Marnie and Lola are both German Spitzen. When Lola came into our lives we decided it would be good to know a little more about her breed. Amongst the countless general dog books that we acquired, we also bought Juliette Cunliffe's German Spitz volume to give us the lowdown on spitzen themselves. Sadly, it just isn't very good!

The book is badly written and very generic: in many paragraphs you could replace the word "spitz" for "labrador" or "poodle" and still retain the sense of the author's platitude. The photos aren't great either. There is a very dated look and feel to the book and it was certainly no more useful -- actually, probably much less so -- than combining a general dog welfare and training book with the few facts and figures about spitzen themselves that you'd find in a dog encyclopedia. On the plus side, the first chapter of Juliette's book, on the history of the breed, was interesting. I'll write something about that on the site soon.