Book Details:
Book Title: How to Find Your Dream Dog by Dixie Tenny
Category: Adult Non Fiction, 139 pages
Genre: Pets & Animal Care
Publisher: Authors Unite
Release date: October 2016
Format available for review: print and ebook (PDF)
Will send print books for review to: USA & Canada
Tour dates: Feb 27 to March 31, 2017
Content Rating: G
Book Description:
Bringing a new dog into the household should be one of life’s happiest events. The process always starts with excitement and high expectations. Too often, though, it ends in disappointment. The new puppy wakes everyone three times a night, gnaws on furniture, piddles everywhere, knocks the children down. The new adolescent dog is too wild. The new adult dog growls at your neighbors. And where did all this dog hair come from?
Most people spend hours researching a new mattress, days researching a new car, and weeks researching a new home or job. Yet for a new dog, a companion for the next 10-15 years, the most they do is visit the nearest shelter or pet shop and buy whatever looks cute and appealing. It’s no wonder they end up disappointed.
Whether you are looking for a purebred puppy or a charming mixed-breed, the type of dog you bring into your home matters. A quiet owner will struggle to keep up with a high-energy labrador mix, for instance, while an active outdoor family will be impatient with a snoozy bulldog. And finding the right kind of dog means becoming the right kind of owner—a task that takes some forethought and planning.
How To Find Your Dream Dog is here to fix the disconnect of dog ownership. It walks you step-by-step through the process of choosing the right type of dog for you—not only exploring the canine qualities that can determine your perfect puppy, adolescent, or adult dog, but also assessing your lifestyle to make sure you’re a good match for the dog, too. The book also looks at good (and bad) sources for finding healthy and sound pet dogs, gives guidelines for evaluating individual puppies, and warns of some red flags to watch out for during your dog search. With this guidebook in hand, you can be confident that the next puppy or dog you bring home will be the right companion and friend for you for the rest of its days.
Dixie Tenny is a Certified Training Partner with the Karen Pryor Academy of Animal Training and Behavior. During her 30+ years spent working with people and their pets, she has seen again and again how mismatches between dog and owner can create “behavior problems” that never would have happened if the right dog had been matched to the right owner in the first place. She wrote this book to help puppy buyers and dog adopters start out on the best possible foot with their new pet dogs, and stay on that path for years to come.
My Review
You can tell that Dixie brings a lot of knowledge in this book. Yet, she is able to relay her knowledge in a very understandable way that readers will be thankful. I do believe that there is a certain dog for everyone. As, Dixie points out the same dog may not be the perfect fit for family A but is for family B. It is not the dog's fault.
In this book, Dixie helps educate people on topics from what type of dog to get: breed, puppy, adult, etc. To how to train now only the dog but you as the responsible owner of a new family member. Yes, the dog you pick will not be just a pet but part of the family. Another example is focused on a puppy. Yes, puppies are cute but they are a lot of work. Dixie states, it is like taking care of a toddler and I would agree. Anyone, who has never owned a dog would benefit from reading this book.
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Meet the Author:Dixie Tenny has been helping people and their dogs find each other and form successful partnerships since the early 1980s. She founded Purebred Dog Rescue of Saint Louis in 1984, which as far as she knows was the country’s first organization that combined the efforts of people who worked in rescue for many breeds under the umbrella of one organization. After moving to Seattle, Washington, she co-founded Seattle Purebred Dog Rescue, Inc. (SPDR) in 1987. She was involved in running this organization for the better part of thirteen years. SPDR was featured in the American Kennel Club Gazette, where Dixie was referred to as the “Matriarch” of purebred rescue. SPDR, still operating successfully as of this writing, utilizes hundreds of wonderful volunteers to work with several thousands of dogs each year, with great success due to their rigorous evaluation and placement policies and their use of specialized breed representatives. The organization received an award from the Humane Society in Bellevue, Washington, due to the fact that SPDR’s help in placing the shelter’s purebreds allowed many more mixed breeds to be placed successfully as well. Dixie also received the Seattle Kennel Club’s “Honor Our Own” award in 2001 for her work with SPDR. Twice, Dixie has been the recipient of the Gaines Good Sportsmanship medal.
Back in St. Louis in 2001, Dixie turned her attention to behavior and training. She was the Director of Training for the Greater St. Louis Training Club, Inc., for five years, creating classes and overseeing the work of 40 head and assistant trainers. In 2003 she and another experienced trainer created Dogs Unleashed, LLC. Dixie and her partner traveled to clients’ homes and worked with a wide range of behavior and training issues for four years. During this time Dixie attended many continuing education conferences featuring trainers such as Dr. Ian Dunbar, Kathy Sdao, Karen Pryor, and Suzanne Clothier. As Director of Training for GSLTC, Inc., Dixie arranged and hosted seminars in St. Louis featuring Dr. Patricia McConnell, Sue Ailsby, Dr. Roger Abrantes, Nicole Wilde, and Leslie Nelson of Tails-U-Win. During this period, Dixie also served for several years as a Judge for the Dog Writers’ Association of America annual awards.
In 2010, Dixie took the six-month course offered by the Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training and Behavior, and qualified to become a Certified Training Partner for that organization. Dixie formed her own business, Human-Animal Learning Opportunities, LLC (HALO) in 2013. HALO hosted continuing education seminars for dog trainers, featuring Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz (three times), Mary Hunter (twice), Celeste Walsen of Courthouse Dogs, and Steve White. Dixie is also a Professional level member of the Association of Professional Dog Trainers, a Certified Professional Dog Trainer - Knowledge Assessed, a founding member of Saint Louis Pet Experts, and a Silver member of SPARCS (Society for the Promotion of Applied Research in Canine Science). Dixie’s own continuing education has included attending the annual conference put on by the Organization for Reinforcement Contingencies with Animals (ORCA), which features some of Dixie’s most respected animal trainers/researchers, including Kay Laurence, Ken Ramirez, Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz, Steve White, Alexandra Kurland, and others. Dixie took Kay Laurence’s challenging two-year online course, the Intelligent Dog Trainer Course (IDTC) in 2012-2013, and is proud to have received Certification with Recommendation on her Unit 1 work. This book and those that she hopes will follow came out of her Master Trainer project for the Kay Laurence course.
Dixie has lived with many dogs over the years, several mixed breeds as well as Australian, German, and English Shepherds, Welsh, Cairn, and Airedale terriers, a Bernese Mountain Dog, a Golden Retriever, and an Irish Wolfhound. Other pets have included cats, birds, reptiles, hedgehogs, a beloved opossum, and more. Dixie has shown some of her dogs in conformation and obedience trials, created and taught Tricks classes, and dabbled in agility, K9 nose work, earthdog, and rally obedience. While in Seattle, Dixie raised a labrador puppy for Canine Companions for Independence, Inc. (CCI). Currently Dixie lives with a Beauceron and an elderly Papillon, and a Somali, a Chantilly, and two Abyssinian cats. When not doing things related to animals, she reads widely, enjoys the company of her three grown children, follows baseball and English Premier League football, and travels the world.
Connect with the author: Website ~ Facebook
A Lifetime of Dream Dogs
By Dixie Tenny
Does a person’s dream dog change with time? In my experience, the answer is yes - or at least, it certainly can.
The photo on the cover of my book, “How to Find Your Dream Dog”, shows me with my arm around my own dream dog, Falcon. I’m holding my daughter’s dream dog, Leo. I think that photo shows how much I love those boys and how happy I am to have them in my house and my life.
But the dogs in that photo would have been very different if it had been taken at different times in my life.
In my early 20s, footloose and fancy free, I had, and loved, terriers. Complicated and challenging was fun! I had all the time and youthful energy necessary to keep up with these bouncy, active, cheerful little dogs. We kept busy with obedience competition, earthdog events, and a brand new sport called “agility.” My terriers liked constant action and so did I. We were very well suited.
In my late 20s and early 30s, I was married with young children, who were rather terrier-like themselves! My energy now went toward keeping up with them, so my dream dog became the Australian Shepherd. I needed a dog that would help me keep my household and family in order at this stage of my life, and research suggested that Aussies would excel at that. Over the next twenty years, half a dozen Aussies came through our household. These intelligent, companionable dogs supported me in so many ways that I came to think of them as my “right hand.” Aussies are high-energy and need activity; I was still young enough to enjoy training and working with them, though less than I had done with my terriers a decade earlier.
After my children were grown, I thought back to a type of dog I had long admired, the Beauceron. I had looked into getting one twenty years earlier, but after talking to Beauceron owners and breeders I realized that Yes, this is my dream dog, but too challenging for this time in my life. Now I was 50 and had twenty-five years of dog training work under my belt. This was finally the right time! And Falcon came into my life.
Why a Beauceron? For me, at that time, that breed had the mix of qualities I was looking for: big (90 pounds), strong, protective, highly intelligent, steady — the perfect dog for me. And so he has been.
As age 60 approaches and I feel the twinges of arthritis in my knees, my thoughts turn to easier, smaller dogs. My daughter’s Papillon is lots of fun — even at age 15, Leo likes to play fetch and is a bouncy, lively companion. But physically managing a ten-pound dog is worlds easier than managing a 90-pound one. Little Leo can get all the exercise he needs through playtime in the house. Not so for Falcon. Many of my contemporaries are having similar thoughts.
Another option would be to consider adopting a senior dog. Seniors have a hard time finding homes, and as Leo demonstrates, they can be perfect companions, who demand much less than an active younger dog from their human partners. I once adopted a 13-year-old Cairn terrier, who ruled our household with regal charm for two years, and, between long naps, played a merry game of fetch up until her very last days.
The world of dogs is wonderful for so many reasons, but one big one is that it is so varied. With very few exceptions, the right dog for you is out there, no matter what stage of life you are enjoying.
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