Training book recommendations?

[OneDayIWillLearn]

Especially but not exclusively aimed at terriers!

I was looking at this one - anyone used this one? But also any recommendations of books you particularly rated very welcome.

We have a 13 month Border Terrier - I read the Happy Puppy book and did a one-to-one course when he was 4-5 months and then two terms of group classes but the timing is awkward so we stopped that in the summer.

He’s a really nice dog with no major behavioural issues. He did well with the training we’ve done and I enjoyed training with him and feel we could go further. And also he seems to be going through a bit of a ‘testing the boundaries’ phase (no doubt typical of the age!) and I’d like to get more confident with my approach to not letting bad habits develop at this stage and to channeling his terrier instincts productively!!

Border terrier slave here. Mine is two and my first full terrier although my last dog was a terrier cross and I have taught lots of borders agility. It's the reason I chose one - they are fun, fit, active and LOVE to learn with the right motivation (usually food)

They are super clever little dogs. They also have a mind of their own. They need to WANT to do something! If not they will go self employed.

I would say that no real books I have found understand terriers - a lot are based on old school 'they need to be shown who is boss' mantras. Absolutely not. They are intelligent therefore sensitive. They learn so quickly if the motivation is there.

Your best bet is a trainer who understands them and what makes them tick. They excel at most of the sports - mine is starting to compete in Rally and so far has managed top scores each time and is just about to start in agility. Have a look for an ongoing class, KC clubs are good for this.

@Newpeep thanks! I think he would be good at agility- like you say he is very bright and fit and keen to please so I think it would be a lot of fun. To be honest one of the reasons I stopped the classes was because I wasn’t convinced the trainer ‘got’ terriers - he had a German Shepherd who was very impressively trained but I couldn’t help feeling he saw any other breeds as slightly less good versions.

We are moving fairly soon so I may try to find a class in the new area, and perhaps buy this book in the meantime (or if anyone else is along with any other suggestions, I’m still all ears!)

Oh I get it. Our agility class is all collies and spaniels...and the terrier. She is as capable and driven as they are but she does need to have things taught a bit differently. We keep sequences short and save the long runs to the real thing, repetition if I get things wrong results in her going 'well I got it right so I am not doing it again' so we rarely repeat and correct and she has more and greater frequency of reward. Our trainer has more compliant breeds but thankfully has taught lots of terriers so also gets it and leaves me to decide how I train and reward whilst keeping roughly in line with the rest of the group.