From Wags to Riches How Dogs Teach Us to Succeed in Business & Life

Move over Jack Welch and Warren Buffett. The new role model for business leaders isn't a corporate superstar or one of America's wealthiest tycoons. It's the family dog.

What can man's best friend teach us about building stronger, more collaborative organizations? Plenty. In From Wags to Riches, management expert Robert Vetere explores how our partnership with dogs, going back to the first human settlements, provides an intriguing model for teamwork in the corporate world. As president of The American Pet Products Association, Vetere has partnered with Purdue University researchers to explore the human-animal bond. Here, he also considers what dogs teach us about intimacy and relationships and tells why they've become the center of American family life.

With interviews from CEOs who've learned important lessons from their dogs, From Wags to Riches shows how you can apply insights from dog trainers and animal behavior experts to boost creativity and build a playful environment where people feel free to innovate. Vetere demonstrates that canine-like qualities such as sharing responsibility across pack members and tuning into each other's needs and emotions by observing facial expressions and body cues can dramatically improve your personal effectiveness and ability to lead.

From Wags to Riches contains practical tips and canine insights for any dog lover who aspires to become leader of his or her pack.

Robert Vetere is President of the American Pet Products Association (APPA), the largest trade organization for pet products in the world. At APPA, Vetere works with Dr. Marty Becker of ABC's "Good Morning America" and Dr. Alan Beck at Purdue University to explore the human-animal bond. He also volunteers at Green Chimneys, a farm that teaches leadership skills to children with emotional, social and learning disabilities.

Over the past two decades, he has led management training seminars using the insights in this book. Among the Fortune 500 companies he has counseled are Union Carbide, First Brands, Walmart, Clorox, Lehman Bros, Merck, Oil-Dri, Mars, Nestles, Bear Stearns, PetSmart, and Proctor & Gamble. Bob has been interviewed by BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger's, Entrepreneur magazine, "World News Tonight," CBS News, CNN, The New York Times magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune.

Before joining APPA, Vetere served as senior vice president, administration, general counsel and secretary at Oil-Dri Corporation of America, a publicly traded $175 million international manufacture of agricultural, industrial and pet products.

Valerie Andrews has spent more than 25 years chronicling social innovation. Her work has appeared in major magazines, on PBS television and the web. She recently coauthored The Business of Changing Lives: How One Company Took the Information Superhighway to the Inner City with Allan Weis, one of the founders of the Internet, and has edited several bestselling business books. Her articles about creativity, peak performance and changes in the American workplace have appeared in People, New York, Vogue, Esquire and on the Internet. She has also appeared as a commentator on public television and is the author of A Passion for this Earth, essays on our connection to the natural world. Her first book, The Psychic Power of Running, was published by Rawson Associates.