This Book Will Change Your Dog's Life: Stimulating Canine Challenges to Ensure Every Dog Has Its Day

by Charles di Bonio

This Book Will Change Your Dog’s Life is a radical, transformative, dictatorial antidote to canine self-help manuals. It’s for dog-owners everywhere who feel that puppy school is just not enough or that their dogs are getting a bit rut-bound. It offers 365 life-changing challenges for dogs to do with just a bit of human help. For example, one’s dog can be a cat for a day, host a bone-tasting evening, or learn to skateboard. One need only follow the instructions, and by the end of the course, human and dog will have successfully subverted the canine stereotype, and Rex (or Roxy) will be able to embark on the next book on his (or her) own.

* A quirky, fun book guaranteed to charm dog owners and dog lovers
* 365 challenging canine tasks, from the sublime to the surreal
* Suitable for any breed
* Guaranteed to change a dog’s life

Genres: Dogs, Animals

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2009

Reviews

[Sarah Jacquie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay maybe being a vet tech I'm ruining the fun here, but this book makes me nervous because some of the things I've had to deal with in emergency hospitals have been similar to the things mentioned in this book.

Anyone with common sense will realize this book is just a silly collection of nonsense presented in a bubble gum way, but some of the things it directs are far from funny... a few examples:

- Tie your dog's mouth shut when he barks, and then you bark instead.
- Put your dog in a box and tie him up in it, see how long it takes him to get out.
- Force your dog to sit somewhere for an hour with an e-collar on and put music on.
- Put your dog's feet in concrete, or go to a construction site and do so (for that Hollywood splendor)
- Get your dog drunk.
- Take your dog near a road, and test your dog's sense of traffic by blind folding him. The goal is not to get run over.

Not only will people do these things because they are stupid, but it is cruel and of course several of these things can kill your dog . I haven't been the only person to see it, it still happens, people duct taping their dog's mouth shut, ingesting materials left out or purposely put on the dog and not cleaned off (or should have not been there in the first place!!!), leaving on an e-collar and forgetting (oops) your dog can not drink or eat with it on, and dogs with no leashes near roads with cars can get hit (is this really necessary to say?).

This book needs a disclaimer, and while I have met so many wonderful dog owners, there is about 10 bad owners for every 1... and they desperately need big bold letters to tell them "not to do this at home".

[Laurla2 · Rating 1 out of 5]

-1 star. not at all what i was expecting.

here are some of the challenges for your dog:
"exploit your dog as a coffee table."
"call your dog by a cats name all day long and see if he notices."
"some dogs produce a great deal of drool. don't let it go to waste. collect it and recycle it as hair gel."
"your dog pants all day right? so fit him up with some motion sensors on his chest, which are wired to a kenetic energy cell. instant free electricity."
"sign yourself and your dog up for a tour of duty. if you don't like fighting, just volunteer the dog."
"today you will scoop your dog's poop using the following items only: two coffee spoons, a borrowed glove, a $10 note."
"pick a fight with a rottweiler today!"
"get drunk with your dog and see if he tells you something he has never told anyone else before."

-see? its stupid. too stupid to even finish. but so painfully stupid that i'm counting it as read. i think maybe its *trying* to be funny, but in my opinion it fails. and its not shelved with humor books in the library, its shelved with dog training books.

[Stephen Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange and funny book I picked up from a thrift store. Visually very interesting. If you are the sort that likes to have deep discussions about weird topics with your dog, and especially if you like to dress your dog up, this book would be very good for you. for the rest of us, maybe good as a coffee table book to just browse from time to time, or get ideas from. Most ideas are just plain silly, (well, almost all), but with enough serious details to make it interesting. Some are potentially dangerous to anyone who is an idiot and doesn't know when someone is joking. There are so much stuff though that you get overwhelmed and it is best taken in small bites, maybe even day by day as prescribed.

I would list some of the quirky things, but there are just too many. Better to make your own quirky list of things to do with your dog, and see how many you came up with are already in the book, I have a feeling that all you come up with, is already covered.

Hard to know what to rate this book. Was going to give it a 3 because it overwhelmed me with silly but generally useless ideas, but giving it a 4 because it is visually interesting and definitely different.

[MisterFweem · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's cute, I'll give it that. Some of the editing needed work (What is this "Face Book" of which they write?)

It's a great hodgepodge of graphic design, with lots of eye candy to look at. But after reading 300 or so of the days' activities, I have to admit I was just ready for the book to be over. Read in small doses is my advice.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the daily challenges are hilarious. Some are silly. Some are weird and disgusting....murder or things that would kill dog or others. I know all meant as a joke. A few were not funny even in a dark way.

[Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dog says that he feels so much smarter now