Reddit reviews For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend

For connecting with Jake, I recommend For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend by Patricia McConnell.

For Frank, I recommend After You Get Your Puppy and Dog Training Digital Textbook by Ian Dunbar. You'll have to register for the site, but it takes 30 seconds.

From Dr. Patricia McConnell's For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend:

>It's no coincidence that highly social animals like people and dogs have exceptionally expressive faces...Emotional expressions act like lubricants in social interactions, and the more important your behavior is to those around you, the more important it is that they be able to read your emotions from your expressions.

>One of the most important things to notice about a dog's face is whether her mouth is open or closed. Relaxed, happy dogs tend to have relaxed and often slightly open mouths. In its extreme form, biologists call the look the "open-mouth play face." Aspects of this expression are not unlike the human smile.

I recommend the book if you're interested - the author is a PhD in animal behavior as well as a dog trainer, and she discusses a range of dog emotions and how to read them. A lot are quite similar to human expressions, so no, it's not simply anthropomorphizing. She discusses the debate among scientists about anthropomorphization, too - much of her argument is that fear of doing that has led to some illogical denial of of fairly obvious similarities between the emotional lives of dogs and humans.

Since this is your first dog I have some recommended reading for you:

The Other End of the Leash and For the Love of a Dog

I own more than I have read, but since I graduated I've been collecting and reading some volumes.

Here are links to a few on Amazon that I've particularly appreciated, in the order that I've liked them. The reviews speak for themselves.

http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Cognition-Mental-Lives-Animals/dp/0333923960/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1291930685&sr=8-3

http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Lives-Animals-Scientist-Explores/dp/1577316290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291930685&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Canine-Body-Language-Photographic-Interpreting/dp/1929242352/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1291930891&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Dog-Understanding-Emotion-Friend/dp/0345477154/ref=pd_sim_b_6

Not on psychology, but a couple I found informative;

http://www.amazon.com/Bestiality-Zoophilia-Relations-Animals-Anthrozoos/dp/1847883540/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291930813&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Dearest-Pet-Bestiality-Midas-Dekkers/dp/1859843107/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291930813&sr=8-2