We've tried to do everything we could to be prepared for the responsibilities of dog ownership. I've done more research on vaccinations, socialization , training techniques and general dog psychology then I did for most of my college courses. It seems that some of this work has started to pay off, or we are just very lucky, Finn is very well behaved.

The "research" of course consists of a number of mediums. I devored everything given to us by the breeder, which got us through the first week. Then I plowed through a number of online articles about raising a dog, health issues, and quick tips. After that I moved onto the massive packet of instructions provided by our dog trainer. Once I got through all of that I reorganized my RSS reader with about 45 dog blogs (and counting... let me know if you have one I should add).

Now I've taken to reading dog related books for all of my pleasure reading. There are a few guidebooks for dogs in Los Angeles, a pretty solid book of tricks (it helped teach Finn fetch and roll-over) and most recently I finished my first novel length reading; The Other End of The Leash, by Patricia B McConnell. TOEOTL (because I like acronymns) contained a broad scope of information with a chapter on translating primate to canine to how to deal with the loss of a pet. Although there were no earth shattering secrets, like a certain frequency of wistle that causes a dog to immediatly drop what it has in it's mouth and come sit by its master, the underlying message of the book helped me to better understand what Finn really thinks about me. I always knew dogs were preceptive but I didn't even think about all the extra "cues" I am giving him when I say commands; the angle of my head, what I'm wearing, or the fact that even saying a command may be confusing ,because dogs are such visual creatures.

Overall mcConnell does a great job of showing that she really is knowledagble about pets. The Ph.D is for her studies in applied animal behavior. Her own dogs are sheep dogs and help her take care of a flock as well as protect her farm. In my eyes a person who can train a dog to care for and protect a bunch of animals instead of trying to play with them (ie Finn) must know what they are doing. I have a stack of other books I will be getting to at some point, but if you are looking for one that will help you better relate to your own pet you may want to check out TOEOTL.

Hopefully I'll be able to suggest a bunch of other books next week. We are going on a cruise tomorrow. Finn is going back to Cage Free K9's, where he'll be get as dirty as he did during LosAngeles huge rainstorm the other day, but at least he'll meet some friends.

If anyone knows some good material (blogs, novels, magazines) let me know in the comments.