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The Culture Clash (平装)
by Jean Donaldson
| Category:
Dog training, Dog behavior, Pet, Animals |
| Market price: ¥ 208.00
MSL price:
¥ 178.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A flawed classic, this dog psychology/training book is still a valuable resource for all dog owners. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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Dr. Ian Dunbar (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
Do yourself and your dogs a big favor: Give it a read! And let's look forward to many more books by Jean Donaldson. |
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D. Emanuel (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-12 00:00>
The teacher of my puppy's obedience class recommended this book to me. After I got through the first half, I found that I really liked it. The first half is ridiculously preachy, especially if you already believe in using positive reinforcement in training. The second half, while still peppered with diatribes against owners who use training collars, random moments of near-anthropomorphic descriptions of dog behavior (a bit much from a book that begins by explaining how ridiculous it is to anthropomorphize your dog), and other attempts to make the reader feel guilty, is also filled with exercises that are extremely valuable.
If it weren't for these excellent exercises, the book would be worthless. At times, it reads more like an overgrown master's thesis than a book for the general public. Perhaps a master's thesis dumbed down and extended for the general public is a better descriptor. Donaldson's diction bounces all over the place. She often begins a sentence with a keyword taken from behavioral psychology and ends with a coloquial expression. This mixed diction is a massive stylistic fault, making understanding the author's meaning somewhat difficult from time to time.
The book's organization is present but not in any truly engaging manner. The chapters seem a bit like lectures written into book form. Its lack of an index makes note taking, highlighting, etc. an absolute must. I am surprised that the second edition does not include an index, this seems like the sort of thing you would actually think to do when you go back to improve a text for its second edition.
As I said before, this is a good book. It has its problems, but when it's on it's dead on. In spite of all of its stylistic and structural problems, it's still better written than some of the other books that people have recommended to me. The exercises are incredibly useful and generally easy to understand. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a handy book to help you understand obedience training in terms of the way dogs learn (and also recommend that you find a good trainer, have him or her recommend other titles to you and start classes as quickly as possible). Donaldson's explanation of how to teach your dog how to play fetch works. My dog wasn't really getting it, but Donaldson's book gave me the tools I needed to get my dog to understand what I was wanting from him. |
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A. Walker (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-12 00:00>
Already a convert to positive training methods, the "attitude" of the book was not obvious to me (perhaps it would be obvious to those more sensitive, such as those still very attached to traditional training methods). As far as I could tell, only rarely does Jean Donaldson make these comments that the reviews have made out to be so prevalent and it hardly slows the reading down. I've only counted 2 statements she has made that I considered rather disrespectful and off-topic, and these are the very two quoted by previous reviews, I believe... and both were in the first chapter. I haven't found any since.
It's a very entertaining book, with a lot of very good information that would help ANYONE with a dog (whether trainer or owner). She "debunks" many myths (sometimes less gracefully than necessary) about dog training and general dog behavior, and she helps the reader understand WHY these are myths and what real behavioral science says. It's not so much meant to be a "How-To" (sit, stay, heel) book, though it touches on such things, but it's mostly a "this is how dogs work, so this is how we should change our methods to suit them" book. It allows for room for our brains to kick in and think of creative (and positive) ways to solve our individual problems. If you want more specifics, this isn't the book for you... but it's a great "general positive reinforcement training" book for those of us who don't know it all. Also a very easy read (there are some psychology terms but nothing overwhelming), so it's great for the ordinary dog-owner.
As has been noted, this will be a hard book to go back to if one is attempting to search for something specific... but this is why I take notes along the edge of the pages. Then you can flip through the pages and find the relevant points in your own writing. I also agree with the previous review in that the flow could be better between chapters and sections of chapters.
Overall, not as well organized as I would like but the best book I've read on the "Culture Clash" between man and dog that's so prevalent in society today. |
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A reader (MSL quote), New Zealand
<2007-01-12 00:00>
Jean Donaldson has a winner with the Culture Clash. The book is packed from cover to cover with useful information, with scarcely a page lacking some nugget of training wisdom. I have to admit that when I first found this book, I read it straight through twice (once while taking notes!) and then returned it late to the library because I was constantly referring back to it. It really is that good.
The main theme of The Culture Clash is a plea for us to honestly understand the motives of our canine companions, instead of seeing them through the distorting lens of anthromorphism. Ms Donaldson is a behaviourist, and includes a lot of information on operant conditioning and learning theory in this text. However, the book also teaches us how to apply this theory - included are a wealth of practical suggestions on how to live with and train your dog. The theory and practical in The Culture Clash are equally good, and I do not exaggerate when I say that many individual chapters would alone be worth the purchase price of the book. Ms Donaldson leaves us understanding not only how to train our dogs, but also exactly why we are doing what she says.
So why not five stars? The content of this book is inspired, but unfortunately Ms Donaldson shoots herself in the foot with her sanctimonious tone. Ms Donaldson champions the effectiveness of positive reinforcement when changing behaviour, so it is strange that she feels the need to resort to punishing her audience so much. Dog trainers who use punishment are variously labelled "pathetic", "cruel" and accused of finding personal gratification by punishing dogs. Choke chains are not called by their proper name, but are melodramatically renamed "strangle collars". Trainers who believe in pack theory are "too stupid for words". The vast majority of owners will find this approach alienating. If punishment really is that ineffective and morally bankrupt, then why must she continually resort to it throughout the book to blugeon her hapless readers?
Ms Donaldson could also use a little education on the subject of canine drives. Unpleasant as it may be for a behaviourist to admit, it is easy to see that domestic dogs have intense inborn genetic drives, and good training exploits these desires in a much more sophisticated way than outlined by Ms Donaldson. Unfortunately, this truth doesn't fit Ms Donaldon's behaviourist paradigm at all. Instead of rewarding in drive, she treats all rewards as equivalent, which in turn results in her promoting a couple of quite unlikely techniques. For example, she recommends luring aggressive dogs away from each other with tidbits of food (hint: if they can switch from fight to food drive so quickly, then they didn't really have a major aggression problem in the first place. I can promise you that if you tried this with a high fight drive dog, your food would be completely ignored.)
It is also concerning that Ms Donaldson seems a little confused about her own stance on the use of punishment. She has a helpful and well-thought out chapter on the proper and appropriate uses of punishment when training dogs. And her methods include a great deal of punishment - she regularly prescribes negative punishment and "no reward markers" to her dogs. On the other hand, positive punishment is given the thumbs down, and negative reinforcement is a definate no-no. Ms Donaldson fails to explain why negative punishment is so much less damaging to a dog than positive punishment - I imagine many dogs would rather be verbally reprimanded than denied dinner or isolated from their human family for any period of time. One gets the feeling that negative punishment is sometimes promoted as 'better' than positive punishment not because of its effect on the dogs concerned, but merely because Ms Donaldson feels more comfortable using it.
If I could have given this book four and a half stars, I would have. I honestly believe that any dog owner or trainer could benefit from a read of this book; it is one of the very best dog training manuals published so far. In fact, in a perfect world, all new dog owners would recieve a complimentary copy of The Culture Clash when they collected their new puppy! Here's hoping one day this book will be re-edited and re-published, so that it retains the gems of information while losing the occasional blunders and distractingly spiteful tone. |
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M. Miller (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-12 00:00>
I am a certified canine obedience instructor. I love this book and have read it many times, will read it many more. I tell my students that if they read only one dog book- this has to be the one. Excellent descriptions of how dogs think with many examples. It supports positive reinforcement methods of training, which is the only type of training I do unless it is a survival issue. It is set up in a weird way, but as long as you read it through, you will get all the info you needed. She does have a kind of tough attitude- but it is a response from so many ignorant beliefs that have been proved wrong yet are still being used by thousands. Not everyone should have a dog- not everyone should even have children! It is a nice outlet for me to read this because I totally agree with her, but I can't tell my students, "Well you don't have time for a dog so you shouldn't have one!" That won't fix anything, but reading this book helps me vent. If I can get some of my students to read it, then I'm not the bad guy for telling them the bitter truth. Lassie is not real, so don't expect that from your dog. |
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Natalie Cray (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-12 00:00>
Donaldson's book was a revelation. Having grown up with dogs and watched many friends own and (more or less successfully) train them, I finally began approaching canine ownership with all the passion and compulsion people normally reserve for human pregnancy. I wanted to get a dog, and I wanted to do it right, dammit. I needed more than a training guide. I needed a training philosophy.
To that end, I ordered something like twenty books ranging from breed guides to "training for Dummies" manuals. Reading through them reminded me of a college anthropology exercise - the second I attached myself to what felt like a useful piece of information, the next book I read would come in with an updated, seemingly superior strategy. Thank god for The Culture Clash, which firmly established itself as the top-most tier.
This is a conceptual book, not a manual. And I totally agree with all the other reviewer comments expressing disappointment in the layout and overall inaccessibility of the book...by the end, I was a converted zealot without a plan. It was clear to me that Donaldson's beliefs and ideas were all factually and morally right-on and that this was and would remain the keystone of my dog training ideology. I also wanted to cry, or call her up and invite myself over for my puppy's first four months... though the book is full of concrete, well-explained exercises and strategies, it is not a do-it-yourself, a-to-z starter kit nor even a particularly accessible reference manual. I put it down feeling galvanized, vindicated, and completely overwhelmed. Which is probably exactly the point. The book is not the be-all end-all of dog training, but rather the correct starting point for mutually satisfying canine/human cohabitation mastery.
I would love to read a step-by-step puppy-to-senior dog training manual by Donaldson, but in its absence, I am enormously grateful for this book and have ardently forced it upon every dog owner I know. A friend - while eyeing my ever-expanding canine library - recently asked me what one book I'd recommend to someone about to adopt a puppy, and I immediately recommended this one. True, it's probably not the only one she'll need, but it is the only one that will successfully and beneficially influence the rest of the acquisition list. |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-12 00:00>
I got this book when it was fresh from the presses. Well, I even got two, I knew that was probably the only way I would be able to have one at home at all times, according to what I had heard about this book...
English is not my language, and back then I had barely read a book in English, so I was a bit worried. I soon found out that there wasn't any need to worry... I brought it with me travelling the day I got it, and soon was totally captured. I even made a fool of myself, laughing out loud on the airplane.
This book is so fun to read and it gives you so many "A-HA Experiences" about your dog and it's behavior... Back then I had my wonderful Shanti, the best Yorkie friend anyone could wish for. She had a tough past before I got her though, and was troubled by severe anxiety. The best thing I ever did for her, was getting this book and Turid Rugaas' book On Talking Terms with Dog's: Calming Signals (hope I got that right)... Soon Shanti and I understood each other much better, and her anxiety was much better controlled, giving us both a better quality of life. I will forever be grateful to Jean Donaldson for learning me how to understand Shanti (and now my also highly loved Yorkie Peanut) a lot better.
I of course also had to buy Jean Donaldson's follow-up book (Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars...) Dogs are from Neptune a bit later, and it is just as wonderful as this one, also a must have, if you ask me.
I find that books like this often get a bit boring, just like reading a school text book, if you get my drift... But that can surely not be said about Jean Donaldson's books. She has a wonderful writing style. It is easy to read and full of humor, makes you really understand in a fun way, with examples that makes you laugh and go "YES!". It is definately not without reason that this book is a best-seller!
And, I really must add, I really recommend buying more than one, because this is sure one of those books that everyone wants to borrow!!! If I had to do it again, I would get at least 3, because this is knowledge I sure want to share with friends and family! I had both of my books out at all times for a couple of years, as all my dog owner friends had to read it, even if many were real concerned by the fact that it wasn't written in Norwegian, and as me, they had never read a book in English... They're reactions were just like mine, it didn't matter at all, that is how easy to read it is, and on top of that you get some useful training in the English language (wonderful side effect of reading this book, don't you think?) So, if your language is English, Chinese or Norwegian - Go for it! Enjoy!
Had I been able to give it 6 stars, I would have! |
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Surchin (MSL quote), Malaysia
<2007-01-12 00:00>
Together with Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog, Jean Donaldson's Culture Clash encouraged me to re-examine my relationship, my methods of training and attempts at communication with our dogs.
Jean Donaldson has a no nonsense writing style, she says it like she believes and thinks - no excuses, no grey, take it or leave it, and there is no where to hide, the reader can either agree or disagree but there is little doubt in Ms Donaldson's own mind. And she tells it from the dog's perspective.
Unlike many training books that just set out the procedures & techniques for training a dog. Culture Clash takes us one step further along the road, and helps the owner/trainer understand why certain training methods work better than others. Why positive & operant training methods coupled with an understanding of dog behaviour, instincts & psychology is the way towards a less frustrating, less stressful and more successful method of teaching/training our dogs.
Culture Clash is a training manual, in that it teaches us how to teach/train our dogs - it is more than a training manual because Ms Donaldson also explains how dogs think and perceive our methods & style of training, she explains why & what makes dogs nervous, why & when dogs bite, what makes our dogs tick and do what they do - or not do, she tells us what may or may not work, she tells us of the various psychological thresholds that exist within all our dogs, and she does all this with clarity & in detail.
No Lassies and no Rin Tin Tins - the author describes our dogs as they are ... and offers us an insight and understanding into their true nature... and she writes of what is really required to build and maintain a meaningful & responsible relationship with our dogs.
The book offers the reader a deeper appreciation of what is going on in the dog's mind as training progresses, making for more effective training, and perhaps most important - improving our relationship with our dogs.
But the least the book will do - is make us re-think the aspects and elements of our relationship with our dog, and that cannot be bad.
Culture Clash is a wonderful balance between a dog behavioural book and a training manual.
A good reference book, a worthwhile buy & read. |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-12 00:00>
The back cover of this book sports a recommendation saying that the book is "literally overflowing with information that's so new it virtually redefines the state of the art in dog training." Alas, I've been unable to find this information anywhere in the book. In much of the book Donaldson quite correctly points out techniques used by many, perhaps the majority, of dog owners that are bound to make life sour for the dog and the owner, such as punishing a dog for an offense comitted hours ago or yanking him around forever on a choker. That the people doing this are wrong and Donaldson is right is proven thousands of times every day by people who can't train their dog. Yet nothing about this is new. If Donaldson had consulted dog training literature even from the nineteenth century, she would have found the same observations. (E.g., Carl Tabel's very punishment-oriented classic makes this point very clear.) These things were known long before Skinner ever got to abuse his first rat.
Donaldson's strong aversion against punishment is entirely acceptable, yet the way she condemns everyone who uses corrections in her moralistic tone is not. Donaldson admits that corrections, if and only if adminstered correctly, can increase the reliability of a command, and she also admits that one can reasonably argue that a command that could save the dog's live might be "installed by all means necessary." She could have added that the increased reliability can lead to increased freedom for the dog, and thus enhance his quality of life. What is more, at the end of the book, when she finally gives practical training advice, Donaldson falls into using "active corrections" all the time. Her innocent insistence about halters and anti-pull harnesses that "I honestly don't know how it works. Perhaps there's some aversive being applied." is ridiculous. These things might indeed be better for many dog owners than choke collars, but the reason is, and Donaldson herself correctly states, that in order to deliver a convincing correction with a choker you need to apply a serious yank. Like so many other advocates of "positive-reinforcement only" training, Donaldson does not practice what she preaches. I have seen people who clearly abuse corrections, people who arguably overuse them, and people who arguably underuse them, but I never have seen anyone living with a dog who did not apply some form of coercion or punishment at times.
Finally, Donaldson needs a better editor. Her constant use of nouns as verb modifiers and techniques of emphasis "soooooo" make me "distress vocalize."
(A negative review. MSL remarks.) |
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Amy Webber (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-12 00:00>
I felt it would be worthwhile to respond to a couple of comments. Some reviews refered to Donaldson's methods as fadish or inneffective. However, Donaldson's methods are based on the work of B. F. Skinner, a prestigious behavioral scientist who made major contributions to the field of psychology and behavioral science. Classical and operant conditioning, principals used by Donaldson in her book, have been around for quite some time and have been shown to be highly efective with numerous species. Donaldson's point is that people who train the "standard, leash-jerk" way are ignoring years of tried and true animal behavior science.
Some have said that this is not a good how to book. I don't think that is its primary purpose. I think she is trying to provide a sound foundation on how to think about dogs and training so you the owner are "set up to succeed." The hope is that when you choose a how to book or a training program you will look for one that uses positive reinforcement.
For example, do you see zoo trainers using negative reinforcement with sea mamals or elephants? Of course not, they use treats. Positive reinforcement works when other techniques don't or simply can't be used.
Finally, her point on liking dogs for who and what they are vs. liking them for the human qualities we project onto them is an important distinction for owners to make. I think that this is perhaps the most important point made in the book: what is wrong with a dog being a dog or why do they have to be part human to be good animals/pets?. Changing the way we think about our pets will help us to stay objective and think with our human heads rather than our hearts when we are struggling with training and/or problem behavior in our pets, and in turn to have an experience that is both successful and positive.
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