More Advice and Comments About
Dog Behaviour and Training

Here are 28 more quotes about dog behaviour and training. Some of them are from professional dog trainers. Others are quips from comedians. Others still are comments and anecdotes about dogs.

There are two other pages of quotations about behaviour and training. Click on the links at the bottom of the page to view them.

But ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee.

Job 12:7

Guests.

Guests are people who come to your home to see you whine at the table, bark loudly, jump on women wearing pantyhose, and do other tricks which you wouldn't think of doing just for the family.

Peg Kehret,
The Doggie Dictionary

We had a dog who was named Pushinka, who was given to my father by a Soviet official. And we trained that dog to slide down the slide we had in the back of the White House. Sliding the dog down that slide is probably my first memory.

John F. Kennedy, Jr. (Pushinka, a descendant of the first dog in space, was x-rayed by the CIA to check for implanted spying devices before being handed over to the Kennedy children)

She is such a scene-stealer. She's got these lashes and big eyes, and when she walks on to the set everybody just says "ooh."

Greg Kinnear, about the dog Jill, who played Verdell in As Good As It Gets

When I played Lady Day, I took Aba onstage with me as a joke. He started singing—in tune!—and the audience loved it.

Eartha Kitt, when asked what tricks her poodle did

Intelligent dogs rarely want to please people whom they do not respect.

William R. Koehler

The small percentage of dogs that bite people is monumental proof that the dog is the most benign, forgiving creature on earth.

William R. Koehler,
The Koehler Method of Dog Training

The dog is like a liberal. He wants to please everybody.

William Kunstler

The next-door neighbors had a German police dog that... acts as a bodyguard for the lady of the house and one day we was over there and the host says to slap his Mrs. on the arm and see what happened so I slapped her on the arm and I can still show you what happened.

Ring Lardner

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.

Doug Larson

Nothing but love has made the dog lose his wild freedom, to become the servant of man.

D.H. Lawrence

A Canadian psychologist is selling a video that teaches you how to test your dog's IQ. Here's how it works: if you spend $12.99 for the video, your dog is smarter than you.

Jay Leno

Mutts are often better to work with. Sometimes, some of the breed dogs get hyper and have lots of health problems. Mutts are just great!

Betty Linn, animal trainer, referring to the collie mix Maui, who was Murray on Mad About You

The only food he has ever stolen has been down on a coffee table. He claims that he genuinely believed it to be a table meant for dogs.

Jean Little

And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down.

Jack London

There's not much you can do with a terrier, ma'am.

Los Angeles dog trainer

Your dog will look at you when you are worth looking at.

Sam Malatesta 
(Thanks to Lauren of Louisville KY for providing this quote.)

We are pretty sure that we and our pets share the same reality, until one day we come home to find that our wistful, intelligent friend who reminds us of our better self has decided a good way to spend the day is to open a box of Brillo pads, unravel a few, distribute some throughout the house, and eat or wear all the rest. And we shake our heads in an inability to comprehend what went wrong here.

Merrill Markoe

Hardly any animal can look as deeply disappointed as a dog to whom one says "no."

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Humans have externalized their wisdom—stored it in museums, libraries, the expertise of the learned. Dog wisdom is inside the blood and bones.

Donald McCaig

Whenever I hear a dog continually barking, my reaction is one of relief—that it's not my dog making all that racket and inciting the neighbors to call the police.

John McCarthy

Show me a dog who still cannot perform a task after it has been trained over and over again, and I'll tell you who the slow learner is.

Barry McDonald

Most owners are at length able to teach themselves to obey their dog.

Robert Morley

To Tom Carlson or his dog—depending on whose taste it best suits.

Ogden Nash (inscription he wrote on the second copy of his book for Carlson. Carlson's dog chewed the first copy.)

Because of Diamond, I have had to begin much of the work afresh. I will not, however, rid myself of her, nor even punish her. She knew not what she was doing, and that which she did was for my protection and for love of my person. Her place remains at my side or against my feet when I lie abed.

Sir Isaac Newton, about his Pomeranian Diamond's attempt to guard him from a stranger at the door. Diamond knocked over a candle, burning all of Newton's papers, including his writings on the law of gravity.

No dog is as well bred or as well mannered or as distinguished and handsome.

Eugene O'Neill, writing about Blemie, his Dalmatian

Why, that dog is practically a Phi Beta Kappa. She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw—I don't say she will, but she can.

Dorothy Parker

When the dog is repeatedly teased with the sight of objects inducing salivary secretion from a distance, the reaction of the salivary glands grows weaker and weaker and finally drops to zero.

Ivan Pavlov

Behaviour & Training, Page 1 | Behaviour & Training, Page 3