Book Review: Border Collie Training Guide: Training Your Border Collie Dog (a mixed review) (Grade: C)

Border Collie Training Guide: Training Your Border Collie Dog, by Paul Allen Pearce (Paul Allen Pearce Publishing, 2015, 178pp, $19.95 HB) Review by Skye Anderson

"Your Complete Border Collie Guide for Caring, Raising and Training Your Border Collie Dog: From the Car Ride Home, Training Your Border Collie Begins"

First of all, we are not sure of the exact, complete title: in addition to the two titles above, it may include Border Collie Think Like a Dog. . . But Don't Eat Your Poop! and Here's Exactly How to Train Your Border Collie - all these appear on the front cover. Secondly, we received four border collie books at the same time, unsolicited. Third, this book is self-published (however, many self-published books are excellent - they just come with caveats) and a few years old.

On the whole, Border Collie Training Guide is a good training and care book in that author Paul Allen Pearch explains clicker training (positive reinforcement training). However, clicker trainers who have transitioned from traditional, force-based dog training, use positive methods and vocabulary whole-heartedly and as exclusively as possible. Pearce still uses vocabulary such as 'command' rather than 'cue' plus the words 'alpha' and  'obedience.' He also includes some protocols for traditional training methods, but, fortunately he says these are a last resort. And he also seems to skip a step here and there.

The husbandry sections are very good: nutrition, handling, how to lift a dog, e.g. The book also includes information on barking, digging, dog body language and other topics. 

What We Would Change

Here at DogEvals, we are trainers who also work with behavior cases and don't specialize in nutrition or other topics but, though this book is divided into three  parts, and we sort of figured out the different chapters, there is no table of contents or index which makes the information difficult to find.

On second thought, we did finally find a table of contents but it includes Part 111 without mentioning Parts 1 or 11 and appears a dozen pages into the text so we easily did miss it on first reading (or forgot it).

And, of course, DogEvals would delete the non-positive old-fashioned terms. We would also delete the traditional information and found the author's URL to be non-existent so the good reference section may also be outdated.

Last Words

This book is, for the majority, helpful and would be totally helpful if your positive-reinforcement trainer could black-out the information that is old-fashioned and misleading. The instructions that are omitted can also be figured out with the help of a good trainer.

And, finally, the author has numerous guide books - one for each of many dog breeds!