The Puppy Primer with Patricia McConnell: Socialization, Positive Reinforcement, Mouthing, and More

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Zazie and Kristi are joined by Patricia McConnell, PhD, to talk all about puppies as the third edition of The Puppy Primer is out now.

Zazie Todd, Patricia McConnell, and Kristi Benson chat over Zoom for The Pawsitive Post in Conversation podcast

By Zazie Todd, PhD

Listen to episode 71 of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation wherever you get your podcasts (Apple, Spotify) or below, watch on Youtube or below, or scroll down for the show notes and transcript.




The Puppy Primer (3rd edition) with Patricia McConnell, PhD

We talked about:

  •     The most important thing Patricia would like people to know about puppies
  •     Why she did a new edition of The Puppy Primer and what new things are in it
  •     How to help kids and dogs get along
  •     Whether advice on socialization has changed over the years
  •     What to do when a puppy is mouthing you
  •     Things that people are mostly getting right for dogs these days that they didn't used to in the past (and one worrying thing that might be making a comeback in some places)
  •     What it felt like to be working on the new edition
  •     A question that Patricia has for the audience
  •     And of course we asked her what she's been reading recently

This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

The Puppy Primer (3rd edition) by Patricia McConnell PhD is out now and available wherever books are sold. 

Patricia recommended 4 authors to us:


Also mentioned in this episode:


Patricia McConnell PhD is an internationally-renowned applied animal behaviourist who has dedicated her life to improving the relationship between people and animals. Amongst her many treasured dog training books, The Other End of the Leash draws our attention to the human side of dog training. Her memoir, The Education of Will, is a beautifully-written and uplifting account of how to reclaim life after trauma, for both humans and dogs. And her first novel, Away to Me, is a gorgeous mystery set in the dog world. Patricia and her husband, Jim, have two dogs and a very spoiled flock of sheep on a small farm in Southwestern Wisconsin.

Patricia McConnell's website: https://www.patriciamcconnell.com/


The conversation about puppies and The Puppy Primer

Zazie: With the advent of canine science, we now know more than ever about how important it is to socialise puppies. So what has changed over the years? Today, we're talking about all things puppies with an absolutely beloved author, Patricia McConnell, PhD, whose classic book The Puppy Primer, is just out in the new and revised third edition.

Welcome to The Pawsitive Post in Conversation. I'm Zazie Todd. I'm joined, as always, by my friend and colleague, Kristi Benson.

Hey, Kristi. Although I've interacted with many puppies, I've never actually had a puppy of my own. But I know you have. It's a special thing, isn't it?

Kristi: It's amazing. I adore puppies. I just adore them. Yeah. And they're also just exhausting. Yes.

Zazie: I think that's why I've always gone for the adult rescue dog instead.

But obviously it's a really special time. And today we're joined by Patricia McConnell, Ph.D. to talk all about puppies.

So Patricia is an internationally renowned applied animal behaviourist who has dedicated her life to improving the relationship between people and animals.

Amongst her many treasured dog training books, the Other End of the Leash draws our attention to the human side of dog training. Her memoir, the Education Of Will, is a beautifully written and uplifting account of how to reclaim life after trauma for both humans and dogs.

And her first novel, Away to Me is a gorgeous mystery set in the dog world, which we spoke to her about earlier this year. And we'll put those links in the show notes.

Patricia and her husband Jim, have two dogs and a very special flock of sheep on a small farm in southwestern Wisconsin. Thank you so much for joining us again, Patricia.

Patricia: Oh, thank you. It's just a joy to be here. You guys do such great work, so thank you. Thank you.

Zazie: We're always thrilled to chat to you. And so now there's a new edition of The Puppy Primer, which I'm going to hold up to the camera for people to see The Puppy Primer: Everything you need to know about to raise a happy, confident dog. And it's a new third edition of this book.

The cover of the third edition of The Puppy Primer has a very cute Doodle puppy sitting in a field


So let's start with the basics. What do you like to tell people about why it's so important that they help their puppy to get a good start in life?

Patricia: Yeah, you know, puppies are just, they're just like molding clay. I mean, you know, there's so much you can do for good and so much you can do, you know, create problems if you don't know.

You know, so much of who an adult dog is, is based on. It's. It's true. You know, genetics play a big role in utero development, as it turns out, plays a big role.

Really stressed females who have, who, you know, have puppies can end up with dogs who are more easily stressed. So there's a lot that goes on before we actually get the puppy, get our puppy. Right.

But when you get a puppy, you. You still have an animal who is not done developing. I mean, there's a critical period between, you know, five so weeks, 12 to 14 weeks. It's very mushy. Depends on the dog. But, but there's a time in a dog's life where it is predisposed to learn certain things.

And probably one of the most important things I think in early development is, is how a dog is raised has a profound effect on its resilience, on his ability to deal with change.

And so many behavioral problems are from dogs who are reactive or stressed and so can't deal with change, can't deal with the circumstances around them.

So this is an opportunity, one to help your dog's brain and physiology to develop in the healthiest of all possible ways.

But it's also, this is the time where you create a relationship with hopefully a dog you're going to have for 12, 15, 16 years. Right. More longer, even if we're really lucky, which is rare.

But, but, but there's so much influence you can have a dog, you can have on a puppy in terms of who do they see you as? Do they see you as somebody to be cautious about, somebody to be afraid of, somebody to ignore? Right.

Or somebody who they can trust, who does everything they can to help, to help them understand sort of the way the world works and the way to fit into the family.

So you can create a lifetime of joy or a lifetime of sort of frustration and struggle just in those first couple of months. That's, you know, that's a pretty big deal.

Kristi: Yeah, absolutely. It does.

It can feel like a lot in the moment, I think, is something that Often you hear from somebody, if they have a puppy, they're like, oh, it's so much. But I think everybody who's in the dog training world is just like, oh, man, it passes so fast.

Like, it. It's gone so fast. Just hold onto it and let yourself be awash in all things puppy. I think.

Patricia: Yeah, I love that. Awash. I love that, you know, it is.

I mean, I think, you know, I don't like comparing dogs to kids in some ways, because I think that can be really problematic. They're dogs, right? They're not little young people.

But nonetheless, I think there are similarities, and one is that it's exhausting, as I said earlier, but it's also got the greatest joys imaginable. I mean, watching a little puppy discover life for the first time and watching them learn to play with other dogs, and they're just so unbelievably cute and adorable.

You're sort of flooded with the right amount of oxytocin all the time.

So it is exhausting, and it's wonderful. I will.

I have chosen. I will not have a puppy again. I've had a. I've had plenty of puppies, and. And so I, you know, I miss.

You know, I will miss some of the joys of that, but I also just feel like I'm not in the right place, right. You know, to be who I want to be for a puppy.

So it's wonderful and it's tiring, but it's absolutely worth it if it's the right place and time for you,

Kristi: for sure. So what is it that made you decide to do a new edition? This is the third, and I would actually be curious, like, what changed from the first to the second and the second to the third? What made it time?

Patricia: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's been. It's been 16 years since it was last revised, and it's been over 25 years since Brenda Syd Moore and I wrote the first version of The Puppy Primer.

25 years. Think about that.

That's an entire generation. Think about how much has changed in the dog world and the world. Just everything, right? So it just. It was just time.

Like, you know, I really got, like, I'm either gonna either not put it out there or I'm gonna change a little bit. But I have to tell you, when I decided to go back and read it,

I did want to revise it, and we can talk later about what I changed.

But just to be really honest, I also was like, damn, this was pretty good.

There's a lot in there. I'm really. That really hasn't changed in 25 years. 

You know, there's an emphasis on positive reinforcement in the book that's just really clear and I just feel really, really happy about.

But I think part of why it's been valuable to people is that it's a combination of things. So it's a combination of general topics like house trading and great training and socialization and.

But it's also, it's like a six week program. So week one, this is what you're going to start with. And then week two, you're going to build on. This is how you build on that, you know. And then week three, this is how you introduce another exercise and this is how you build on those.

And so, so it's sort of two things. It's sort of general, like general puppy topics. And it's also a training guide and I know a lot of people use it in their puppy classes, which is, you know, very.

That makes me really happy because it's a, it's a great way to sort of help people bring, move along. Because I think one of the hardest things about if you're not in the dog training world is you can get started, but then what, you know, and what's next? And you know, there's, there's so much advice that I see and just a whole range of things. It's not just dog training.

They sort of tell you how it happens on computer stuff all the time. They tell you how to get started and then if something doesn't go the way they say it's going to go, you're just stuck, right?

If you do this, this will happen. Except it didn't happen. So now what do you do? So that's addressed succinctly but as thoroughly as possible in a book that does it, that is not 400 pages because who would read that, right?

Zazie: So you've alluded to some of the things that you change, but I am wondering if you could please give us an example of something that is new in this edition.

Patricia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There, there, there are several things. So one of, one of the biggest ones that I'm the happiest about is as I mentioned, I talked about positive reinforcement and I talked about markers.

I talked about using clickers. That was when everybody had a clicker, right? 25 years ago everybody had a clicker.

So I talked some about markers, but.

And I talked about positive reinforcement.

But in this book I spent a lot of time thinking about how do I Succinctly and clearly explain to people the difference in the appropriate use of cues. You know, what are cues, right? What?

She told me to think about what exactly they're saying to communicate to their dogs, because that's their biggest problem, right? You know, people just say, come, and then they say, come here, and then they say, here, here. Then they say the dog's name. My favorite, right? You know, Maggie.

Maggie read my mind, right?

So I talk about cues, and I talk about markers, and I talk about positive reinforcement and how positive reinforcement sounds so simple. But it's not, because it's easy to think you're doing something the dog loves when actually you love it and the dog hates it. It's actually punishment.

So I'm really. I redid that section, and I. And I'm really happy with it. I think it's as clear as it could be in the, you know, amount of time I had to work on it.

So that's one of the changes I'm really, really happy about.

Another one that I worked on is, well, like, I introduced some new exercises like touch, right?

So in there now is to teach your dog touch, which I think is just a really valuable. Valuable cue. It's so easy to train.

It's really easy to train, and it gives you the ability to sort of direct your dog around in space. So I love having that in.

There's something I change. There's a third thing. There's more. More than three things. But one of the things I wanted to mention today, one of the things I thought really hard about that I changed is what to do about puppy biting, right?

So in. In the earlier versions, I talked about yelping. So if a puppy is, you know how, as they do, right? You're getting mouthed by a puppy.

So in the earlier versions, what I suggested is you yelp. And I love that because it's salient. I love cues or communication that is salient to a dog. And that's not. Doesn't happen often enough, right? I mean, it's hard, right? You can't bark. You can't use scent, right?

So I love yelping because it's salient. I mean, they have learned that if their litter mate yelps, it means play is over. Usually it doesn't necessarily mean the puppy understands that you've been hurt, but it means the play is over, right? So it's a really salient signal.

However, here's what I've learned in the years since.

It's really easy for us to do. Zazie can do it. Kristi can do it. I can do it.

But it's also easy to do wrong. It's too easy to do wrong.

Kids overdo it Sometimes people turn into a big, harsh kind of positive punishment fire. You know, it's like. Yeah, it's just. It. It just takes a little bit of thoughtfulness and sort of training your own voice in your body, I think, to do it right.

So I changed that, and I basically just changed it to just withdrawing, like, play is over.

So you get it. You know, you get a puppy who's just like, obsessed with nipping on you, which they often come because that's all they'd had to play with, right?

Mostly they'd have their litter mates to play with. So that's what they want to play. Well, why wouldn't they want to play with you? So they do, and it's really common.

But what is hard to mess up? Because we're all human, right? We all mess up all the time.

It's hard to mess up is just like, play over, right?

So you get, you know, you get a nip, and it's just like, you just leave. It's just over. Play is over. And you leave your puppy sort of sitting there like, what happened? Right?

So that's what I write about in this book, and I like it better because as much as possible, we want to have instructions to people who are not in the dog world like we are, that are as foolproof as possible.

So that's one of the changes I made that I think makes the book better. I'm happy with it.

Kristi: I think. You mentioned kids being maybe not tricky to train, but kids maybe started doing things that we wouldn't expect of adults yet. And I can definitely think of instances where I've seen that in action.

So that sort of leads into. Our next question is about family. So a lot of families with young kids, especially get puppies.

I see it. And this is something that maybe it's sort of salient just to us as dog trainers, because we're like, oh, my goodness, you have a young human puppy, and now you're getting a puppy.

Puppy. Like, it's. It can be a lot. Right. So what's your advice on helping children get along with the puppy?

Patricia: Yeah, there's a section in there in the. In the. The Puppy primer that I think is really important, because you're right. So many people who have young kids, this is the time to have them grow up with a dog. You know, that has happened in my own family.

My niece has three Boys. And she wanted them to grow up with a dog. And so they got a new dog.

And I saw a video of them teaching the dog to sit.

And it just come. The dog hadn't been there very long. And the three boys are surrounding this little puppy, and all three of them are going, sitting, sit, sit, sit. Because they're kids, right?

So one of the things I talk about is actually the first and most important thing that I think I want to mention is I talk about not letting children, and we can debate about the age, but not letting young children be unsupervised with a young dog, period, at all.

And this is not popular because when I say supervise, I mean eyes on. I do not mean you're in the room watching tv. I do not mean you're scrolling social, right? I mean, you're literally eyes on.

Because kids just don't know. You can't expect them to know. How would they know what scares a dog? How? You know, and kids do tend to scare dogs because they just come on really strong.

They can be loud, they can be. Their movements can be sort of unpredictable.

And they just do not know that what they do might scare the dog and might lead eventually to some kind of defensive aggression. So I talk about that.

I talk about ways that kids can interact with their dog, right?

So one of the things that I think is really important is that kids is that I love it when kids have a relationship with the dog.

One of the things I even threw out was this idea of, like, if you have several kids,

why don't you teach each of them get to teach the dog a special trick. So it's like, it's their trick, right?

So it's sort of their thing, and, you know, they get to do it.

And how to play, how to let kids play with your dogs, I think is so important because what do dogs love to do? Chase. What do kids love to do? Be chase, right. Or chase dogs.

And so. So chase is so important to avoid sort of both ways.

I mean, how many dogs get. I mean, I know tons of adults who do this. I can't tell you how many clients I had. And I have friends who did it. So their way of playing with a dog was that they would chase their dog and the dog would chase them.

They would chase their dog, which just sounds really fun. Except when you go to catch, ask your dog to come when you need to put it away, when you need to go work, when you need to do whatever, put it on a leash, and you sort of move towards them and they start to run away because you've taught them that when you move towards them, that's what they do, is they run away.

So how to play games. Really, really important.

And how to help the puppy learn that it's not that kids aren't litter mates. Right. That you don't chew on them and how to help your kids sort of work through that.

So there's a lot of potential problems with kids and dogs. One of. I don't know if you. Had you seen Steve Dale's new book, Ask the Dog?

It's about greeting unfamiliar dogs. And that's the last thing I wanted to say that I mentioned in the book is that children need to learn, adults need to learn the appropriate ways to greet unfamiliar dogs. And Steve's book, Ask the Dog, you know, it's a. It's a book for children. It's really well done. It's basically.

It's not just. And I know he told me that part of what motivated him is it's always like, ask the owner. Right? Ask the owner. Is it okay? And his point is, no, ask the dog. Learn to, you know, teach children to learn to read dots, which is like, yay. Like, really, really great. So. 

But kids and dogs, like, the cutest, most adorable thing on earth or, you know, hell on a piece of toast, you choose.

Zazie: It's nice that you mentioned Steve's book, too, because we were very lucky we got to speak to Steve about Ask the Dog. So that was a really fun conversation.

Yeah, I'll put that link in the show notes.

So you mentioned. It's. I can't believe it. But 25 years since the first edition of this book, and

Patricia: you came. I'm very old.

Zazie: You came into dog training as a scientist, and the science of what we know about dogs has kept on changing over the years. So how has your advice on socialization changed over the years?

Patricia: Oh, that's, you know, that's a really interesting question. And it hasn't.

I don't, you know, I should go back and look. But in the. It doesn't change in the book.

So basically. So here's my take on that. Is that.

And I worry about this a lot because I see socialization being one misdefined, but also mostly done in a way that actually causes problems rather than prevents them.

So in the earlier versions, I made a really big point that socialization is not flooding. Right? It's not swamping your dog. It's not taking your dog to the farmer's market or to the dog park and having him sort of overwhelmed with tons and tons of stimuli.

So, you know, in this version, I might have tweaked it a little bit, but I don't think very much because I've always been somebody who was like, no, no, no, no, no.

Do not introduce your puppy to 100 new people right in the next two weeks. No, no, no, no, no. That's too much.

Puppies need one. They need a secure attachment base.

So, you know, Kristina Spaulding talks a lot. She gave a talk I can't wait to hear at that Cana's conference that wrapped up a little bit ago. I wasn't able to see her talk, but I know she's talked about attachment, different kinds of attachment, and how important secure attachment bases are.

So, one, a puppy needs a secure attachment base. So they need to know you are there for them. So you take them somewhere new where they've never been, and it smells different and maybe there's noises puppy's never heard.

You are there, right? You're not constraining the puppy, but you're there. The puppy knows you are there. It has a secure attachment base.

And added onto that, what's really important is to.And I'm going to use socialization the way it's used, which is actually mystified, but that's okay. It's basically a lot of times when people talk about socialization, they're talking about not just teaching dogs who their social partners are, you know, other dogs, and that members of our species are a part of their family, too.

But it's often used to talk about getting your dog out and about so that they are comfortable, they are habituated, they are used to.

They are used to sights and sounds that you don't necessarily have in your home. Right.

So what's important is to do that in this gradual way. So you don't take your dog to a dog park where they can, you know, like sort of the mosh pit of what's happening at the gate, right?

So they get overwhelmed by seven dogs or 15 dogs. That's the last thing you want to do. You might, you know, you know what? You. I've actually suggested some of my clients do this.

You could go to the dog park, and then you stay in the parking lot and you let your dog look out the window. Or you take your dog on a walk somewhere sort of away from the fence where all the dogs gather when people come in, Right.

You gradually expose them to things that are new and different, and you watch them really carefully. How are they doing how are they reacting?

And it's okay. As we well know, for tons of really good research on the physiology of stress.

Kristina Spalding is another great person. She is the queen of understanding about stress in dogs.

Is that a little bit of stress early on in development is actually really good because it teaches your brain and your physiology about how to.

About sort of when you get sort of knocked off a balance. You know, being stressed is when there's this sort of range of.

Of what's called homeostasis, where, like, inside this range, this is where your brain and your body and your physiology sort of like, this is normal, and it gets bumped off of normal.

You know, whether it's just like you get really hot or all of a sudden you're sort of overwhelmed.

What's important is that you, you know, is. Is the. The physiology in the brain of an individual is able to come back, right? So you could like, oh, I bounced off, but I came back.

It's like a really healthy rubber band, but if you go too far, the rubber band breaks or you do it too much, it gets brittle, and then it's hard for the dog to come back. So it always ends up living out here.

So it's really important to let your dog experience some kind of minor stress. Like, I'm in a new place and this is real, and I'm a little weird and a little nervous, but it's okay because my attachment figure is here and I'm not completely overwhelmed.

And I ended up having a good time or we had did something else. So I haven't really changed on that. I've always felt like it's really important, but it's sometimes, far too often, in my opinion, done incorrectly.

So I don't know. What about you guys? Is there a trend I've missed?

Zazie: No, I don't think so.

I feel like we know more about how important the things we already knew are. Kind of. It's like everything we've learned has emphasized how important it is not to flood puppies and to make sure they get this wide range of experience.

That's what I feel like, anyway.

Patricia: Yeah. Kristi, what about you?

Kristi: Yeah, same as what Zazie's saying.

I think the big thing is sharing and educating about good practice, about how important it is. And I think we went through a tricky time in Covid, and I think.

And I would be maybe interested even in speaking to sociologists about this, but saying how was like, sort of the. Oh, God, this happened during COVID How has that helped us as practitioners to be like, here's why that happened, and here's maybe what we need to be doing different or better or.

Patricia: Yeah, that's really interesting question. We could have a whole other talk about that. Although I don't have a book on it. I don't even know what book there would be. But I truly believe we have not begun to understand the effect of COVID on our species.

Zeitgeist. You know, and certainly we know. I mean, all of us know of dogs who. You know, puppies who never got out and about for a year. Right. Because nobody felt like they could and suffered for it. Right.

But I mean, that's a really good point.

And the other effect of COVID is that a lot of people got puppies, weren't used to having dogs. And that's a whole other conversation. How are you going to tease that apart?

Kristi: Yeah, for sure. And then just the explosion of. Of breeding, too, that seemed to happen, you know, like it was.

Or maybe it didn't, but it. You know, that. That's the sense you get from looking at the new. Yeah.

So we're talking about these changes over 25 years, and there has been,

I think, positive changes in how people interact with their pets over the past couple of decades.

So what improvements are you seeing sort of in how people care for their puppies? What are people getting? Right. But now that maybe they didn't in the past?

Patricia: Yeah, there's been a lot good. There's just. There's been so much good. Um, it's really heartening our industry. You know, our. The field of canine behavior and training has. Has just made so much progress.

And so, you know, one of the things that I think is just profoundly better is our baseline knowledge of how to communicate with a dog. Basically, I sort of get back to cues, markers, and reinforcement of understanding.

And I think this is not as pervasive as I would love it to be, but I think we met a lot of strides in people understanding that dogs are not disobeying you because they want to be dominant.

They are not disobeying you because they're jerks or they're stupid.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk about, well, he's just trying to get me, you know, a lot of dialogue. Well, he just wants to be dominant. It's like, no, I don't think that's relevant.

No. And I. So I think, in general,

I think the word has gotten out more and more and more in a really good way, that dogs are just confused, you know, Dogs are. We are very different species and we tend to focus on voice a lot and words a lot.

And dogs focus, certainly they can learn words, they can learn, you know, total intonation is really important to them. I did a whole PhD on that.

But there's just, there's so much to learn about. There's so much to learn about what's going on inside the mind of a dog.

Right. You know, and of course we don't know, but we're doing our best.

And I think the whole switch of perspective is like, why is the dog doing that? And I think most importantly, in 25 years. Well, as importantly is not stop doing that. The focus on, like, no, don't do that. But the focus on, well, what do I want them to do?

What do I want my dog to do? And, you know, and I've, I mean, a lot of us Talked about that 25 years ago, but I think that perspective has gained a lot of attention and. Which is wonderful, you know, which is great.

So one of the other good things that we need a lot more of, and this was talked about a lot at Canis. I'm actually writing a blog mentioning it right now is an understanding that our dogs lives have changed profoundly in the last, what, 30, 40 years, 50 years, my case, 60 years.

So if you're as old as I am, you could you remember when you had a dog and you got up in the morning and you fed your dog and then you let it out the door, Right?

That's what we did with Fudge, our little terrier mix. We Fudge, you know, woke up with Fudge, fed her, we ate our breakfast. And then when I went to school, Fudge went outside and said goodbye to me at the school bus.

And then when I came home, sometimes Fudge was there, sometimes Fudge wasn't. Nobody was worried.

Fudge had to come back, I had to come back, and Fudge had to come back before dark. That was it. That was the rules.

So we had dogs with all this agency and autonomy, meaning they were able to do what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it. And we know in human psychology, not being able to do that is a form of torture. I mean, everybody. I am lucky to have never been in prison, but people who have been, I have worked with prisoners and the thing they talk about the most when they get out is that they can have a soda when they want one.

They can go to the. They can do what they want to do when they want to do it.

And I think that's incredibly important for dogs. And our dogs have lost it, a lot of it in this country.

One of the great things that came out about at the CANIS conference that I was just at in Schaumburg, Illinois, was talking about this issue and comparing a dog in street dog in India, a family dog in the UK and a family dog here in the US and the consensus, and I'm just going to skip over like an hour and a half worth of really interesting conversation, was that the dogs in the U.S. in some regard, had the lowest level of welfare because their lives are so constrained.

They're always on leash. Right. They are expected to fit into our lives as human lives in ways they didn't used to be expected to do.

So even though, I mean, it's wonderful people doing so many great things with the drugs, which is wonderful. Yay. You know, agility and freestyle and this. I mean, it's great. Right.

And yet so many dogs are never outside off leash. Right.

And they are in other countries anyway. So one of the things I think we need to work on in this country is changing the culture and the laws, because I think our dogs need it. I think a lot of the reactivity you see in this country that you don't see in the UK, for example, is because dogs are so constrained.

But the other thing I wanted to mention with this question is that so much has gotten better. I mean, I think we're so much better at training our dogs. I think our dogs are getting activities that are great that they've never gotten before, which are wonderful.

But there's also. There's a pendulum that is swinging in a really not great way.

Here where I live in southern Wisconsin, there are a raft of training businesses now that have just cropped up, especially since COVID frankly, there are a lot of really slick, cool videos of people who will take your dog for two to three weeks for three to $5,000, and they will train them and they'll come back trained, and it's a little extra for you to have any time learning what they did.

And the electric collar is more money too, Right.

There is a pendulum swinging where dominance is sort of back and our colors are back.

And that's very, very distressing to many of us. And it's not just where I live, it's all around the country.

So that's something that is not good news about things that have changed.

And it's something we all need to be aware of and work really hard to counteract, I think.

Zazie: Yeah, we we definitely need to work hard to counteract that because of the risks to the dog's welfare and the risks to the human dog relationship if people are using those outdated methods.

And it's very distressing that this is a conversation we still have to keep having, but we need to keep having it because it's so important for dogs and for people who have dogs.

So we won't shut up about it. We'll keep talking about it.

Patricia: No, we are not. We are not. Who knew?

Zazie: No. But although we could talk about puppies all day and would absolutely love to, we also have to ask a writing question.

So if that's okay. So we would like to know, what did it feel like working on revising this manuscript?

Patricia: It was harder than I thought it was.

It was really fun.

I mean, there was a great deal of joy with it because it was really fun to talk to a lot. Even I don't teach puppy classes. I haven't done that in years. So it was really fun to talk to my friends and colleagues about what's up with you and what are you doing?

And, you know, I had people read the older versions and make comments. It was really fun to sort of get back into that.

But it was also. It was. You guys. It was really hard to find my voice because I've been writing fiction for six years, right? I've been. I write my blog and I write fiction.

So my blog is nonfiction. But it's different than writing a training book or any kind of a guide.

And most of my time has been working on learning to write fiction, which is really fun and really hard.

So I had to switch my. What is my voice? Who am I? What voice do I have here? Because I not only had to switch to nonfiction, but I had to fit it into the Voice I had 16 years ago.

You know, I originally wrote the Puppet Primer with Brenda Scidmore over 25 years ago.

And so there's a voice in that book and I wasn't rewriting the entire thing. So there's a voice in that book I had to find again.

And that took a while. It really did. It took a while.

I am thrilled with the fact that it's now published by Little Creek Press, which is a woman owned local publishing house. They're just literally half an hour away from me. They're wonderful women. They're wonderful people.

And it's just really fun to have this very cool woman owned business that does really good things, that publishes local authors.

It just sort of feels like established in place now. You know, it feels really good and I am not objective, but I have to tell you, I think they did a fabulous job.

It is a gorgeous book and they did a wonderful job helping to design it and typeset it.

And I am sorry, but I want the dog on the COVID of that book. It is the cutest dog that ever lived. I want that dog. That is a Walt Disney dog.

Anyway, so it was harder than I thought it would be. But it was also really fun in a way I didn't realize it would be.

Zazie: That's really cool. Thank you. And so it's available wherever books are sold so people can go out and get it to help them with their puppies and we

Patricia: Can I interrupt. I'm so sorry, but I have a question related to it.

One of the things I have to decide as an author is is it worth my money? Because it's quite expensive to turn the book into an audiobook. So there's an audio version of The Puppy Primer, the older version now.

So if your readers, if your readers, if your listeners would just chime in and just, you know.

Yeah, I just, I'm trying to decide if it's worth it because it is really expensive for me.

So the question is not would you like an audio version? It's would you buy an audio version?

Zazie: Would you buy it? Yes. So people can. 

Patricia: I'd love to know. Yeah, I'd really love to know.

Zazie: People can write in and let us know. If you're listening on your podcast app. You can literally just hit send us a fan mail and let let us know. Yes. Audiobook or no audiobook, if you're watching on YouTube, you can leave us a comment below. And of course you can look Patricia up on her website and contact her direct. And in a moment, I'm going to ask her to tell us how to learn more about her and find those details.

But I have another question first because we always like to ask our guests to recommend a book to us. And I'm actually really curious to know whether you're going to recommend some fiction or some non fiction tours, because I know you, you know, you read both, you write both.

So what have you been reading recently that you loved?

Patricia: So I refuse to keep it to one book.

So if I'm breaking the rules, I don't care. You can just stop the microphone because you have all the power.

Kristi: I'll mute you.

Patricia: You can mute me and just have me just do this?

Zazie: No, I love it when people pick more than one book.

Patricia: Okay, good, good, good. Okay, so nonfiction,

I Am loving Kim Brophey's Meet yout Dog. I don't know if you've had her on. If you talk to her, she talks about LEGS.

So, you know, what are the. What are the things you need to learn about your dog? You need to learn how they learn. You need to learn the environment they're living in.

You need to learn their genetics. You know, who are they? She has a big section on different types of dogs, sort of what they're predisposed to.

And then the S. I love the S is self.

Who is your dog? What is inside there? You know, every dog is different. Every dog's an individual.

She also, Kim Brophey is a big advocate for more agency with dogs. But anyway, I'm really loving that book. I highly recommend it.

But of course, I'm reading fiction right now. I am reading.

Her name is. Oh, Ann Cleeves.

Ann Cleeves is a fabulous United Kingdom writer. She's the one who wrote the books that the TV series Shetland was based on.

I'm rereading the first book of her, Matthew Venn. That's the name of her detective series called the Long Call.

She's just beautiful writer and her plotting is fabulous. So right now I'm reading her. But.

But I just want to advocate for two other brilliant fiction writers who I could never write as well as. But I aspire.

So one is Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment. She's absolutely brilliant. And the other is Tana French. I mean, I just like, I kiss the hem of their skirts or their pants or whatever they have on. I just. I worship the ground I walk on because now I know how hard it is to write good fiction now.

And they are brilliant at it. So, you know, I could just spend the next six months lying on a couch, petting my dogs, reading books, but that won't happen. But there's a lot of great stuff out there.

Zazie: It sounds perfect. So I wish it could happen. I kind of would like to do that, too.

Patricia: I think we all need to do that, frankly.

Zazie: I think so. So you've given us some great recommendations there. Thank you. And if people want to learn more about you, where should they go?

Patricia: Oh, thank you for asking. They can just go to my website and it's pretty easy. You just go to patriciamcconnell.com and there's. There's information about my books.

There's a learning center that I'm really proud of and that's sort of working on it right now. Lots of.

It's all free articles, videos, all kinds of things that can help you learn about your dog.

And there's also section contact me. So if you want to get a hold of me, you can get a hold of me through that. So thank you for asking to remember my name. And there I am.

Zazie: Perfect. Thank you. And I'll put those links in the show notes and a link to The Puppy Primer, which is a classic now in its third edition and available wherever books are sold. So thank you so much for coming to talk to us about it. It's always a pleasure to chat with you.

And I'm also going to put in the show notes links to our previous conversations with you. And I also want listeners to know that there is another conversation upcoming after this is aired because we had the pleasure of hearing Patricia in conversation with Kat Warren at Barkfest and that recording will be appearing on the podcast probably in February of next year.

So stay tuned and look out.

Patricia: That'll be so fun. Yeah. Thank you.

Zazie: Yeah, it's.

Patricia: Go on.

Zazie: It really was fun. It's always fun to chat with you. So thank you.

Patricia: Well, I'm just interrupting you with effusive praise for the work you do. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.

Zazie: Thank you. Oh, thank you. So today I'd like to give a special shout out to our listeners in Tucson, Arizona. We're really glad to have you here with us.

Patricia: I grew up in Tucson. Hi, Tucson.

Zazie: So hi to everybody there and wherever you're listening from. Thank you for being with us. If you've enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend about it so that they can enjoy it too.

And we will see you next time. Bye

Kristi: Bye everyone.


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