So many of you have shared my life with dogs, my ups and downs, mistakes and triumphs, lessons and sorrows. I am very proud to give you the first look and  share the tentative (no sub-title yet and the type will change) cover of my second e-book original (the first is “The Story Of Rose,” a New York Times Besteller published last summer). This book will be published next month, and will be available where digital books are sold. It will not be available in paper for or sold in bookstores.

Listening To Dogs is an important book for me, my dog training manifesto, my philosophy of living with dogs and training them. It is not a training book, per se, I do not tell you how to have a perfect dog, whatever that is and I don’t want one. I have never had a perfect dog, but a bunch of great ones, rescues and purebreds. I do not read dog training books, they have never been useful to me, although I certainly recognize they can be very useful to others at certain times. I have learned so much in recent years from Orson, Pearl, Clementine, Homer, Rose, Izzy, Lenore, Frieda and Red. I want to share what I have learned, good and bad.

I see this as an empowerment book. I have learned to train my dogs by choosing them carefully, by listening to them, understanding myself and my environment and being my own guru. By understanding them as animals, not as pathetic creatures or furbabies.  I have a lot of confidence now in what I am doing, I have paid attention, experimented, been tested,  learned my lessons in the real world of humans and animals.

I have wonderful dogs, as many of you can see from following the blog every day. In a way, this is because I have learned to follow my own instincts. They come when called, eat well together, do not harm humans or animals. They even pose for photos. I believe dog training in America is something of a catastrophe, a de-empowering shell game in which a few people make a lot of money telling people to do things most of them cannot do, no fault of their own.  There is no one class, no one theory of dog training – I don’t have one –  that will work for you and your dog all of the time. Training is a highly personal, individualistic experience, a spiritual experience based on who your dog is, who you are, where you live, who else is in the house. It starts before you get your dog and never ends.It is woven into your life, as is your dog.

Training is not about obedience but communication and trust. No one person can tell everyone else how to do it.  Many people buy expensive books and struggle with their complex lessons, and give up on training their dog.

In this book, I will be urging you not to do that, to empower yourself to have the kind of relationship you want. To really think about the kind of dog you want and are willing to work with. I think I have figured out how to do this, and I am on fire to share it with you. There are many great dog trainers and they have a lot of good things to say. But nobody knows you and your dog better than you do and there is much at stake at your believing you can figure it out yourself, free of charge. One of the many reasons I want to publish this particular idea as an e-book is that it will not be expensive, and thus especially accessible to anyone who loves their dogs and wants to do well by them. That is all of you. I’ll keep you posted on the cover and the pub date. Thanks for following my life with dogs, and I hope this book is helpful to you.

My next paper book, The Second Change Dog: A Love Story will be published in November by Ballantine/Random House.