SUPERPUPPY: How to Choose, Raise, and Train the Best Possible Dog for You

A super puppy book, refreshingly flexible and undogmatic, offering sensible guidance and alternative procedures on everything from selecting a dog to fit your family, home, and habits (but ""forget all these rules"" if nothing happens between you and the dog so selected) to identifying and dealing with various diseases and parasites. Relaxed as they are about individual differences in dogs, owners, and ""experts,"" the Pinkwaters are firm about pet shops (they give several good reasons why you should never buy a dog in one), rigorous about pet and vet selection, careful to structure their obedience-training procedures, and openly contemptuous of people who buy advertised canine junk food, acquire pets without the necessary commitment of time and love, or allow their pets to saddle the world with unwanted animals. Drawing on their own experience as professional obedience trainers and owners of two Alaskan malamutes with distinctive personalities, and emphasizing throughout that they don't know it all, that their book is not ""complete,"" and that there might be better ways for you than the ones they suggest, the Pinkwaters quietly and personably set forth a thorough, thoughtful, and sympathetic Dr. Speck of puppy care.