Beyond Flight Or Fight

Beyond Flight or Fight is a fascinating, in depth exploration into the psychology of rehabilitating fearful and traumatised dogs so that they can have a happy future in our human dominated environment. Sunny Weber has immense experience and understanding in this field and her expertise really does shine through every page. Beyond Flight or Fight is not a step by step instruction manual, but rather an invitation for us to understand how our own behaviours can influence the dogs in our care - for better or for worse. I was especially interested in the sections where Weber explains how exceptionally fluent most dogs are in interpreting our body language and that they will often give body language signals precedence over whatever verbal commands we make. As humans on the whole have lost much of our ability to communicate non-verbally, it's no wonder our dogs get confused when we send conflicting signals!

Beyond Flight or Fight does include a number of case studies of formerly fearful dogs, most of which are quite challenging emotionally to read. I find it hard to accept how casually people can abandon a pet, yet thousands do and often for reasons that would have seemed to be obvious problems had they really considered how much of a commitment they were taking on. Weber discusses the differences between shelters and foster homes, but mostly focuses on foster work as the individual care component here is vital in rehabilitating a fearful dog.

While I don't have a dog myself, I was very interested to read this book and picked up a few tips myself for better ways to greet the dogs I do meet pretty much every day. For people who share their homes with a dog however, whether a fearful one or not, I imagine Beyond Flight Or Fight would become an invaluable resource and conversation starter, allowing owners to better understand their canine companions and also, hopefully, allowing those dogs a similar improved understanding of their humans!