Book reviewUSEFUL STUFF TO KNOW
Last October, we held a ‘How dogs work’ workshop, during which I recommended a great book by Kim Brophey. With her LEGS system, she has revolutionized dog training and behaviour.
Both team member Sarah Shephard and I have completed her course to become a family dog mediator. Thank you to Sarah, who reviewed Kim’s book for us.
click on the links to find out more about Kim https://www.dogdoorcanineservices.com/
her book is https://www.amazon.fr/Meet-Your-Dog-Game-Changing-Understanding/dp/1452148996
If you have had dogs all your life, if you are preparing for the arrival of your very first dog or if you are chewing the cud about inviting a dog into your family, Kim Brophey’s Meet Your Dog is for you. It’s a revelation, an inspiration and essential reading for anyone who is committed to making their world a better place for dogs.
The author, who is an Applied Ethologist and a practising dog behaviour consultant in the US, explains L.E.G.S – a new, scientifically underpinned system she has masterminded, to help us understand what motivates and affects dogs to behave as they do.
The acronym L.E.G.S stands for Learning, Environment, Genetics and Self. Kim describes it as a ‘simple framework for understanding the great range of factors that affect our dogs’ behavior’.
In Meet Your Dog each one of the L.E.G.S pillars is covered in a separate chapter. It brings the reader the latest relevant science in a fun, relatable and easy-to-digest format.
LEARNING covers your dog’s experiences and education.
ENVIRONMENT explores your dog’s external world.
GENETICS unravels the role of DNA in giving your dog its specific characteristics.
SELF looks at how individual factors such as health status, age and sex play a role in behaviour.
The section on genetics is especially brilliant as it clarifies what your dog was originally bred to do. Kim explains the ten primary genetic breed groups and the reader can then identify which group their dog belongs to and gain a real insight into why their four-legged family member likes to do what he or she does! At the beginning and end of each chapter Kim highlights why you may fall in love with each breed group and what you may find hard to live with. She provides home life, public life, and personal life scores as well as a relationship survival key and practical tips.
Whether you have or are thinking of taking on a guardian breed, a terrier, a toy dog, a herding dog or any one of the other breeds that humankind has ‘designed’ this book will help you to understand each dog’s behaviour much more clearly, enabling you and your family to build a positive and harmonious human-canine relationship.
I can’t recommend this book enough: It’s fun, educational and oh so informative. When you finish it, you simply want to turn back to the first page and devour every word again. I read it from cover to cover twice and became so hooked on Kim’s substantial knowledge, expertise, philosophy, and capacity to explain how to navigate common sense, that I went on to take the superb L.E.G.S Applied Ethology Family Dog Mediation Professional Course.
In fact, this is why I have lapsed with my book reviews – I have been so distracted with my online learning!
