Born to Bark
My Adventures with an Irrepressible and Unforgettable Dog
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
"For Christmas the woman who would become my wife bought me a dog—a little terrier. The next year her Christmas gift to me was a shotgun. Most of the people in my family believe that those two gifts were not unrelated."
So begins Born to Bark, the charming new memoir by psychologist and beloved dog expert Stan Coren of his relationship with an irrepressible gray Cairn terrier named Flint. Stan immediately loved the pup for his friendly nature and indefatigable spirit, though his wife soon found the dog’s unpredictable exuberance difficult to deal with, to say the least.
Even though Flint drove Stan’s wife up the wall, he became the joy of Stan’s life. The key to unlocking this psychologist-author’s way of looking at dog behavior, Flint also became the inspiration behind Coren’s classic, The Intelligence of Dogs. Undeterred by Flint’s irrepressible behavior (and by the breeder’s warning that he might be untrainable), Coren set out to prove that his furry companion could pass muster with the best of them. He persevered in training the unruly dog and even ventured into the competitive circles of obedience trials in dog shows, where Flint eventually made canine history as the highest-scoring Cairn terrier in obedience competition up to that time. (Stan chose not to tell his wife that the highest-ranking obedience dog of that year, a border collie, earned a total score that was fifty times higher.)
The longest-running popular expert on human-dog bonding, Coren has enlivened his respected books and theories about dogs with accounts of his own experiences in training, living with, loving, and trying to understand them. A consummate storyteller, Coren now tells the wry, poignant, goofy, and good-hearted tale of his life with the dog who (in the words of his own book titles) taught him How to Speak Dog and How Dogs Think and whose antics made him ask Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Illustrated with Coren’s own delightful line drawings and photos, and interwoven with his heartfelt anecdotes of other beloved dogs from his earlier life, Born to Bark is an irresistible good dog/bad dog tale of this extraordinary, willful pooch and his profound impact on his master’s insights into canine behavior as a research psychologist and on his outlook on life as a whole.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Coren (Why Does My Dog Act That Way?) shares the often amusing and always instructive stories of life with Flint, his oversized Cairn terrier. For the author, a trained researcher and psychologist, the preternaturally heroic and intelligent Flint, capable of rescuing kittens and apparently able to read and count, was key to unlocking a new way of looking at canine behavior and human relationships with dogs. Coren discusses canine behavior (particularly barking) and how to train and socialize man's best friend. He also shows how Flint cares for those around him from offering heartbreak therapy to saving a four-legged pal from an aggressive raccoon. Coren closes his chronicle with insightful theories on canine intelligence, letting Flint's behavior illustrate key points as he totes out lingerie in front of guests and repeatedly hits the answering machine playback button to listen to his absent master's voice. More than just an entertaining story about doggie escapades, this book offers valuable advice on loving and living with our canine pals, even when they chew and bark when you least want them to.