Summer usually means at least a few trips to the beach or lake where you can lay back and relax with a good book. One that I am going to highly recommend is “Team Dog:How to Train Your Dog the Navy Seal Way” by Mike Ritland.

Ritland first earned his bones as a Navy Seal, parlaying that experience into a successful post military career training and selling dogs through his business, Trikos International. He gained a large following after his inaugural mission as a trainer-turned-author with the release of his book, Trident K9 Warriors, another recommended read.

This will not teach you how to train your dog to capture international terrorists, but it does have many great pointers about building better relationships with your dog. It gives the reader insight into how military handlers actually deal with and feel about the dogs in their care, painting a far different picture than one often gets about the harsh training some war dogs endured in the past. You won’t find any groundbreaking information or cutting edge theory here, just solid advice and time-tested methods to get your dog to behave a bit better packaged in an enjoyable read. I think a line from Ritland in an early chapter sums up his philosophy and the theme of the book, “…if you get your mind right and get your dog’s mind right, the right behaviors will follow.”