Why Does My Dog Act That Way?: A Complete Guide to Your Dog's Personality

By Stanley Coren

No one knows dogs better than author and psychologist Stanley Coren and no one writes so well about their personalities and temperaments. This new book distills his many years of expertise in both canine and human behaviour into a fascinating and highly readable guide to how your dog's individual personality influences everything he does and hence, his relationship with you. Packed with the very latest scientific research and leavened with Stanley Coren's trademark fund of stories and anecdotes, WHY DOES MY DOG ACT THAT WAY? is above all a practical guide which will provide every dog owner with the key to greater understanding of his or her dog. The book explains the specific traits of numerous popular breeds and examines how this affects the way they react in and out of the home, with other dogs, with people and with children. It also looks at variations within breeds and at the behaviour patterns of many mixed breeds which will have inherited a cocktail of characteristics from their parents. And it includes a fun, comprehensive and easy-to-follow multiple-choice personality test you can do with your dog at home which will reveal your dog's innermost secrets and help you to understand what makes him tick, enabling you to fine-tune your training to suit both your dog and you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Dec 9, 2008
• ISBN: 9781847397461

Stanley Coren

Stanley Coren an international authority on sidedness, is professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Born to Bark: My Adventures with an Irrepressible and Unforgettable Dog (2010), among other books.

Reviews for Why Does My Dog Act That Way?

[satyridae · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Amusing, erudite and very informative. I was skeptical when I picked this up, fearing it would be another touchy-feely "love your doggie" sort of book. It's not. Coren is a scientist, pure and simple. He's also an unapologetic, unreconstructed Darwinist of the Dawkins school, which gets huge points from this reader. Highly recommended for dog-owners.

[cammykitty · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not as good as Coren's The Intelligence of Dogs. The book had many, many amusing anecdotes in it - Nixon's Bouvier de Flanders bit him on the butt when he wasn't moving fast enough - but it seemed to lack focus. I've read many, many dog training and dog development books so the information about early socialization was nothing new. I tend to rate dog books a bit low because I'm looking for something new and beyond introductory. The most interesting part of the book, to me, was on brain stimulation/potential growth in older dogs. I haven't heard a lot on how to keep your older dog active and sharp, and since my own boy is really an elderly dog now, that is an issue close to home. Worth reading of course, but I have great respect for this researcher/author and was hoping for more.

[if0x · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read Coren's How Dogs Think earlier this year, and there's a fair degree of overlap between that tome and this. Which is not to say that material's repeated (although it is, to an extent), but is, perhaps, to suggest that the two might have more sensibly been amalgamated into a single book.The most interesting/fun bit of this book, for me, was the dog questionnaire buried in the central section. This consisted of six sets of ten questions that attempted to give your hound a grading for six attributes (energy, dominance, problem solving, sociability, emotional reactivity and anxiety). The book then includes, as an appendix, a ranking of the purebred breeds on this scale, so that you can, allegedly, see how your dog compares to the 'norm'.Whilst, as I said, this was fun, it didn't really tell me anything about Mali that I wasn't already aware of (for example, he's very sociable, and has high energy). And whilst I was expecting that the book might then go on and discuss the ramifications of this, it didn't. Instead it went on to talk about selective breeding programmes (including an uncomfortable diversion into the world of dog-fighting), and then finally closed with tales of heroic acts by dogs, and how these might be explained in terms of a gene's-eye-view of evolutional theory.So, it was a fun read (for the most part), and informative, but ultimately proved something of a 'frothy' read.