"Teaching the Dog to Think" is Now Available for Purchase

Hello Kim's Craft Blog Readers: I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. As we start the New Year, I just wanted to let everyone know that Teaching the Dog to Think, my new memoir about building skills and enhancing creativity, is now available for purchase. While this is ostensibly a book about my encounter with dog agility training, it is also a path towards understanding positive learning theory, as mapped out by Karen Pryor and others. You can refer to my earlier blog post on Revising the Workshop to read more about applying positive learning theory to teaching creative writing. What follows here is a synopsis of my book, together with some blurbs, links to purchase Teaching the Dog to Think, and further reading.

Happy New Year, Everyone, and Happy Reading!

SYNOPSIS OF KIM'S NEW BOOK

Teaching the Dog to Think is Kimberly Davis’ engaging memoir about her crash introduction to the sport of dog agility—with its jumps, tunnels, balance beams and weave poles. An award-winning poet and blogger, Davis vividly describes her frustrations trying to get her dog to “mind.” We then watch as her first steely-eyed agility coach shames her into giving up choke collars and scruff shakes in favor of the “positive” training methods used by agility instructors.

Davis’ breezy, often humorous account shows how these new techniques allow her to communicate with the “alien” mind of a dog. Also how they transform her unruly yearling collie, Willow, into a loyal, hardworking teammate. Davis ultimately carries the lessons she has mastered in dog training class into other areas of her life, particularly into parenting and teaching creative writing. In a climactic scene, Davis stands over her young son browbeating him to do his homework, and realizes, I wouldn’t do this to a dog. She knows now better ways of encouraging an inexperienced learner to perform.

In the end, this memoir becomes a soul-searching exploration of how to get others to do what we want without bullying or cruelty—by using our heads and forcing ourselves to be a little smarter.  A subtly subversive book about dealing responsibly with those less powerful than ourselves, Teaching the Dog to Think speaks not only to dog lovers, but also to anyone who has ever felt helpless, angry, or frustrated as a parent, teacher or pet owner.

"A wonderful entry point for anyone learning about these important new methods for teaching skills and enhancing creativity." --Catherine S. Mayes, Independent Autism Advocate and Autism Project Advocate, Massachusetts Advocates for Children

"You MUST read this book if you have children or pets, and want to change their behavior without coercion!" --Richard McManus, Founder and President, The Fluency Factory

"An interesting story of how switching to clicker training vastly improved one agility fan's dog and also changed her own approach to family life." --Karen Pryor, author, Don't Shoot the Dog and Reaching the Animal Mind

WHERE TO PURCHASE "TEACHING THE DOG TO THINK"

Buy from Clickertraining.com at THIS LINK.

Buy from Amazon.com in PAPERBACK or on the KINDLE.

Click through to Amazon: 

Watch for promotions on Amazon during the Spring of 2012!


FOR FURTHER READING


Karen Pryor has lots more information about "operant conditioning" and positive learning theory on her website, as well as fun animal videos, and training classes for canine and human instructors.  Visit Karen Pryor's Clicker Training Website.