Border Collies: A Breed Apart by Carol Price
Book Two: ESSENTIAL LIFE SKILLS AND LEARNING by Carol Price
The second book in a three-part series by Carol Price, author of the best-selling Collie Psychology.
This book focuses on the training process; not only on the key excercises and life lessons critical to teach any Collie from puppyhood onwards, but how you go about mastering them most succesfully with your own dog.
Carol explains how many behaviours in Collies can be avoided, or prevented through teaching your dog the right lessons earlier on in life.
Carol's aim is to de-mystify the whole process of training dogs, and also make it much easier for readers to understand how dogs learn.
A review by Roy Goutté
Once again I have the pleasure of reviewing the latest work of Carol Price, surely one of the most acknowledged authors on the Border Collie in the UK. Carol doesn’t just stop at the basics of understanding the Border Collie as others do, but delves deeper and deeper into her ever growing list of beautifully presented publications.
Essential Life Skills & Learning is the second of a trilogy titled Border Collies: A Breed Apart and as Carol herself says that her main aim in this book is to de-mystify the whole process of training dogs. To this end she has been 100% successful in my opinion.
Divided into eleven chapters beginning with Young Minds which explains how young dogs learn, we are taken on a journey through Education, Earliest Training, Focus, House Manners & Life Skills, plus some useful exercises such as the Down, Wait, Stay and Come when Called (Recall) plus many others.
It matters little what discipline your dog is to be introduced to as it matures, but preparing it to be socially acceptable and physically capable is essential.
One area covered that I was particularly interested in as it is something I advocate myself, was the UNDER-TRAINING and OVER-TRAINING advice which without a shadow of a doubt is paramount in whatever activity your BC is to take part in. As a trainer myself of sheepdogs and formerly dogs for Obedience competition it can be the foundation or ruination of those disciplines and for sure all others as well!
Authors like Carol Price with her experience and knowledge of the Border Collie’s mind are not common-place and ESSENTIAL LIFE SKILLS & LEARNING, once read, is a testament to that fact.
Yet another ‘must buy’ for your bookshelf or precious gift.