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Dog trainer Matthew Margolis presents a thorough series of tapes about training, caring for, and living with a dog. The set of four tapes comprises 13 half-hour installments, originally shown on PBS as a weekly series. It's easy to see how accurate Margolis's mantra of "love, praise, and affection" can be with regards to training a dog. Over and over he shows how the practice of simple and repetitive techniques, such as "the corrective jerk" and speaking in a consistent voice, plus the love, praise, and affection, results in an obedient dog. Margolis illustrates the multitude of dog personalities and breeds, showing the viewer different breeds of dogs and different personality types in each episode. He uses common human sense to intuit the dogs' personalities (hand waving to check if a dog shies away from motion, approaching a dog from different angles to ascertain if the dog feels threatened, talking to it) and then offers suggestions regarding training techniques geared toward the dog's personality. Some dogs will require a more firm approach, others a more gentle approach. Margolis takes charge of all sorts of dog problems, from lunging and barking protective dogs to dogs that constantly jump on their owners to dogs that climb fences and run off or those that run when their names are called. Often it's the owners who need more correcting than the dogs, and Margolis isn't shy about pointing this out. The training segments of Woof! are organized in a nonlinear way because of its TV-broadcast format, which could prove frustrating to an owner looking for a step-by-step guide to rearing a puppy. Plus there's plenty of doggie baby talk from Margolis when getting to know each dog, which could be grating over a long period of time. However, the series' overall jovial tone proves quite entertaining and encouraging, as does the occasional appearance of a celebrity dog owner and his or her problem dog, such as Shannon Doherty and her willful mastiff and Roger Clinton and his overprotective mixed breed. Margolis also balances out the training content with peeks into the lives of dogs and their owners. We meet Buster, the basketball-dunking golden retriever, and see owners and their dogs working out in a training gym in Los Angeles, where it would otherwise be difficult to find much open space to play. Margolis shows us loving relationships between dogs and owners and how working together with "love, praise, and affection" can indeed lead to more obedient dogs and better friendships with our pets. --Gilia Angell |
