BOOKS: National Animal Control Training Guide
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2001:
National Animal Control Association Training Guide
NACA (P.O. Box 480851, Kansas City, MO 64148), 2001. 370 pages, spiral binding. $50.00.
The most influential book about animal care-and-control ever written, at the practical level, was the 1989 first edition of the National Animal Control Association Training Guide. It brought together for the very first time the corpus of knowledge about animal care-and-control “best practice,” as learned on the job by several dozen of the most respected animal care-and-control personnel in the U.S., and swiftly became “The Book” at public animal shelters not just across the U.S. but around the world.
Since 1989, to go “by The Book” has meant literally going by the NACA recommendations, reinforced at countless seminars using the NACA Training Guide as a text. “The Book” consisted of four main sections, covering animal care-and-control law, animal handling skills, occupational and public safety, and communications, plus a supplemental chapter by the late Leo K. Bustad on “The Significance of the Human/Animal Bond for Animal Control Personnel.”