The most recommended behavior books

Sit. Stay. Love. Life Lessons from a Doggie is a beautiful book packed full of life lessons. This book is a great way to instill good behaviors in your children from a young age using easy-to-understand concepts and rhyming that makes the book a ton of fun to read! 

This book tells the true story of an African couple who adopted a lion cub, raised her to adulthood, and then eventually returned her to the wild.

In my reporting on wild pets and reintroductions of captive animals, I learned that Elsa’s story was a bit of a miracle. Such successful reintroductions are very rare. The Adamsons were complex people and their story has an ambiguous legacy, especially given that it may have inspired people who were not really able to care for big cats to try to keep them as pets.

However, there’s no denying that their experience makes for a fascinating read. And by living so closely with her, they were able to see and describe Elsa as an individual, not just “a lioness” interchangeable with any other.

Farley Mowat once declared: “I never let facts get in the way of a good story.” I have read Never Cry Wolf as fiction many times, even though its author pretended it was factual. As a writer interested in Canada’s north, Mowat’s universe is an obvious choice for me. The inclusion of Inuit characters is also quite appealing. In this book, a naturalist studies Arctic wolves in a makeshift camp in northern Manitoba and deals with the ridiculous expectations of the bureaucrats who sent him out there to fend for himself. He discovers that contrary to public opinion, wolves are not responsible for the decimation of caribou herds, humans are. Some elements are exaggerated for comic effect, and as one of Canada’s best storytellers, Mowat delivers on laughs. 

When in school I commented that my dog seemed angry with me, my teacher replied: “Don’t be anthropomorphic by erroneously ascribing human emotions to animals.”

The view of animals as unemotional automatons was the prevailing scientific view for decades, although we pet owners suspected otherwise. Then observers such as Jane Goodall and de Vaal showed that we were right all along, as shown in many of De Vaal’s books.

Mama’s Last Hug begins with an account of the mutual emotions expressed by de Vaal and the chimpanzee matriarch Mama when she hugged him from her death bed. The book recounts many heartwarming examples of chimpanzees and other animals expressing emotions.

Since we have common evolutionary ancestors with other animals: why should we ever have thought we were unique in having intelligence and emotions? 

I can’t say enough about Through a Dog’s Eyes. Read it to save your puppy from harsh training methods. Read it before you choose a training method to prepare for raising a puppy/dog.

Arnold offers a giant step forward in the humane treatment of dogs as feeling and thinking beings. Jennifer Arnold once thought methods of dominance and negative correction were necessary, but through her Canine Assistance program (a service dog organization), Arnold learned that kindness and encouragement proved the best way to train dogs.

For twenty years, Arnold adopted, raised, and taught dogs for people with special needs. Dogs showed her how to “teach” dogs to make choices, not to simply “train” to follow commands. Her dogs performed amazing feats of thinking and taking lifesaving actions.

I wanted to know more about these birds. I love the sound of swifts as they circle high in the sky in summer. The book inspired me to put up two swift nest boxes and to try to persuade all builders to include a swift brick in every new house.

I loved this book because it took me into the strange world of the swift. My three passions are cats, animal welfare, and nature. Swifts are amazing and incredible birds, and we need to know more about them so we can help them survive in the modern world.

This book is a mix of science and cat anecdotes and easy to read.

We cat lovers all want to make our cats happier and if we don’t stay up to date, we won’t be the best owners we can be. I chose this book because I believe it is important for all cat lovers to increase their knowledge.

Horses are central to human history, but they have a history of their own. Budiansky explores equine history using biological science, animal behavior, and evolutionary history. How did horses evolve? How did horses and humans come together to co-evolve? Why do horses and humans get along so well? What are horses like? How do horses do what they do? After setting horses in historical context Budiansky takes up issues of communication, social behaviors, intelligence, the senses, the mechanics of movement, and the production of power and speed. This book shows that horses are not magical or mystical creatures, but serious fellow beings who have co-evolved with us through biology and history.

The thing I love about the subject of this book is that it is visible all around me. The great yearly drama of the nesting season is the most exciting part of watching birds. This is where the good stuff happens: song and courtship, battles over territory, the miracle of nest construction, the cuteness of babies, and the development of monogamy. 

Heinrich’s book opened my eyes to this story. He merges his deep scientific knowledge with personal observation, making that broader understanding applicable to what I can observe myself. He explores the different ways birds have of living their lives, constantly asking how we can explain those patterns not as random assemblages of behaviors but as comprehensible evolutionary strategies. He makes birds make sense.

It’s dinos and trucks, two of my son’s favorite things combined into one.

The dinotrux are a mixture of everyone’s favorite dinosaurs and construction vehicles, and they are bored. And when the dinotrux get bored, they create mayhem and destruction wherever they go until their misbehaving ways can be corrected. Which leads to much laughter and mayhem while reading too!