Bibliography

(See a complete list of 31 books on the Swedish page. This will be updated.)

1. Problemhund och Hundproblem, ICA 1971/1985/1994  (Problem dogs and dog problems. 192 pages)

This book was my first and it was met with overwhelmingly positive critics. It was the first time in Europe that a psychologist wrote a book about dogs. Things like learning psychology, stress and stress factors and modern ethology were hitherto almost unknown for dog owners. Also that stress, pain and mal nutrition could be the cause of problematic behavior was new knowledge. Also the special way of analysing and curing abnormal behavior had never been recognised before. In the book there is also a section describing normal behavior, ethology, in wolves and dogs. This book has been one of the ICA Publishing Company’s best selling dog books for 25 years. It has been published in five other countries and is being translated to english to be published in North America in 1999.

2. Lyckliga Lydiga Hundar,  ICA 1974/1984/1994

(Happy, obedient dogs. 103 pages)

This is a book about obedience, but not in the traditional sense. Most books of this kind deals with obedience for competition, influenced by the military and police training of dogs. Here the focus is on every day situations for dogs and owners, situations where it is important to have a gentle, although efficient control over the dog, like in traffic, among other dogs or people, with small children and so on.

Even this was judged as a pioneering book when it first was published and was met with exellent critics and is still one of the top selling dog books on ICA. It has been called “the bibel for dog owners” and has been published in three other countries.

3. Hund och Människa, Bonniers -74/Own publishing, 1982 (Out of print) (Dog and man. 128 pages)

This is a popularised version of my thesis for my psychology exam, a study of how the environment influences a dogs behavior and a critical scrutiny of the concept of “mentality”.

Things like the attitude of the owner (emotional “warm” or “cold”), if the dog is kept in a backyard or restricted to some room or other area, is home alone most of the day, if there are more than one dog in the household, are all examples of things that are correlated to the behavior of the dog.

This also was seen as a pioneering work when it was published. Many dog owners and peolpe working professionally with pets had to revaluate old believes about environmental influences on dog behavior. Suddenly there were statistics to show how different aspects of a dogs surroundings could have a strong impact on how it behaved, many things that people simply did not know before.

The book also strongly critizised the rigid trait-concept, “mentality”. Up to this time it was common that dogs were put away with the diagnosis “mentally bad”, especially problematic dogs. They were often taken to a person who tested mental traits in dogs in order to see what was wrong. And usually a dog that was afraid, lacked self esteem or didn’t trust people scored low. So the diagnosis were: Mentally bad, nothing to do but to put the dog to sleep. After the publication of this book most mentality tests were abandoned, except for military or police purpose as a screening before buying an adult dog.

4. HIT – om ikallning och inkallningsproblem, Hunden i Fokus, 1975 (Out of print) (COME – About recall and its problems. 31 pages)

This was awarded “Dog book of the year” in 1976 by Sweden’s second largest dog magazine. It tells people the do’s and dont’s when teaching dogs to come on recall. Since this is one of the most important things to teach a dog the book was very wellcomed and the first edition was sold out rapidly.

5.  Skotträdda Hundar, Hunden i Fokus 1975/1981  (Gun shy dogs. 32 pages)

Gunshyness is more common than most people think, especially nowadays whith such an amount of firework displays on several occassions each year. Almost nothing had been written earlier about the therapy for gunshyness in dogs, exept one page in my first book.

By this time, in the middle of the seventies, people still believed that this was a hereditary deficiency and no cure was available. At the Army Dog School in Sweden they even had found out that some dogs had specific heart rates when exposed to gun shots and that this was correlated to the fear. They took this as a sign for “genetic gunshyness” and a lot of dogs were destroyed as uncureble cases. I then pointed out that the physiological reaction to stress is individual and could stop this trend.

Treating gunshyness has, according to my follow up statistics, a good prognosis. It is rather easy to teach a dog to be stable to sounds.

6. Arga Hundar , Hunden i Fokus, 1976/1981 (Aggressive dogs. 32 pages)

Aggression in animals and man has always been a complicated matter both to analyse and to cure. The dog is no exception to that. The normal “cure” for an aggressive dog was to be put down if not severe punishment had immediate effect. This was especially true if the dog was aggressive to humans.

Aggression has several causes and should be delt with in a multi-therapy way. Today aggressive dogs are no greater challenge to an animal behaviorist as long as one do not work only with the symptoms and try to punish the problem away. Looking at and working with what causes the behavior is what gives long lasting results. Mostly severe aggression is pain-, stress-, hormon- and nutrition related. The prognosis of treatment is very good.

This book was pioneering for the Scandinavian public on the topic of aggression in dogs and is said to have helped thousands of dogs and owners.

7. Idel, Ädel Avel , (Own publishing) 1985. (Pure, Noble Breeding. 35 pages)

The need for an alternativ to mental tests was more and more asked for since so many dogs got scared in the rather rough test situations. Upon request I construed a test that didn’t acted upon the dogs. One fundamental thought was that the owner knew his dog enough to be able to objectively describe it in some characteristics. From genetics we learn that a test value from one individual does not have any capacity to tell us anything about heredity of behavior. You need at least values from a whole litter (in adult age).

So this test became a very efficient tool, since it was so easy. You could call dog owners by telephone and ask the simple questions. Even in cases where the dogs were dead, the owners could give the answers.

Follow up studies showed a great fitness for use and several dog clubs and breeders praised it for the simplicity and accuracy. The report tells about the background, some critics about the standard mental testing, some genetic rules, presents the idea and the concept of the alternative and what questions that are most interesting to ask.

8. Shaping   (Own publishing) 1985/1988/1990 (Shaping. 48 pages)

Shaping is a special method and its’ originator is the world known american professor B. F. Skinner, even more known for his work on operant conditioning. The timing of reinforcement of a special behavior in a learning situation is essential. It is a matter of split seconds and the movement of for example the hand with a treat to a dog is way to slow. One way of getting the right timing is to associate the treat with a sound, perhaps from a whistle. When the dog responds in the right way, one sounds the whistle in the exact moment. Then the treat follows as soon as possible.

With this training method, dogs have learned both tricks and obediance and it is widely used in training service dogs for handicapped people. But not only that, also in correcting problematic behavior it is nowaday a very used and effective method.

9. Hundens Gyllene Regler ,  Jycke-Tryck AB1986/1989

(Golden rules of the dog. 120 pages.) (Was availabel on audiocasett)

The dog’s ancestor is the wolf and our pets still have most of their behaviors common with the forefather. But few people know about this. So a dog owner thinks his dog is aggressive when it growls because a person hugs it (closeness could be very threatening), or mentally weak when it is shy to a stranger who smiles and try to pet the dog on it’s head (These things and the intense eye contact that a person always displays in that situation are strong threat signals). Also a bitch may begin to act in a strange way, irritated and perhaps growling to anyone who comes near her bed. She is not crazy, she just thinks she have puppies, a hormon related false birth. And a dog that jumps and barks when the owners hug is not jealous, it reacts to the closeness, which could be the foreplay to a fight.

Things like these are inherited rules for social life intended to enhance the chances for survival in i hard wild life. If they are properly understood, one really understands ones dogs’ behavior. The book got exellent critics when it was published and is frequently used as a textbook in dog clubs.

10. En Jycke Betyder så mycket (research report)  Masterfoods, Malmö 1986 (A pet means so much. Research report. 36 pages)

I made a study (under supervision and support from the University of Örebro) which revealed that the feelings of dog owners to their dogs are quite comparable with parental feelings. A dog owner got just as upset and was ready to exhibit just as much force as a parent when their dogs/children was threatened. This study was presented at an international conference 1986 in Boston, Massachusetts arranged by the Delta Society, 1986

11. Lexikon i Hundspråk   (Own publishing) 1986/1988/1991  (ABC in dog language. 160 pages)

This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only book in the world that deals with all aspects of canine communication. It not only tells about how dogs communicate with a lot of mimics, gestures, sounds and smells, but also of the more subtile means of animal language, like different forms of touching, direction when nearing another dog and likewise.

So far it has been very positively recieved by the public and the critics has been overwhelmlingly good. It has been published in Germany and was 1993 the best selling book in the German publishing company (Oertel & Spörer). It was published in English (Dog House Publishing LTD, B.C., Canada) 1998.

12. Fria Hundar (samprod. m. Marie Hansson)     Jycke-Tryck AB 1987/1994  (Free dogs /coproduced with Marie Hansson Hallgren/). 118 pages

This is a book about all aspects of teaching a dog to obey though it is loose. It is not only the “come command”, it is much more. For a dog to listen to his owner when off leash, it must be taught many different things, like the “no command”, it must be taught to wait, stop, go slow, come near, go in front, go behind and several other things.

Since some dogs are more difficult than others in off leash training, the book also has a chapter that deals with things that cause problems in the training, like if a dog has exessive energy due to understimulation or some other forms of stress related problems and other things. The dog owner then does not only work with exercises that are symptom oriented, but also the causes of the problem.

This book was a hit from the day it came out and the critics were very good. Ten years after it was first published it still is a big seller.

13. Tikens Dominans, Jycke-Tryck AB 1988. (Relation between mother and pups. Research report. 37 pages)

This study actually started a lively debate around the issue on how mothers treat their puppies. One reason is that some trainers claimed that mothers are strict, severe and sometimes even aggressive against their young offspring. This assumption then lies behind their advices to dog owners to treat their dogs strict and severe.

The study showed that mothers are extremely kind to their puppies, therefore their behavior could not be taken as a justification for advices to dog owners to treat their dogs with rigorous discipline and punishments.

The study has been reported in the international ABS Newsletter (Animal Behavior Society) and has been a reference in several textbooks and magazine articles.

14. Hunden i våra hjärtan, (ICA, 1989.) From 1992: Jycke-Tryck AB (The dog in our hearts. 128 pages)

Pet animals, especially dogs, mean more to their owners than people generally know. There are today thousands of studies showing the physiological and psychological benefits from having pets. Children growing up with dogs tend to be more sociable, understanding and responsible, adult dog owners rate higher on schedules of hapiness and harmony. Elderly live longer and happier and have more friends if they have dogs. Handicapped people benefit really much, especially if they have service trained dogs. In fact the whole society benefits in different ways. Just to mention some, there are police dogs, narcotic searchers, bomb dogs, rescue dogs and guide dogs.

This book is based on one hundred references, all strong evidences that dogs do good to people and really earn the label “man’s best friend”. But it doesn’t stop with that, it also looks at man as the dog’s friend. How you should behave and how you should treat your dog to have a fine and harmonious relationship are almost half of the 128 pages dealing with.

The critics were overwhelmingly positive when it was published and the book is used in study circles and the like.

15. Kantarellsök med hund (samprod. m. Marie Hansson Hallgren) Jycke-Tryck AB 1990. (Searching chanterells with dogs /coproduced with Marie Hansson Hallgren/. 80 pages)

Dogs have enormous sensory capacities which are used in many different tasks, both for pleasure and serious work. Teaching a dog to search for chanterells has, since this book was published, become enormously popular leisure pursuit, almost the number one for many dog owners. These mushrooms are difficult to see because they usually grow in hidden places, under root systems and so on. Also in fall there are a lot of golden leaves to distract you.

After having had a lot of classes in chanterell search with dogs and owners, me and my cowriter decided to do the book. It was the one and only in the whole world and the first edition was sold out in a record of time. The book, and also talk about and showing dogs in searh for chanterells, was a subject on national TV and radio in several occassions and in almost every newspaper in Sweden. Also our neighboring countries have had coverages and reports every fall.

We estimate that you get ten times as much chanterells with a trained dog than you could find alone – and you get a ten times more happy dog – it just loves it.

16. Ryggproblem hos hund (forskn.rapport)   Eget förlag 1994. (Backproblems in dogs. Research report. 32 pages)

This study showed that it is as usual that dogs have problems related to the spinal, as we humans. In a normal population of 400 dogs there were 63% that had some sort of defect as defined by the chiropractors that were cooperating to do this piece of research. In many cases there were problematic behavior correlated to the back defect. One of the most alarming findings were that as many as 91% of the dogs that had been pulled hard on the leash, or themselves pulled hard, had defects in the neck!

The results of this study have been spred world wide and have made dog clubs change training methods and not use hard pulls on the leash any longer. Many dog owners now shift to use a harness instead of a collar (especially choke chain) to avoid hurting the neck of their dogs.

Books by Anders Hallgren – see attached

Titles translated to other languages:

1. Problem dogs and dog problems. 192 pages   Also publ. in Finland, Denmark, Norway, Germany

3. Happy, obedient dogs. 103 pages   Also publ. in Finland, Denmark, Norway
4. Dog and man. 128 pages
5. COME – about recall and its problems. 31 pages
6. Gun shy dogs. 32 pages
7. Aggressive dogs. 32 pages
8. Pure, Noble Breeding. 35 pages
9. Shaping. 48 pages   Also publ. in Finland, Denmark, Norway
10. Golden rules of the dog. 120 pages
11. A pet means so much. Research report. 36 pages
12. Dictionary in dog language. 160 pages   Also publ. in Denmark, Germany, Canada

12. Free dogs (about loosetraining)(cooproduced with Marie Hansson). 118 pages

13. Relation between mother and pups. Research report. 37 pages
14. The dog in our heart. 128 pages
15. Searching chanterells with dogs (cooproduced with Marie Hansson). 80 pages Also publ in Norway

16. Backproblems in dogs. Research report. 32 pages