What Dogs Want: A Visual Guide to Understanding Your Dog's Every Move - Softcover

Arden Moore -- The Pawsitive Coach™ -- happily wears many "collars" in the pet world: radio show host, author, professional speaker, editor, media consultant and master pet first-aid instructor. Her mission: bringing out the best in pets and their people. Each week, one million tune into her Oh Behave Show on Pet Life Radio. The founder of Four Legged Life and creator of National Dog Party Day, Arden shares her home with two dogs, two cats and an overworked vacuum cleaner. Learn more at www.fourleggedlife.com.

Introduction

I happily share my home with two stellar communicators -- a pair of rescued mutts who answer to the names of Chipper and Cleo. Although I am the one with the Bachelor's Degree in Communication from Purdue University, Indiana, Chipper and Cleo masterfully convey their wants and needs, rarely committing a communication miscue.

Their "talk" is always clear and consistent -- whether they are communicating with me, each other, their canine pals, or even their feline housemates, Zeki and Murphy. Often, my dogs can convey their message without uttering a single sound. Their messages are delivered by their postures, tail positions, tail movements, eyes, expressions, actions, and much more. When Chipper turns her head and air snaps, then plops down with her rear end hoisted in the air, I know that she is ready for a friendly game of tug-of-war. When Cleo starts to pant and jumps onto my lap, I know that she needs to relieve her bladder outside.

Throughout my career, I have been both a student and a teacher of the art of communication. For two decades, I toiled as a reporter and editor for major daily newspapers. That profession taught me to speak less, listen more, and to observe body language so that I could better decipher whether people were telling the truth, hiding something, or embellishing the facts.

For the past dozen years, I have shifted my focus to studying and interpreting communication between pets and people. As an animal behavior consultant, host of the award-winning "Oh Behave!" show on Pet Life Radio, and author of 24 pet books, my goal is to narrow the communication gap between pets and their people, so everyone can enjoy greater harmony in the household. I founded Four Legged Life, an online pet community to help people "laugh, love, and learn" about their pets.

Dogs do their best to deliver their canine cues to us, but sometimes we misinterpret their signals. We may quickly declare a dog who spills his kibble on the kitchen floor to be a finicky, messy eater. But the real reason may be that he is enduring undiagnosed mouth pain because of a broken tooth or infected gum. We may not accurately distinguish the "bark-bark-bark" that our dog sounds to alert the approach of a delivery worker from the "bark-bark-bark" that he uses to convey sheer boredom and his need for purposeful play.

Help is here. The pages of What Dogs Want provide you with a visual guide that decodes 100 postures, expressions, sounds, and actions exhibited by dogs of all sizes, ages, and breeds. Paw through the pages and not only will you learn why your dog is acting or vocalizing in a specific manner, but you will also discover what you can do in response, to bring about his best behavior and health.

So, call your dog over, dive into these pages, and let clear communication between t he two of you finally begin.

Arden Moore