50 Games to Play with Your Dog

This book introduces the owner to basic communication with the dog. Good place to start when learning how to train and entertain your pet. Gets both owner and pet excited about being able to "speak" in and respond to a common language.

My dog loves it and so do I. We are having great fun with it.

This is a thin book with nice photos that gets straight to the fun part, without philosophy or case studies. While it's true the book includes many basics, it also builds on them in a way that eventually gets to some pretty amazing results. For example, you start with simple fetch. Not all dogs like to do this, and the book is honest about that. But if yours does, you move on to teaching the names of specific items, like fetching different toys on command. That done, you start teaching the dog to take the item to different people in the house, like take the ball to Jan, take the teddy to Mike. (I do think these kind of complex games are going to work best with highly motivated working dogs like border collies, terriers, german sheperds, and individual mixed breeds with similar characteristics.) What I like is that each step is made into a game, and if you're patient and like this kind of interaction with your dog, it should be a lot of fun for both of you. The book could also be a good gift for a patient 10 to 14 year old with an active young dog. p.s. If you're looking for a bigger, more complex, more detailed tricks book, check out 101 Dog Tricks by Sundance. But that's a much more academic approach, and would be overwhelming for most kids. 50 Games to Play is a good little starter book that's more about fun. 101 Dog Tricks has advice on what to do if your dog balks at something you're trying to teach. 50 Games to Play suggests you just move on to the next thing and see if the dog likes that one better.