Pet Books

The Nature Aquarium World set is excellent. I bought book 3 first and it was for large to gigantic planted aquariums. Book 2 starts with miniature tanks and goes up to medium size tanks. It provides a good variety of planting ideas with a list of plants, fish and accessories needed to recreate each design. The pictures are stunning.

If it were not for the goldfish bowl, this book would receive 5 stars from me because, in every other way, the book serves its purpose very well. The validity of the goldfish bowl is a dangerous notion to perpetuate and I was disappointed that an expert, who serves as a role model and who must love nature so much, would not have more respect for it than to perpetuate such a known erroneous practice.

Goldfish should never be kept in bowls. The smallest goldfish reach softball size when kept in healthy conditions and need twice the tank size for a similar biomass of smaller fish. In such a bowl, the fish would be dead in a matter of hours from suffocation due to lack of oxygen. In slightly larger (but still small tanks), their growth would be stunted, their immune systems compromised, and their lifespan greatly reduced due to the inability of the system to carry the large load of ammonia excreted by these fish. Although survival in small tanks is possible, with frequent, large water changes, the quality of life would be dismal for these beautiful cratures and completely inhumane. I hope Takashi Amano takes responsibility, changes his ways and stops perpetuating bad practices that so many other responsible aquarists have been working hard for so long to change.

Aside from the goldfish bowl, I think the book is fabulous. I have been an advanced aquarist since 1994 (have worked in fish stores, owned a fish maintenance and design business and have a degree in marine biology) and have read (and own) most of the plant books on the market. This book, as well as his others, are not meant for beginners (or even intermediate users) in search of a solid how-to manual. Better sources for that would be The Dynamic Aquarium: Building Living Ecosystems (by Adey and Loveland) or Peter Hiscock's 2 books, Encyclopedia of Aquarium Plants and Aquarium Designs Inspired by Nature or The Ecology of the Planted Aquarium by Diana Walstad.

But, if you are a beginner looking for inspiration or scope of what is possible, this is a good beginner book. I suspect that majority of aquarists who actually get a lot of practical use from these books are those who can readily take the data from each photo and put it to good use. Amano's books, if used as such, assume the aquarist has an advanced understanding of lighting, water chemistry, nutrient balances, biological filtration, fish behavior, etc. For advanced aquarists, these books are invaluable in that they supply tested permutations that can be immediately applied. This saves the hobbyist much experimentation when it comes to combinations of plant placement, relative to CO2 levels and lighting and nutrient regimes.

In my opinion, this book is not required for beginners, although they can certainly learn from and enjoy it. But, it is required for any advanced plant-loving aquarist. I would highly recommend it for anyone who loves aquariums or appreciates the natural world.

To quote someone else's review... this book makes a good paperweight and has nice pictures. Also a waste of money.

This book has gorgeous photographs of amazing aquariums. It`s not as intructional as I`d hoped but it`s an excellent book.

One buys this book for the pictures. They deserve five stars. I am using this book for inspiration as to what can be achieved with nano and micro tanks.

The shortcomings of this book are only to blame this book for being what it is not and what it does not claim to be. It does not claim to be a 'how to' book, though I believe many readers (me included) wish it WAS a 'how to' book. As such, one can continue moaning about how inaccurate the scientific names of plants are; how little information there is on planting, propagating and maintaining the plants; what the mineral contents of the substrate and fertilizers are; what the light spectrum and intensity is; etcetera...

So, although I love the book. I'm going to minus one star for the lousy reason that it isn't what I want it to be.

My kids love the Henry and Mudge Books. Each Story is Wonderful and worth reading over and over again.

Henry and Mudge in the Sparkle Days

Henry and Mudge enjoy the winter season in this delightful collection of three short stories. The words are easy and the type is large enough for the beginning reader to feel comfortable. This book is filled with humorous illustrations that extend the text. In one illustration Henry is sliding a reluctant Mudge across an icy pond. In another picture Mudge messes up Henry's snow angel. This is a good book for the younger set.

This is a beautiful, full color book, that tells you everything you have ever wanted to know about the beautiful Cats at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

You can always tell the true animal lovers from the "posers".

The true animal lovers are 100% No-Kill.

If it is not No-Kill, it's not a true "shelter". (www.nokillblog.com)


Best Friends operates the world's largest No-Kill Sanctuary for all kinds of animals.

When so called "animal welfare" groups like PETA, The HSUS, ASPCA, etc, all called for the Michael Vick dogs to be murdered, Best Friends was there to save them...and they have made fantastic progress and many are now ready or soon will be ready for loving families.

Best Friends does the same for Cats. Recently, Best Friends rescued 800 cats from an abusive, neglectful situation, and many of those cats are now in loving homes, with their very own families, free to live, love and be loved.
Now THAT is what I call an animal welfare group!

That's how you know who the true Best Friends to animals are!

The precious souls who come into the care of Best Friends Animal Society are in very good hands, indeed.

As you read this great book, you will see how the precious cats are loved, cared for, and have their lives nourished by the Best Friends Animal Society.

Kittyville is a place that I'd feel very safe in, if I was a cat. (Actually, I am part cat. No joke.)

You will be touched by this beautiful book, and you will see why the area where Best Friends is located, in Utah, is called "Angel Canyon".

You will fall in love with all of the precious four-legged souls (cats) who you meet in this book.

Who knows? Maybe you'll see a cat in this book who YOU want to adopt into your loving, caring family.

Or maybe you will be inspired to go to your local "shelter" and adopt a cat and save a precious living soul from certain death.

I find that mature and older cats have a harder time being adopted, because everyone wants the "cute and cuddly" kittens. Sure, kittens ARE cute and cuddly, but not any more so than a mature/adult, or older cat is.

ALL cats are cute and cuddly!

The kittens wont have a problem finding homes, in most cases, but the mature and older cats might, and thus, they need to be adopted even more so than kittens do.

If you love cats, or if you love any companion animals, this book is a must read.

I look forward to the day when cats and dogs arent murdered anymore....the day when the murderers decide to stop the killing and decide to go No-Kill. It can and has been done in some Cities.

It's just a matter of caring enough and working hard enough to make sure that it's done. That's why any true animal shelter should be run by a 100% No-Kill animal lover.

If your local shelter isnt No-Kill, you can join together as a community and demand change.

You have the power. Yes you.


To learn more about Best Friends Animal Society, please visit their website: www.bestfriends.org

This is a very good quality book with lots of helpful information. It could have had a few more illustrations to help with the grooming process, but is very helpful overall.

This is a very excellent informative book on how to groom. I highly reccomend it!

This is a good guide for traditional cuts. It gives enough information to get the haircut done. Some of the info is a little outdated, but overall it's one of the books I've used as my "bible". It's definitely a book that should be in every groomer's library.

NICE BOOK IF YOU ONLY NEED TO LEARN HOW TO BATHE, TRIM EARS OR CLIP NAILS. DOESNT TELL YOU WHAT SIZE ATTACHMENTS TO USE OR WHAT PART OF THE BODY TO USE THE DIFFERENT ATTACHMENTS.ITS BETTER IF YOU HAVE A POODLE, MORE PAGES DEVOTED TO IT. ONLY ONE PER OTHER DOG!

IF you need a book to learn how to start Kennel clipping, do not buy this one.

IF you want to be a groomer in a city and work in someone else's shop then go for it.

I do strip clips and summer clips so this book was not very helpful to me in that area.

My daughters love all the stickers!! They keep track of their LPS's with these books. We have all three.

Great book. It was part of a birthday gift and it rounded things out nicely.

My 7 year old daughter received this for Christmas and has really been spending a lot of time with it. She is enjoying using her imagination and being creative in coming up with names and other date to fill in for each Pet. This gift didn't cost a lot, but it's given her hours of enjoyment. When she's finished, I think I will pick up the next volume for her.

This is a fun sticker book plus journal like book. You place the individual stickers on a page and then write about that particular character. It keeps my daughter busy for hours and it is fun for her to see all the characters she still needs to add to her collection.

... if you can get your child to actually use it to hold the stickers, instead of putting them on everything else. Or just buy it for the stickers, my daughter did love it for that.

Kozloff's book is a classic and a bible for anyone who studies intertidal and coastal organisms in the Pacific Northwest. Professor Sean used this book when he took Kozloff's Marine Biology class at the University of Washington and it has been one of his favorites ever since. Kozloff's insights and anecdotes on marine organisms, accompanied by his encyclopedic knowledge, blend to create an outstanding book for identifying and learning more about marine life. If you simply want to know the names of the organisms, there are plenty of cheap field books out there. But if you want to truly know and understand marine organisms and the role they play in the ocean, then this is the book for you.

This book is really geared more toward the academic. I would not find it useful as a field guide, though it makes for fairly interesting biological reading. It is not laid out in a "field guide" fashion, with species listed and illustrations for each provided. It would be frustrating to take the kids to the beach at low tide and attempt to use this unless you are very well acquainted with your marine taxonomy. Most species are not identified by a common name, and the color plates and illustrations are not necessarily near the species text.
This book reads as a textbook for students rather than a useful tool for laymen who just need to know what critter they just found under a rock, and want the information before the tide comes back in.

Though published in the early 1980s, this book does a wonderful job of introducing the active naturalist to the nearshore marine life of the Pacific Northwest. This book includes good illustrations and photographs, descriptions of where marine flora and fauna live and what they do there. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to go the seashore of the Pacific Northwest and figure out what they are looking at. Kozloff has been there and seen everything he's writing about. I use this book as my primary text when I take students to Puget Sound, Washington, for my marine ecology field course. A top notch field guide!

This is a great book to have on hand. Especially for animal lovers. It has different chapters for the differant animals. This book is also easy to read.

My dogs, cats and my family are so happy about this book because it teaches using natural remedies to cure common ailments in pets. I mean, we don't want to use flea/tick repellents that can harm us... so using aromatherapy (in right doses) is so much safer. Besides, like lavender and ylang ylang aromatherapy--going natural smells so much better!

I was very impressed with the information and the format of the book. I don't necessarily totally agree with all the information presented, but it was very well done and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in using essential oils on their animals.

This was another great book on pet healing. Our pets can benefit from many of these healing methods used for people. This was put together very nice. I use it alot.

Very informative book with lots of practical information. Detailed recipies for making your own aromatherpay/essential oil blends for anxiety, skin problems, fleas, ticks and more. Has resource guide on where to find quality products and also advice on what to look for in a quality product if shopping elsewhere.

I loved this book, I bought 2 of them in fact (one for a friend) because I was so impressed with it. John Lyons's teaching is based on the fact that the horse is a condition response animal and that you set up the condition to get the response you want out of your horse. He also likes to think of it as "playing games" with the horse and not just "training" it must be fun for you and the horse and if its not, YOU are doing something wrong-not the horse. I highly reccomend this book!

Everything happened as promised: A very nice (appearing unused) book arrived within a few days of ordering. Perfect!

You wouldn't want this book if you need visuals. There are very few pictures to help in understanding how to go about a lesson. I think John Lyons would rather you buy his videos. This book doesn't help unless you have the videos. Only buy this book if you have a round pen and you don't need visual help in getting the idea. I felt it was a waste of money.

This book is very informative. Easy to read and very easy to understand. The author does a good job of explaining training techniques.

Informative step-by-step instructions for everyone, from a novice working with their first horse, to the experienced horseman. Makes problem solving easy in a sensible manner.

This is a great book about how Alex came to be and how he became so smart. Dr Irene Pepperberg chose Alex as a young parrot and began teaching him language and to associate words with objects. Alex became very smart and could hold a pretty decent conversation. This book shows just how intelligent parrots are and they are more than just pets, they are our lifelong companions. The Alex Studies is an excellent read, I reccomend this book highly.

The importance of Dr. Irene Pepperberg's work is much wider reaching than just talking parrots. This book chronicles the amazing studies she has done with Alex, her African Grey parrot in cognition and language acquistion. Discovering that Grey parrots have such abilities should make the threat to their habitat and the horror of illegal smuggling of these intelligent birds much more pressing and urgent to the public. That Dr. Pepperberg's techniques can also be applied to assisting children with learning difficulties adds to the benefits of these unique and startling discoveries. If you are interested in animal intelligence, especially if you have a Grey at home, you will be amazed by this book.

The book was in great condition and it arrived promptly. The price was also great- I've seen it for more than twice as much more elsewhere. Thanks for the pleasant transaction!

What can a bird learn? Irene Pepperberg set out to find out. As with children, the best way to assess what has been learnt is to ask. Primarily for that reason, she chose birds capable of forming human words. An African Grey parrot, who she dubbed Alex [Avian Learning EXperiment], became the subject of her investigations. Earlier efforts in laboratories were unsatisfactory. Why should Mynahs, reputedly excellent mimics, fail to learn speech in laboratory conditions? When in homes with several people providing input, they chatter endlessly, almost to distraction. The solution, Pepperberg decided, was the intense social environment. To that end, she developed a training method that produced astonishing results.

This book thoroughly documents the author's methods and results, providing a fascinating account of the cognitive abilities of at least one psittacine species, the Grey Parrot. Incorporating a technique she calls M/R - for Model/Rival, Pepperberg would "teach" an assistant what she wished Alex to learn. The bird observed this, then was encouraged to emulate the learning experience. This meant the bird had to understand what was to be learned and use its innate abilities to achieve it. Speech was the first lessons, but things moved well beyond simple words quickly. Shapes, colours and materials were the next level, with Alex discriminating among them both singly and in groupings. The object was to understand what Alex could comprehend and act on. Alex also learned to differentiate - "larger", or "different" or, most significantly for a bird - "abscence". He could note when something was missing, naming the missing object. The method resulted in Alex's expressing his own needs and wants, even ending a training session by declaring he wished to quit.

Pepperberg's research findings are in direct contradiction to past scientific efforts. The book is therefore richly detailed with the methods used and was information was obtained. There are photographs of test object layouts, even stills from X-ray videos of how Alex forms his speech. She is clearly challenging the received wisdom of established opinion. She's careful to avoid terms like "consciousness" or even "intelligence", although the latter comes in for some discussion late in the book. She finds only one example of Alex's communication she thinks can be deemed "creative". Much more important, in her view, is that we need to understand previously under-evaluated cognitive capabilities in parrots. They are a long-lived and social species, conditions which lead to interaction among individuals and reinforced learning. Social interaction, combined with carefully devised teaching methods are essential to proper learning, whether with children, other primates or psittacines. The capacity is there, and we need to recognise it. The Alex studies clearly demonstrate that at least these psittacines are capable of far more than the simply mimicry we've long attributed to them. Human primacy in learning, once considered fundamental to our place in Nature, is clearly at an end.

Pepperberg's narrative is thoroughly detailed and supported by an equally thorough bibliography. The reading may be a bit of a slog for the novice reader. The citation method breaks up sentences, a common technique with ethography studies, but cumbersome to cope with. The method is in line with her concern for academic acceptance. She excuses the approach as not desiring "to overwhelm readers with facts and figures" [although there are still plenty of those] but to encourage an enlarged sensitivity to the abilities of non-human species. She has certainly accomplished that task, and admirably. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

The work that Irene Pepperberg and Alex have done is incredible, and this book would be fascinating if the "Notes" were included in the text and the references were footnoted at the end of the book or at the bottom of the page. While the use of APA style substantiates the credibiltiy of her research and increases the book's value as an intellectual property, it is difficult to find a complete sentence without multiple references cited in parentheses scattered throughout. This makes the normal "flow" of reading almost impossible, and unnecessarily compromises both enjoyment and ease of comprehension. Definitely read this book if you're interested, but keep the aspirin close for the headache you're bound to get while trying to sort out the legitimate text from the references.

I used this in Kenya, and got to know a lot of the animals there pretty well. If you are going to Africa, I highly suggest getting this, but also supplementing your research with more local resources. The book is now on the coffee table, and is pretty cool to flip through.

Probably this is the best field guide, the drawings are beautiful but strangely, the Dromedary is missing from this book albeit it is native to Northern Africa.

It is a good book...diagrams are detailed well and descriptions are good of the animals....good guide book for college classes.

This guide was an excellent reference on Safari, small size and well organized format made The Kingdon Pocket Guide to Africa easy to use in the field.

Excellent information if studying. Kingdon is an excellent source of CORRECT information when it comes to African animals.