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Cooperative Care: Seven Steps to Stress-Free Husbandry

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Seven Steps to Stress-Free Husbandry. Having trouble trimming your dog's nails or bathing him? Is your dog stressed in the vet's office? Wondering how to make the process of grooming and veterinary care more comfortable both for you and your dog? Then this is the book for you! Cooperative Care will cover seven main areas to help prepare your dog for all the necessary physical procedures that will keep him healthy and happy. The methods in this book are based on positive reinforcement and allowing our pets the opportunity to choose to opt in and participate in our conditioning sessions. When we take the time to carefully observe our dog's behavior, read their stress signals, and respect their communication with us, it's just amazing how quickly we can replace suspicion with trust. Our goal is to empower our dogs and help them gain confidence in the husbandry process. Spending time preparing your dog for typical husbandry procedures is one of the best gifts you can give him!

136 pages, Paperback

Published December 22, 2018

36 people are currently reading
224 people want to read

About the author

Deborah Jones

141 books9 followers

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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
Profile Image for Allison Kunze.
262 reviews
May 1, 2023
One of those I'm certain I'll be re-reading a lot this year! I have a lot of work ahead of me to work on counterconditioning all our husbandry, but we'll work on it a little bit at a time.
629 reviews
November 18, 2020
This book is helpful in that it has checklists of the many ways you should get your dog used to "husbandry" activities. I think the step by step and details are quite helpful. However, it could have used checklists at the beginnings of each chapters for the supplies needed (I'm having to make those myself in mine). I think it will be very helpful in getting my dog used to a lot of different things.
Profile Image for Jérémy.
51 reviews
January 6, 2025
J'ai pris connaissance des soins coopératifs, il n'y a pas si longtemps et j'étais un peu perdu : Comment faire? Par où commencer? Ect... Beaucoup recommandaient ce livre et maintenant que je l'ai lu, je comprends pourquoi 👀 Ce livre est tellement détaillé que je me sens vraiment plus préparé pour commencer l'entrainement avec mes petits monstres 🐾 Si les soins coopératifs vous interesse, je vous recommande grandement ce livre pour mieux vous outiller dans cette aventure 😁
Profile Image for Aggis.
948 reviews4 followers
May 5, 2019
4.5! Really extensive protocol regarding how to break down the typical basic husbandry behaviors with our pups.

My only wish would be for a more comprehensive guide towards handling in the vet office vs. at home. Things like blood draws/injections were mentioned briefly but no training steps were supplied I think this area is lacking.

Overall great read!
Profile Image for Courtney.
585 reviews2 followers
February 2, 2020
Very informative, and I really like the step-by-step instructions and checklists. Some of this I've already done with my pup, but lots of great tips that I will be trying to lay a foundation for her not to hate husbandry activities!
432 reviews16 followers
January 23, 2025
Simple, understandable and with actionable steps to take that nobody can do wrong, really.
Love this book and would recommend it to any pet owner to help them understand the process of teaching their pet (and themselves) cooperative, stress free care.
Profile Image for Marie.
287 reviews1 follower
Read
April 13, 2025
Not going to rate this one just yet until I've had a chance to put the training in motion. But for now I'll say this was very well-explained and I now have a much better plan to move forward with in regards to getting my dogs to tolerate handling and nail trims, etc.
1,099 reviews1 follower
December 30, 2019
Didn't plan on reading this in one sitting but that's what happened. Reading was the easy part -- now to go back and do the work to see if we can get my dog to be more cooperative about grooming.
110 reviews1 follower
August 15, 2022
I recommend this to every dog owner! It has made grooming and wellness a breeze with my dog since I started doing this with her as a puppy.
Profile Image for Lizzy  Barkett.
1 review
June 14, 2019
This is an all-inclusive guide to teaching your dog how to opt-in (or out!) of his/her own care. I really wish I could give copies to all of our clients at my hospital! I recommend it to everyone. It's so clear and easy to follow.
Profile Image for Laura Friis.
14 reviews1 follower
June 19, 2022
Why did I get this book?

Amazon made me. Plain and simple. Okay, the actual story was that I was looking for another book, which I’ve blissfully forgotten the title of and never got around to buying when Amazon was kind enough to pop this title onto my screen. I really want to say that this is usually not how I pick my books, but truth to be told, I got distracted by this new shiny and popped it in the basket, and headed off to checkout. It happens a lot. But honestly, husbandry is super-important, and by the time I selected my shipping address, I was extremely pumped about finding this book.

What does this book do?
What it says on the can. And a little more. It absolutely takes you through 7 steps to achieve great results, but it also comes with a basket of case studies, from real people, with real dogs, and real struggles. In short, it offers the reader a mirror to reflect themselves in and that is always a good thing. There’s not so much noise around the seven steps, in fact, only 45 pages of the book’s 135 pages are introductory stuff and thoughts, including the case reviews.
Each step comes with a neat little checklist at the end, to help ensure you’re taking the steps in the right order, and it does a wonderful job at stressing how slow and steady win all the races. Both with husbandry and any other kind of training. There are plenty of pictures to help the reader understand the steps and at the end of each chapter, I was pumped to get going, but like the good little wannabe chef that I am, I sat down and finished reading the entire recipe. A decision that was worth it, to be honest. Because when you reach step 5, you’re in for a little chuckle if you took the steps in order. If you didn’t, slightly red ears might ensue, because the chapter starts right out with calling those out who tried to skip steps. This is truly one of the things I came to love about this book. That it stresses the importance of splitting, starting from the bottom and working your you up. There are no shortcuts in dog training. Or husbandry, for that matter. This book should be a household item in dog homes. Especially for the super neat section on muzzle training that’s in it. And it even tastes great, says My dog

What does this book not do?
Well, this is actually a really good question this time. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything much here, considering the subject of the book. If I really had to get nit-picky about it, colour photos would have been super nice. But I’m also fairly aware of how colour print affects the printing price. I also could probably have lived without the short testimonials that dot each chapter, but those are extremely easy to skip, so it’s no big deal.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews

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