Below I’ll give you my selections for the best Dog Psychology books by a few categories. I will cover these and other great books more in depth later.
- 1. The Dog’s Mind: Understanding Your Dog’s Behavior (Howell Reference Books) (1992)
- 2. Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding & Correcting Common Dog Problems (2007)
- 3. Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (2010)
- 4. The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think (2013)
- 5. What the Dog Knows: Scent, Science, and the Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive the World (2015)
- 6. The Secret Language of Dogs: Unlocking the Canine Mind for a Happier Pet (2016)
- 7. Lucky Dog Lessons: Train Your Dog in 7 Days (2018)
- 8. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook–What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (2017)
- 9. Cesar Millan’s Short Guide to a Happy Dog: 98 Essential Tips and Techniques (2014)
- 10. Think Like Your Dog and Enjoy the Rewards (2013)
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1. The Dog’s Mind: Understanding Your Dog’s Behavior (Howell Reference Books) (1992)
“Quite simply this is an excellent book. It is well-written, with snatches of dry humour. It should be mandatory reading for anybody who keeps a dog or has intentions of so doing.” -R. W. F. Poole, Daily TelegraphHow do dogs perceive the world about them? How do they see, hear, learn, relate to their owners? How large are their brains, what is their emotional makeup? Why do they suffer from stress and how can it be coped with? Over the last few years a substantial body of knowledge has been built up about the psychology of dog behavior. Combining more than twenty years of…
2. Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding & Correcting Common Dog Problems (2007)
From his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show to his roster of celebrity clients to his reality television series, Cesar Millan is America’s most sought-after dog-behavior expert. But Cesar is not a trainer in the traditional sense—his expertise lies in his unique ability to comprehend dog psychology. Tracing his own amazing journey from a clay-walled farm in Mexico to the celebrity palaces of Los Angeles, Cesar recounts how he learned what makes dogs tick. In Cesar’s Way, he shares this wisdom, laying the groundwork for you to have stronger, more satisfying…
3. Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (2010)
The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a picture of what it might be like to be a dog. What’s it like to be able to smell not just every bit of open food in the house but also to smell sadness in humans, or even the passage of time? How does a tiny dog manage to play successfully with a Great Dane? What is it like…
4. The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think (2013)
Does your dog feel guilt? Is she pretending she can’t hear you? Does she want affection—or just your sandwich? In their New York Times bestselling book The Genius of Dogs, husband and wife team Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods lay out landmark discoveries from the Duke Canine Cognition Center and other research facilities around the world to reveal how your dog thinks and how we humans can have even deeper relationships with our best four-legged friends.Breakthroughs in cognitive science have proven dogs have a kind of genius for getting along with people that is unique in the…
5. What the Dog Knows: Scent, Science, and the Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive the World (2015)
A firsthand exploration of the extraordinary abilities and surprising, sometimes life-saving talents of “working dogs”—pups who can sniff out drugs, find explosives, even locate the dead—as told through the experiences of a journalist and her intrepid canine companion, which The New York Times calls “a fascinating, deeply reported journey into the…amazing things dogs can do with their noses.”There are thousands of working dogs all over the US and beyond with incredible abilities—they can find missing people, detect drugs and bombs, pinpoint…
6. The Secret Language of Dogs: Unlocking the Canine Mind for a Happier Pet (2016)
Recent studies into the minds of canines show that they have a rich social intelligence and a physical and vocal language as complex and subtle as our own. In this fun and fascinating guide, world-renowned trainer Victoria Stilwell explores the inner world of dogs. This book is your guide to understanding your pooch, communicating effectively, strengthening your bond, and helping dogs learn in the most effective way possible so they feel confident navigating the human world with success. Along the way, you’ll learn the answers to questions such as: • What do different tail wags…
7. Lucky Dog Lessons: Train Your Dog in 7 Days (2018)
The celebrity dog trainer and Emmy-winning star of the CBS show Lucky Dog shares his training system to transform any dog—from spoiled purebred puppy to shelter-shocked rescue—into a model companion in just seven days.Each week on Lucky Dog, Brandon McMillan rescues an untrained, unwanted, “unadoptable” shelter dog. In the days that follow, these dogs undergo a miraculous transformation as they learn to trust McMillan, master his 7 Common Commands, and overcome their behavior problems—ultimately becoming well-mannered pets and even service dogs. With his labor of love complete, McMillan unites each dog with a forever…
8. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook–What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (2017)
What happens when a young brain is traumatized? How does terror, abuse, or disaster affect a child’s mind — and how can that mind recover? Child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce D. Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence.In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry tells their stories of trauma and transformation through the lens of science, revealing the brain’s astonishing capacity for healing. Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what…
9. Cesar Millan’s Short Guide to a Happy Dog: 98 Essential Tips and Techniques (2014)
After more than 9 seasons as TV’s Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan has a new mission: to use his unique insights about dog psychology to create stronger, happier relationships between humans and their canine companions.Now in paperback, this inspirational and practical guide draws on thousands of training encounters around the world to present 98 essential lessons. Taken together, they will help dog owners create the most fulfilling life possible with their dogs.In these pages, Cesar delves into crucial themes that go…
10. Think Like Your Dog and Enjoy the Rewards (2013)
Speak Your Dog's Language You can take communication with your dog to amazing levels if you know how, and this shows you how.Learn to think like your dog and to communicate with it in a language your dog understands and uses all the time; body language. If you aspire to become a dog whisperer, this pet training book is the right one for you. It stands out among dog training books because it provides information from a boots-on-the-ground professional dog trainer who has learned her craft in a painstaking way. This dog obedience training book is…
Best Dog Psychology Books Worth Your Attention
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Genesis and download some dog psychology books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Psych Experiments: From Pavlov’s dogs to Rorschach’s inkblots, put psychology’s most fascinating studies to the test
Author(s): Michael A. Britt
ID: 2412175, Publisher: Adams Media, Year: 2016, Size: 1 Mb, Format: epub
Artistic Practice as Research in Music: Theory, Criticism, Practice
Author(s): Mine Dogantan-Dack
ID: 1382834, Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co, Year: 2015, Size: 2 Mb, Format: pdf
Essentials of psychology
Author(s): Stephen L. Franzoi
ID: 814795, Publisher: Atomic Dog Pub., Year: 2006, Size: 127 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not final. Some books are absolutely chart-busters according to The Wall Street Journal, others are written by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.