Book review: Bernice Muntz’ “High Five with your Rabbit”
By Laure-Anne Visele, written May 2013.
A contact of mine has just released her book “High five with your rabbit” in Dutch. This book enjoys rave reviews on the Dutch market, so I was quite excited when it came out in English. Here’s what I think about it:
Book review
This article is part of my collection of book reviews.
AUTHOR: Bernice Muntz
PUBLISHING YEAR: 2012
SUMMARY: All-in-one rabbit care and… training guide!
AUDIENCE Mainly aimed at rabbit owners, but beneficial to all amateurs of animal training.
REVIEW: Bernice Muntz is a highly successful animal trainer in the Netherlands. From caiman to canary, Bernice’ training techniques have helped improve and even save the lives of countless animals whose behaviour problems made them impossible to live with. Bernice has long been keeping and training rabbits, and finally put her years of lagomorphic experience to paper with “High Five…”.
I can confirm that Bernice’s advice matches the scientific body of knowledge on rabbits’ ethological needs – not a given in the often ill-researched pet literature. A friend of mine, a veterinary technician, even told me that this is THE book her practice have been recommending to their customers.
The primary purpose for me was the chapter on animal training, as Bernice uses the intriguing and powerful SATS training technique.
“High Five with Your Rabbit” gives you step by step instructions on how to train your rabbit not only on matters of household etiquette, but also to perform really neat tricks. Bernice also covers common behaviour problems with rabbits, and how to tackle them.
A couple of “minus” points, at a stretch:
- I read the book to get the basics of SATS training, naively hoping it would be sufficient to get me started on SATS with my dog. But of course, a couple of chapters in a book dedicated to pet owners will never replace an in-person workshop if you want to use SATS professionally.
- The English translation was clumsy at times, taking away some of the elegance and flow of the original text.
My overall conclusion is: perhaps not a technical training manual for professional trainers, but an absolute must-have for rabbit owners who want to give their pet rabbit a good quality of life.
The Dog Training Daily
This review also featured in The Dog Training Daily of 26 May 2013.
Your comments
Did you read this book? What did you think? Would you recommend it? Have you read a similar one that you’d recommend to Canis bonus readers?
Further reading
Dogs and society
- Hot dogs – Quick poll about hotly debated dog issues (e.g. leash/no leash, treat/no treat, etc.)
- Dogs, my philosophical position – My position on debated dog issues
- Does your large dog scare people? – Article about more intimidating dog breeds
Dog training and behaviour
- Separation anxiety – a treatment protocol
- Treating dog-dog aggression – some advice
- The perfect recall – fool-proof guide to getting your dog to come back when called
