Feeling Outnumbered? How to Manage and Enjoy your Multi Dog Household, By Karen B. London, Ph.D. & Patricia B. McConnell, Ph.D.

A rather small booklet of 40+ pages, this book helps you learn to deal with training your dogs if you have more than one (good for breeders).  Both authors have doctorates in zoology and they help dogs with aggression and behavioral problems and their focus of the book is on “Teaching your dogs to be polite and patient rather than pushy and demanding…”.

The book is concise and to the point, which is, you need to treat your dogs as individuals before you can deal with them as a group.  Once every dog in your household has managed his “sits”, “stays”, “waits” and “offs” you move on – in small steps- to teaching them the commands while they are together.  It is similar to teaching a dog to “come” with few distractions, then changing the places and increasing the activities around him so that he masters the command.

Also covered is how to establish equality in the household and maintaining peace.  I have this problem with two of my dogs, when I pet my oldest Shih Tzu Archie, Connor and Fifi try to prevent me from giving him affection.  They both bash into him trying to push him away from me.  The thing is, I love all my dogs and I want them to be happy, so I used to only pet Archie when the others were not looking.  Now that he is suffering from osteoarthritis and other old age maladies many sources recommend that aside from giving him medications and keeping him warm and comfortable, I give him TLC – Tender Loving Care.  So I need my dogs to accept my giving love to each of them separately.

The best or rather funniest part of the book was the section called “So you want another dog?”.  The truth of the matter is, if my dogs were better behaved I would certainly introduce one or two more dogs (I already have three and a beagle that comes to stay on and off but she stays at my grandmother’s house most of the time).

If you have two or more dogs, this is a good book on how to keep them well behaved and to know which are the commands that you must have your dog master.

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