Chaser has a way with words. Along with basic nouns like house and tree, she knows the names of more than one thousand toys and can retrieve any of them on command. Now she and her owner, retired psychologist John Pilley, are tackling sentences with multiple grammatical elements and learning behaviors by imitation. Chaser is capable of deductive reasoning and complex problem-solving skills, but she isn't unique. John's training methods can be adopted by any dog lover. While sharing the poignant story of raising Chaser, John shows how to incorporate learning into play and more effectively channel a dog's natural drives. His work with Chaser points us toward a new way of relating to our canine companions that takes into account our evolving understanding of the way animals and humans learn.

"[This book is] the story of the dazzling discovery of a cure that could soon be within reach of all . . . you must read this book." --David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PHD, author of "Healing Without Freud or Prozac" and "Anticancer" When Olivier Ameisen's book was first published, Barbara Fisher noted in "The Boston Globe "that "this is not your usual memoir of addiction, degradation, and redemption." His story is indeed unusual--not because he was a brilliant cardiologist who developed a profound addiction to alcohol, or because he tried numerous treatment options and none helped. His story was the story of millions of alcoholics--until he decided to take his treatment into his own hands. Searching for a cure for his deadly disease, he happened upon baclofen, a safe muscle relaxant that had recently shown promising results in studies with laboratory animals addicted to a wide variety of substances. Ameisen experimented with increasingly higher dosages until he reached a level that left him free of "any" craving for alcohol. That was more than six years ago. "Heal Thyself "(originally published as "The End of My Addiction") is both a memoir of Ameisen's struggle and a call to action. In the past year, a growing number of researchers and doctors have been inspired by Ameisen and begun prescribing baclofen and lobbying for wide-scale studies into how the drug works. Last spring, no less an authority than the leading medical journal "Alcohol" "and Alcoholism "endorsed the book. Hailing Dr. Ameisen as "a remarkable medical researcher," it summed up its assessment strongly and directly: "This book is to be recommended."