Love Don't Shoot the Dog? Readers share 40 books like Don't Shoot the Dog...

A timeless meditation on purpose, suffering, and the human spirit. While not about entrepreneurship, this book is essential for anyone seeking to understand the deeper meaning behind their work. Frankl’s insight—that we can find meaning even in suffering—is profoundly relevant for founders navigating hardship and uncertainty. 

What struck me most about it was how Frankl captured the Holocaust not just as a historical event, but as a raw, existential landscape. I’ve seen many films and documentaries about that era, but Frankl’s account stands apart. His lens is philosophical, not just historical. His insight that meaning, not pleasure or power, is the primary driver of human life resonated deeply.

I've focused on the idea myself that many entrepreneurs pursue ventures not for wealth or control, but as a way to fill a deeper existential hole. Frankl’s writing felt honest, profound, and necessary. This is a serious and enduring book I’ll return… show more.

Although this book is more than a century old, I find it just as relevant today as it was when it was first published. As a Man Thinketh offers digestible and easily understood tips to transform the way you look at barriers in life and positively embrace them. Each person holds the key to their own happiness and by dealing with thoughts intelligently and patiently, can help reconstruct life for the better. 

I learned about mental models (our beliefs and assumptions) decades ago, and it changed my life since I had never really examined how my mental models informed absolutely everything I did. I subsequently had the great fortune to come across Carol Dweck’s work while I was still teaching at the Stanford Business School, and learning about growth and fixed mindsets was a further game changer.

I especially appreciated coming to understand how mindsets impact relationships. For example, a growth mindset views relationships as something to work at and people as capable of changing, while a fixed mindset views relationships as either “meant to be” or not and people (and therefore relationships) as incapable of changing. 

I'm used to thinking of storytelling from a big picture, plot-driven perspective, and Made to Stick challenged that. This book really hones in on the small details that make ideas, lines, and moments so ‘sticky’ and memorable. The Heaths focus on the worlds of marketing and business, but I found their insights about how to shape and convey ideas useful, illuminating, and different from most of the ‘writing’ books I consume.

So many of their examples are themselves quite sticky, and I find myself going back to them again and again to challenge my writing and presentations to be even more efficient, unique, and memorable. 

Another winner by Karen Pryor! In this book, Karen talks about the methodology of clicker training and why it is such an important teaching tool. With the sound of an audible signal (the click), we can teach the animal that what he/she did, at that moment in time, is the reason why they are receiving reinforcement. As Bob Bailey once said, “The clicker is used as a scalpel to carve out behavior.” 

Scattered throughout the text are video URLs to demonstrate some of the concepts. For example, a reader can go to the URL and watch a cat do agility!

Whatever canine sport you are in, the clicker can be a valuable tool in your toolbox.

I love this book because, as a dog trainer, I want to use tools that communicate effectively to the dog. This book talks about clicker training and why it can be used to pinpoint… show more.

This book has saved and helped so many dogs. Having a reactive or aggressive dog is very difficult, in this book you’ll get lots of training advice on how to help your dog. Your dog doesn’t have to have severe issues for you to find this book helpful – it’s so much easier to start training before the problem has escalated. You’ll get advice on calmly escorting your dog away before trouble arises, stopping resource guarding (ex-food guarding), and dealing with dogs barking at the door.

This book made me much more aware of how it is natural for us as humans to behave and move in ways that might be disconcerting to our dogs. Being aware of this greatly impacts my interactions with dogs, who, after all, are a completely different species, so it makes sense to approach them differently than we would another primate.

Patricia McConnell’s writing style is engaging, and she shares personal stories throughout the book. I’ve loved everything she’s ever written, but this one is a must-read for anyone who spends any time around dogs. 

You cannot begin to fix the problem of overcrowded shelters and the destruction of adoptable dogs unless you grapple with the category of dogs labeled pit bulls. I cannot say enough good about this book. Thorough, fair, well-written, inspiring, instructive, just amazing. Every person involved in dog advocacy, rescue, or training should read this book, heck, every person that loves dogs should read this book – especially those who have opinions about pit bulls. This book will make you think about how the media dictates our popular opinion about pretty much everything. Thank you to Bronwen Dickey for writing such an important book.

Some books stay with you for a lifetime. Such is the case with Black Beauty for me.

This historical fiction novel (although it wasn’t “Historical” when it was written!”) is considered a classic because of its staying power and message. Anna Sewell’s work inspired the creation of the ASPCA because of the depictions of animal cruelty in the book.

Now, half a century later, it has inspired me to not only write historical fiction horse stories but I also chose to write in first person from the horse’s point of view the way Black Beauty is written.

Jean Donaldson may be the most brilliant, certainly the most blunt and forthright, thinker on the subject of how dogs are, rather than how we wish them to be. In The Culture Clash, she lights dynamite under some of our fondest myths about why dogs do the things they do. The book reads like a manifesto. It forms a foundational philosophy for modern, evidence-based training, and it vigorously takes apart every dissimulating notion that dogs don’t already know what’s best for themselves. Reading this book for the first time was literally thrilling for me—my copy is filled with double underlinings and multitudes of stars in the margins at so many of the pronouncements that amount to a bill of rights for dogs. She knows whereof she speaks: she is the founder and principal instructor of the Academy for Dog Trainers, and a scintillating speaker at conferences promoting the humane education… show more.