Book review announcement on “Do as I do”
By Laure-Anne Visele, October 2014
About the author
I am the co-founder and head trainer at OhMyDog! (dog training school in The Hague) and run a behaviour therapy practice at Canis bonus. I graduated in Zoology, certified in dog training, and got a postgrad specialization in applied animal behaviour. When I am not training or rehabilitating dogs, I obsessively review dog books and write about dog behaviour for my own blog and other websites.
Do as I do
“Do as I do” is Claudia Fugazza’s baby. She’s a dog training cum ethology researcher – the bee’s knees when it comes to understanding applied dog behaviour. She refined a dog training technique that cuts teaching time to a fraction of what it used to be.
The technique couldn’t be more elegant: you show to your dog what you’d like him to do, then ask him to imitate you. This is revolutionizing the service dog industry, among other training sectors: you could teach the dog to empty the washing machine by showing him, instead of painstakingly breaking it down into its component behaviour and teaching each part separately.
The book is tiny, so you should be done in a day or so. It teaches you how to teach your dog this wonderful skill, as well as the history behind the discovery of the technique in research. A little dry, but light on jargon and definitely accessible to motivated dog owners. The book also comes with a DVD to demonstrate the techniques. Anyone who’s anyone in dog training has already started cross-training to DAID, so don’t be left behind and get reading!
You can read the full review here.