Adopt the Perfect Dog: A Practical Guide to Choosing and Training an Adult Dog

by Gwen Bailey

The animal behavorist describes what to look for when selecting a rescued dog and explains how to introduce it to its new home and how to deal with such behaviorial issues as housebreaking and excessive barking.

Genres: Nonfiction, Dogs

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Gwen worked for a leading UK national animal welfare charity from 1988-2002 and pioneered the use of dog behaviour knowledge in the rehoming of unwanted animals.

She was the first person to be appointed by a national animal welfare charity as a full time Animal Behaviourist, eventually heading a team of behaviourists.

Gwen has successfully solved behaviour problems in thousands of rehomed dogs, helping to prevent dogs with behavioural problems being passed from home to home and improving the rehoming success rate.

Gwen lectures at national and international conferences, runs training courses for staff at animal charities around the world and has written many books & education leaflets. She is a Trustee for Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

Reviews

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars generously rounded up to 3 stars.

For a book about how to adopt the perfect dog, there are only a few chapters I found truly relevant. Other chapters were filled with the usual how-to in dog training and the majority of the book can be seen as a how-to on fixing canine behavioural issues. (And while those behavioural issues do apply to shelter dogs, they apply to non-shelter dogs as well.) If you're looking for a book dedicated to helping people with their newly rescued dogs, this book is only helpful in regards to how to pick the shelter dog, how to introduce the new dog to the family and how to correct aggression problems. The rest is fairly standard. I've given it a 2.5 rating because some of the spelling mistakes really irked me. (Like, "envirnoment" and using "a" instead of "an".)

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clear and basic guide to dog adoption. Gwen Bailey has a lot of practical, sound advice about welcoming an adult dog into one's home and she advocates positive, reward-based training methods. There are perhaps more in-depth and helpful guides to dog adoption (PetFinder's dog adoption book is one that comes to mind), but this one could also be a good place to start for someone who is adopting a dog for the first time.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very helpful in preparing us for our new dog. The advice is practical and reasonable. It also makes a wonderful case for adopting a dog from the humane society or a rescue organization, which more books should.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It must have worked because I adopted the perfect dog.