what dog books would you recommend?

Culture Clash is always my #1dog book recommendation. 
Second I'd choose The Other End of The Leash.
Not on your list, but I'd also consider Bones Will Rain From The Sky (Suzanne Clothier) -- you mentioned the emotional side and that is one of her main themes. 

I liked For the Love of a Dog, but enjoyed The Other End of the Leash more (this is if I had to pick - I thought they were both very good books)... 
 
 

And I second the vote for If Bones Would Rain from the Sky - I loved that one!

I've heard differing things about Bones will Rain from the Sky - is it more of a religious undertone?  I'll have to read reviews about it....  I'm not so much into the spiritual aspects as they relate to religion, and that is what I was lead to believe this book was more about.  I had forgotten about it, but now I will go look it up and make my own opinion about it.
 
Thanks for the input!

Also dont forget to go to your local library, I have read just about every book our local one has. Amazon is great for deals in used books as well. My favorite training books are written by Patricia McConnell to start with.

What about Marley & Me?  I've heard that is good and I'm hoping DH a/k/a "Santa" will bring me that one! 

Marley and Me was first on my list..... but a little birdie told me my MIL is getting it for me! []  So that's the only reason I don't have it on the list. 
 
And sheprano, the only reason I tend not to use Amazon for used books is you can't get free shipping with used but you can with new........ so sometimes the difference in price isn't so great then, and not as good of a deal.  I do always check it though, same with half.com. 

I third (fourth?) Bones Would Rain from the Sky.

I am like the least religious (born and raised atheist) least fuzzy foo-foo gal on the planet and I just loved this book. Yes, she's clearly a spiritual person and she talks about that a little bit. But not to an excessive degree and not in a way that a non-spiritual person such as myself couldn't understand and appreciate.

I read this after reading The Culture Clash and it was quite the one-two punch of changing the way I related to dogs. Culture Clash is very in-your-face (Jean Donaldson could never be accused by anyone of being a shrinking violet!), very hard-facts, very how-to, very down-to-earth. It gave me a great foundation for reorganizing the way I thought about my dog (only had one at the time and in fact both of these books were a huge kick in my pants towards getting a second dog). But then reading Bones Would Rain from the Sky, that sort of showed me why I should change my thinking and my ways. How my dog would benefit, how I would benefit, and how beautiful it is to really have a partnership with your dogs rather than just bullying them around.

I say if you were to only get three, it would be those two plus The Power of Positive Dog Training. Any books you don't buy though, can be got through the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and their fantastic online book-reserving interlibrary-loaning system. You don't need to even get off your bum until the book actually arrives at your nearest library branch.

Edited to add: What about the all-time classic, Don't Shoot the Dog? I loved it, but the Carnegie Library has several copies of it, so you can get it from there.

Then that's the reason I've been looking for to get off my butt and go get a library card!  Haven't gotten one since we moved to pittsburgh.  Since I've been frequenting the bus lately I should go there to get more reading material.... sigh.  DH would love me to borrow books rather than buy as I'm expanding onto my second or third bookcase - not counting books from before we met as they are packed up at my parent's yet.  LOL. 
 
Just as a little side note, this interest was cemented more by the fact that lately I can kinda tell Sammy's trying to get a point across and I feel like we completely miss it.  We're also working on more training on our own with him and I know there are better ways to accomplish what we are trying.  Just today DH got Sammy to "bow" on command!  We've only been working on that for less than a week.  And we're making strides of progress with having Sammy sit and wait to be released before walking through a doorway.  But now that we have more to work towards, I'm really trying to understand what he's thinking so we can go about this the best way.  Clicker training is a bust as he's scared of the clicker, but I think we can do without as long as we "get" each other a bit better.  Does that make any sense?

Ooh, I had never heard of half.com, WOW, I am a book junkie, thanks for that!

I know of it as it's a GREAT place for used textbooks - sometimes it's good for other books, but they started primarily with texts and then got larger.  Lately they have changed their charges around so it's not *as* nice as it was since shipping is a bit much even if you get a book for cheap (at least for a $7 paperback, even if you get it for $2 but then spend $3 in shipping it takes most of  the good deal out of it) but for a $100 text it's terrific.

I am so waiting on my order of "From Baghdad with Love",  and the library rocks!
 
Dawn

I very much enjoyed "For the Love of a Dog". It had been quite a while since I'd read "The Other End of The Leash" and although she references Other End frequently, it is still very easy to follow. I then went back and re-read Other End.
 
As good as Other End is, I preferred For the Love. Maybe four stars to five.

Are you looking for novels or informative books?