You must complete your education about
puppy education before you get your puppy. All behavior, temperament,
and training problems
are so easily preventable, if you know how.
When you choose a
new puppy, you need to meet six developmental deadlines before
your
puppy is just five months old. If your
puppy fails to meet any of these deadlines, he will never
achieve his full potential and will be playing ‘behavioral
catch-up’ for
the rest of his life.
James & Kenneth Publishers believes so strongly, that preventing
the development of extremely common and utterly predictable puppy
problems is the only way to prevent the unnecessary euthanasia
of millions of
unwanted shelter dogs.
In our attempt to educate
prospective puppy owners before they get their puppies, we
have convinced
Dr. Ian Dunbar to allow
us to offer his book BEFORE You
Get Your Puppy for free.
 View/Download as
PDF with images (34 MB)
View/Download as
PDF with text-only (0.57 MB)
BEFORE You Get Your Puppy covers the first three developmental
deadlines covering the period of puppy selection until your puppy's
first week at home.
- If you do not know how to assess your prospective
puppy's behavioral development, your puppy
could well
be severely developmentally
retarded before you take him home to live with you
(by
eight weeks of age).
- An eight-week-old puppy should be well-socialized
to people (especially children, men, and strangers) and
thoroughly
accustomed to living in a home environment, i.e., he
must have been raised indoors and
not in a kennel.
- Additionally,
your
prospective puppy should have been housetrained and chewtoy-trained,
and
at the very least, taught to come, sit, lie down, and
roll
over on request.
If you do not know how to raise and train
a puppy, he will most certainly develop a number of behavior,
temperament, and training
problems. Many owners begin to notice their puppy's housesoiling
and chewing mistakes by the time he is four to five months old,
whereupon the pup is characteristically relegated outdoors. Natural inquisitiveness prompts the lonely pup to dig, bark, and escape
in his quest for some form of occupational therapy to pass the
time of day in solitary confinement. Once the neighbors complain
about the dog's incessant barking and periodic escapes, the dog
is often further confined to a garage or basement. Usually though,
this is only a temporary measure until the dog is surrendered
to a local animal shelter to play the lotto of life. Fewer than
25 percent of surrendered dogs are adopted, of which about half
are returned as soon as the new owners discover their adopted
adolescent's annoying problems.
Without a doubt, behavior, temperament,
and training problems
are the most prevalent terminal illnesses for pet dogs.
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