The Cat Whisperer [antikvár]

Prologue We have come a long way in our understanding of animals in recent years. Documentaries on wild animals have given us an insight into their natural behaviours - the reasons why they do what they do. And funnily enough, looking at the behaviour of wild animals has brought us around to looking at the behaviour of our own pet animals. This was something which was taken very much for granted for many years -wild animals were interesting; domestic animals just did our bidding. Now we know that looking at both wild and 'domesticated' animals can help us to understand both better. Pets have shared our lives for thousands of years, yet not even 20 years ago (and sometimes still now) we were using very punitive methods of dog training. Remember the first dog training programmes on the television? As a nation we were riveted and all went out and bought choke chains and said 'sit' to our dogs in high-pitched voices with the appropriate hand signals. It was still a very dominating type of training and punishment figured quite highly. Things then moved on when a new generation of 'animal behaviourists', rather than 'trainers', began to take an interest in