TALKING TO ANIMALS

Mrs. Woodhouse, who has the nervous energy of a whippet and an ego the size of an Irish wolfhound, tells her life story -- a shameless recital of triumphs in animal empathy and management. How she'd nurse poor wee things in spite of her nanny's protests; how she later traveled to the Argentine and gentled wild or mistreated mounts; how she began her horse, then dairy business during the war and finally settled on dog training -- her own for the cinema and other people's for deportment. Mrs. Woodhouse explains some of her methods -- she blows gently in horses' nostrils, uses tone-of-voice signals, takes great pains with cleanliness (during the war, soap for her baby's nappies was used for cows' tails), and above all, love, a heap of it. There is no doubt that Mrs. Woodhouse is a gifted animal trainer, but because of her fondness for sweeping statements in areas where calm expertise is preferable (veterinary medicine for example) and emotional put downs of establishment practice (the procedures of the Obedience Trial circuit) her two previous books and this one have more entertainment value than information.