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Book Review: Bones Would Rain From the Sky

Posted on 27. Dec, 2009 by admin in Dog Books, Dog Culture, Top Stories

Bones Would Rain From the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships With Dogs

STAFF REPORT
©2009 NoDogNo.com

Although “Bones Would Rain From the Sky” by Suzanne Clothier was introduced to dog lovers in 2002, perhaps time to pull this remarkable book off the shelf for a quick review. As people who have read this book would agree, its pages can be read again and again for inspiration and understanding that can deepen people’s relationships with their dogs.

Many dogs deal with how to train a dog, and their various techniques range from coercive to motivational. What’s lost in a great number of training books, which focus on rock-steady obedience or tricks, is often the relationship you should have with your dog. Most of what we read dwells on controlling a dog’s behavior or stopping a dog from being so gosh darn dog-like. This book is different.

You won’t learn to teach your dog to sit, heel, fetch or any number of tricks with this book. But if you’ve ever had a nagging feeling that the methods you’ve tried or other methods people are using are somehow not quite dog friendly, then this book may be what you’ve been longing to hear: A dog expert that tells you in breathtaking prose just how you can improve your dog’s life and behavior by focusing your energy on creating a better relationship with your dog.

After all, most of us chose to live with dogs because we want a relationship with them–even if we wanted a dog for a particular skills, such as hunting, guarding or more. Reading this book will deliver a few surprises along the way, exposing how things we do may be harming the dog as much as our relationship with the dog. Loving and nurturing owners or pack leader hopefuls can all go astray. This book delivers insight on reading a dog and building trust, but it sprinkles in plenty of real-life stories and experiences by Clothier that on their own could be the stuff of literary memoir. (Her passages about death are heartbreaking at times.)

Just when a reader might think Clothier is unreasonable in her approach, she takes a turn to discuss subjects like aggression and behavioral problems and how to balance your actions so you can incorporate tough love at times without reacting with cruelty.

In the end, we’ll each find our own way with our dogs. But this book stands as a ready guide, and those who read its pages will travel down the path with greater speed.