Training People: How to Bring Out the Best in Your Human by Tess of Helena with Brian Kahn. Photographs by Gretchen Lemaistre

Published by Chronicle Books
Distributed by Raincoast Books

This is a training book with a difference. It's written for dogs, by a dog and discusses how to bring out the best in their human companions. Subjects covered in this book are: How to Choose a Human, Male Female or Both?, Basic Training, Discipline, Getting the Food You Want, Advanced Training, The Human Pup, and When They Get Old. Each subject is accompanied by many photographs to make it more simple to follow the techniques included.

This book is by far my favourite training book ever. I couldn't help but laugh out loud while reading it and I know I must have been constantly grinning. It reminded me of books I read as a child by Sheila Hocken (Emma's Story, Emma and I, Emma VIP - I so need to track these down and buy them again!) in which the books are written in the hand of Emma, a puppy learning to be a guide dog. Though it has been twenty years since I read those books, I still remember Emma's first experience with snow. It still makes me smile.

In this book, Tess provides a number of techniques designed to help dogs around the world with the training of their humans. A section that made me laugh the most I think, was the section on dealing with cats who share the household. As a pet lover who shares our home with both a dog, and cats, I found that highly amusing.

A great read that makes it fun to learn about life with dogs. I learned so much more from this than I did reading many other pet training books and it's certainly easier to remember the content. Who said pet training can't be fun?

Photographer's site: http://www.gretchenlemaistre.com/