Excellent, wonderful book about canine body language and the micro expressions used by dogs. I see many of these expressions at my job, and understand what the dogs are trying to say. I also learned more about how dogs diffuse tension, and when we should interfere, or let the dogs communicate on their own. Anyone who has multiple dogs in their household should buy this book; and anyone who works with or trains dogs MUST have this as part of their library. Brilliant. ( )

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. ( )

Recommended in our therapy dog training classes with Dog B.O.N.E.S.

A bit dated; the picture quality is not high (all photos are black and white, some are blurry or low-contrast); and it could have used a thorough copy-edit. Nevertheless, there's valuable information here about dogs' body language. ( )

Lots and lots of good pictures. Very easy reading and it's very hard to put down once you start reading it.
sandy2233 ( )