Author Nona Kilgore Bauer begins Retriever Madness with a chapter called “Know Your Retrievers,” and few know their retrievers like this expert author, trainer, and breeder. Bauer introduces the readers to the six retrievers recognized by the American Kennel Club, among them two of the most popular companion dogs in the world, the Labrador Retriever and the Golden Retriever, along with other superb overachievers: the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Flat-Coated Retriever, Curly-Coated Retriever, and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. Geared toward readers who are interested in working with their retrievers in their bred-for capacity—hunting water fowl and upland game birds—Retriever Madness is the perfect primer to getting started in the field. The book offers advice on selecting a puppy with hunting potential, giving future owners insight on how to evaluate a puppy’s birdiness, independence, prey drive, and personality. The chapter on bringing the puppy home gives recommendations for basic training equipment, including leashes, collars, dummies, whistles, starting pistol and the like. Amateur retriever owners who hope to hunt with their dogs will find excellent advice for training for the puppy’s first twenty weeks of life, the most critical period for training any puppy. In addition to the basic commands (sit, down, stay), the author also explains the release command, whistle commands, forward and backward heeling, and wait. Four chapters are devoted to beginning field work, presenting diagrams and step-by-step instructions and covering such topics as puppy marks, throwing, water retrieves, steadying, force-fetching, marking, executing blind retrieves and more. The author offers remedies to commonly encountered problems in the field as well as a complete glossary of terminology that all readers will find helpful in understanding the lingo of the field retriever.

The wooftasticsecond edition. “This attractive, copiously illustrated easy-to-understand volume covers every aspect of responsible dog ownership.” —Library Journal The revised and expanded second edition of the bestselling The Original Dog Bible remains the most comprehensive dog lover’s resource on the market! The book is divided into eight parts—each fully illustrated and designed for easy reference—plus helpful, entertaining sidebars covering hundreds of related topics. With detailed chapters on the requirements of caring for a dog, health, training, and so much more, this book will prepare you for a wonderful life with a dog. Also included is a catalog of over 250 purebred dog breeds with insightful articles for each! “Being a veteran veterinarian of twenty five years and a lifetime pet lover, I can enthusiastically say ‘this old doc learned new tricks’ upon reading the consummate book on all things dogs . . . I highly recommend it!” —Dr. Marty Becker, former resident veterinarian on ABC’s Good Morning America and coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul “This comprehensive book certainly lives up to its subtitle . . . The best part of the book, however, covers ‘life with a dog,’ with sections on pet care partners like sitters and walkers, emergencies, lost dogs, biting, traveling with a dog, and a fantastic chapter on activities one can do with one’s dog.” —Publishers Weekly

#1 New York Times bestselling author John Feinstein returns to his first love--college basketball--with a fascinating and compelling journey through a landscape of unsung, unpublicized and often unknown heroes of Division-1 college hoops. John Feinstein pulls back the curtain on college basketball's lesser-known Cinderella stories--the smaller programs who no one expects to win, who have no chance of attracting the most coveted high school recruits. To tell this story, Feinstein follows a handful of players, coaches, and schools who dream, not of winning the NCAA tournament, but of making it past their first or second round games. Every once in a while, one of these coaches or players is plucked from obscurity to lead a major team or to play professionally, cementing their status in these fiercely passionate fan bases as a legend. These are the gifted players who aren't handled with kid gloves--they're hardworking, gritty teammates who practice and party with everyone else. With his trademark humor and invaluable connections, John Feinstein reveals the big time programs you've never heard of, the bracket busters you didn't expect to cheer for, and the coaches who inspire them to take their teams to the next level.

"For the first time, a historian of science draws evidence from across the world to show how humans and other animals are astonishingly similar when it comes to their feelings and the ways in which they lose their minds"--

In this new book, renowned dog trainer Kathy Sdao reveals how her journey through life and her decades of experience training marine mammals and dogs led her to reject a number of sacred cows including the leadership model of dog training.