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Games Pets Play, Or, How Not to Be Manipulated by Your Pet
Drawing on the theories of transactional analysis, a veterinarian explains why pets manipulate their owners and why owners allow such behavior and analyzes several common scenarios of owner manipulation by pets
218 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 27, 2022
New tricks: to be honest I don’t mind being manipulated by Will, a five-year-old retired racing greyhound, as long as it’s not doing actual harm to him or others. He has his ways and uses, and a diurnal clock with a flexible Google calendar that means he starts grumbling for a walk and his tea from around 3pm on, and has ideas about which walk and what he fancies to eat. It doesn’t mean I always agree, and we often have arguments, but if I pull rank he usually falls in with what I want and appears unresentful. My mother passed this book on to me - she is of a sterner generation and may be worried I am coddling the dog. But I do resist his blandishments when it comes to too much food: “there’s no call for fat greyhounds!”
Bruce Fogle was a celebrity vet before that was a thing (also husband of TV’s Julia Foster and father of TV’s Ben) and his 1980s book of anecdotes - for it is that rather than a serious psychological treatise or a pet care manual - is very much the sort of thing they’d have gone for on the chat show circuit in those days. I can picture him now on the sofa with Mavis Nicholson or popping in to Pebble Mill At One.
It’s mildly diverting, occasionally illuminating, and slightly dated - wasn’t Training Dogs The Woodhouse Way later discredited in the manner of Dr Spock with children? Anyhow he seems slightly more keen on thwacking animals with a rolled up newspaper than would now be considered acceptable. But animal stories are still big sellers and - Instagram cats aside - this hasn’t changed down the years. A good book to buy secondhand from a charity shop, preferably the Blue Cross or PDSA.
Bruce Fogle was a celebrity vet before that was a thing (also husband of TV’s Julia Foster and father of TV’s Ben) and his 1980s book of anecdotes - for it is that rather than a serious psychological treatise or a pet care manual - is very much the sort of thing they’d have gone for on the chat show circuit in those days. I can picture him now on the sofa with Mavis Nicholson or popping in to Pebble Mill At One.
It’s mildly diverting, occasionally illuminating, and slightly dated - wasn’t Training Dogs The Woodhouse Way later discredited in the manner of Dr Spock with children? Anyhow he seems slightly more keen on thwacking animals with a rolled up newspaper than would now be considered acceptable. But animal stories are still big sellers and - Instagram cats aside - this hasn’t changed down the years. A good book to buy secondhand from a charity shop, preferably the Blue Cross or PDSA.
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November 19, 2016It's a shame the translation is not very good.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews