A practical guide to adopting, training and living with a rescue dog, from popular dog trainer and animal behaviourist Laura Vissaritis.

Adopting a rescue dog can be daunting. With anxieties and fears from their previous life, they can carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. But all dogs deserve a second chance – and this book will teach you how to provide it.

Animal behaviourist Laura Vissaritis’s approach to training a rescue dog focuses on one side of the relationship: the human. Because to help your dog change their behaviour, first you must change your own.

By building a relationship based on mutual trust and respect, you will help your dog make the most of their new life. Explaining the underlying psychology and offering clear step-by-step guides, Laura covers everything you need to know, including how to:

– bring home and socialise your rescue dog
– establish routines for essentials like toilet training and walking on a leash
– understand your dog’s body language
– discourage unwanted behaviours such as excessive barking or jumping up
ease their stress, phobias or separation anxiety.

Giving a rescue dog a better life is one of the most emotional, uplifting journeys you can go on. The Rescue Dog will guide you on the path to success.A practical guide to adopting, training and living with a rescue dog, from popular dog trainer and animal behaviourist Laura Vissaritis.

The Rescue Dog by Laura Vissaritis is a practical, honest, glorious guide to owning a rescue dog and all the emotional baggage that can come from that. How can you best train them? Love them? Punish them when they’re bad? This is a fantastic book to keep on your bookshelf, even if you don’t own a rescue dog. Any dog owner will find use out of this book.

This book has advice for all sorts of behavioural problems — barking? biting? anxiety? not playing well with other dogs? Laura is open about the struggles she’s had with her own rescue dogs, but also the struggles she’s seen in other dogs.

Laura’s tone of voice is conversational, but also welcoming. You don’t feel stupid reading her advice. You don’t feel like a complete failure because your dog has a tendency to be a menace and you’re working really hard to try and fix it. Just this morning I yelled NAUGHTY at my dog so loud he dropped his ball and ran to his bed, frightened. Owning a dog, and especially a rescue dog who had a bad start in life, is really difficult sometimes. It’s nice to read a training guide without feeling judged.

“Once your dog understands that sitting results in obtaining a treat, you can transfer this to a range of rewards your dog may want. Your dog may want to come inside, go outside, jump on the couch, get out of the car, or play with the dog fifty metres away.”

Do you know how many dog training books I’ve read in the last couple of years? A LOT. So many books that ‘claim’ to be a training guide, that ‘claim’ to be a helpful companion to being a dog owner. And so many of them were rubbish. They gave basic advice about how a dog responded to life events, or perhaps information about their personalities, but there was no actual advice. No tips. No step-by-step instructions. And I was always so furious when I finished the books and I felt like I’d learnt nothing to help me with my dog, who is beautiful but needy and energetic and who is ‘behaved’ but not ‘well behaved’.

My major problem at the moment is my dog barks inside the house, and not for any particular reason. He only ever barks INSIDE the house, AT me. I can tell he’s trying to communicate to me, but I can’t always work out what he’s saying. Most of the time he’s confused or frustrated and so he barks. I went into this book wanting to learn a technique to stop that kind of barking. Not the kind of barking that a dog does outside at passersby, because that’s not the issue. The kind of barking that’s communicative, but because I don’t speak dog, I can’t work out how to fix the situation.

Page 19 had my answer — training tips to get rid of this exact kind of barking. And I’ve been using the technique since.

Ever since page 19, I’ve been a convert for this book. It will now sit on my bookshelf as a reference for any issues we may have in the future. Finally — a real, proper, helpful dog training guide.

“If your dog is not allowed on your leather couch, but sometimes you don’t mind if they jump up, your dog will always try to access the couch….If you punish them sometimes but allow them up at other times, then all they learn is that they can get up on the couch, and sometimes for no reason, they get punished.”

Not all sections of this book will apply to every dog owner. There were some sections, chapters, or paragraphs in the book that I skipped over because my dog doesn’t present those kind of issues (for example, separation anxiety) .This book is meant to act as a long-standing resource, so that you can put it on your bookshelf and one day, if your dog or perhaps a future dog develops any of these issues, you can go back and read and feel like you know how to tackle the situation.

An honest-to-God proper dog training guide, with actual instructions that the everyday dog owner can apply. Laura is also incredibly honest about her own dogs — their faults and their weaknesses — and it makes you feel like you’re not alone.

Recommended for all dog owners, not just those of you who have adopted a rescue dog. You’ll all be able to learn things from this resource. If you own a dog and they’re not perfect (hint: no dog is perfect) and you’re exhausted from trying different things and you’ve been through two rounds of private dog training (like me!) and you still need some advice, then buy this and keep this. You’ll feel so relieved.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Rescue Dog
Laura Vissaritis
September 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

In 2005, Chloe Higgins was seventeen years old. She and her mother, Rhonda, stayed home so that she could revise for her exams while her two younger sisters Carlie and Lisa went skiing with their father. On the way back from their trip, their car veered off the highway, flipped on its side and burst into flames. Both her sisters were killed. Their father walked away from the accident with only minor injuries.

This book is about what happened next.

In a memoir of breathtaking power, Chloe Higgins describes the heartbreaking aftermath of that one terrible day. It is a story of grieving, and learning to leave grief behind, for anyone who has ever loved, and lost.

The Girls by Chloe Higgins is a memoir about the death of Chloe’s two sisters in 2005, and the aftermath.

While Chloe was studying for her HSC at the family home in Western Sydney, her father and her two sisters were on their way from an annual trip to the snowfields. On a highway near Canberra, Chloe’s father veered off to the other side of the road — presumably falling asleep — and he hits another car. Their vehicle flips and the back of the car bursts into flames. Chloe’s two sisters are killed, but their father walks away with minor injuries.

This is a memoir about grief, and what comes after a tragic event. It’s about how Chloe’s life went down a very different path than what she’d have planned as a young girl.

The Girls is tender and well-written, but also just very heartbreaking. People all over the world experience heartbreak, grief, and death every day, but when you focus on one person’s story and read beyond the tragedy, you realise the effect such events can have on a person’s health and wellbeing. We read about Chloe’s life beyond the death of her sisters, and we experience how her and her parents have attempted to move past the car accident.

“I am ashamed by how little I remember them. I’ve been reading books lately where people write their memories of losing a husband to cancer, their eyesight at eighteen, their father to the Vietnamese/American War.”

Chloe turns to sex work, drugs, alcohol and self harm to cope with her loss. In a way, focussing on these activities helped her avoid thinking about or remembering her sisters.

It’s stomach-dropping to read about Chloe’s father’s reaction to the accident — his guilt, his tears, his mental deterioration. Chloe does her best to maintain a relationship with her mother and father, but it’s complicated for all parties. They’re coping in the only ways they know how, and Chloe — being the only child left — sometimes finds it easier to not be at home.

“Sometimes I am well for weeks at a time: my head is clear, it is easy to smile, I feel less tension than usual around other people. I spent years working out how to get to this place, and often it comes down to routine.”

The plot jumps around a little, and at times feels a little uneven and jolting. The first third of the book centres around the girls, the accident, and the aftermath of the accident. The middle third of the book is years later when Chloe is in psychiatric care and is then working as a prostitute. The final third focuses on the girls again. The back and forth did feel a little inorganic, but the writing is beautiful and lyrical — poetic, even.

One of the toughest sections of the book is reading Chloe’s father’s diary entries from after the accident. He regained very little memories of that afternoon, and so he relies on information from others to understand what happened.

At first, they thought it was a car fault. But then after eye witness statements, it’s clear that Maurice fell asleep at the wheel. This information is incredibly difficult for him to swallow, and even in the present, he tries to find other reasons why the accident may have happened.

“We have a good day at the beach, Kris and I. I am glad Mum made him get the razor off me, but I like the little scab that is forming across my wrist. I don’t want anyone else to see it, just my parents and Kris, so they will know I need help.”

An exploration of grief, family, understanding and identity, The Girls is a devastating, harrowing read. It’d be a tough read for anyone, even if you don’t have children yourself, but the messages within its pages are important, relevant and universal.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Girls
Chloe Higgins
September 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers