will be introducing this on our instagram page for dog owners as well.

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Very Technical

The performance was very technical and unless you understand, it would be hard to follow.

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Great book on dog training

A well written book on dog training. The book discusses operant conditioning. The theories and applications are well explained.

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Really enjoyed this book.

Great detail and depth of subject. Good examples and well written with some humor, which can be difficult with this topic.

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Excellent read for trainers & owners

Absolutely loved this descriptive well written easy to understand book. Anyone needing to understand learning concepts in dogs to be better trainers or to simply have a better relationship with your own dogs should read.

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Amazingly educational

Must read/listen for all dog trainers and dog owners alike. I enjoyed it so much I am listening to it over and over again. It makes excellent points and I love that it highlights on operant conditioning as well as classical.

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Slow Start

First several chapters were on history of training. after getting through that, the valuable applicable areas started.

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studying for the CPDT-BC

this was read clearly and smoothly. I enjoyed that the speed could be adjusted! such a well written and comprehensive look at behavior analysis.

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Wonderfully unbiased, until it isn’t.

This book does a great job of touching the surface definitions for anyone, trainers and owners alike. It is fairly well rounded until you get to the small sections on punishers, and then the authors bias comes out. They have a blatant distain for using punishers and refer to it as abuse on several occasions. I think that inserting this personal biased opinion seriously detracts from what could’ve been a very very good book. Overall I still like the book for what it is and is a good reference book. It does get a little hard to follow occasionally as an audio book because some charts just don’t translate well with no visual to accompany the description. I would highly recommend the hard copy book as to have as a handy a reference, but recommend the audio book less so.

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In-depth look at Dog Behavior

This is college level and absolutely worth it. You have to listen to it several times. The PDF is very helpful.

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