Franklin and I were at the dog park today, all by our lonesomes in the small dog area when this guy brought his dog into the big dog section. It immediately started barking and growling, being extremely aggressive. None of the other dogs reacted except a tan lab. It started growling and barking back and they almost got into a fight! Well the dog owner was a good one (thankfully) and took his aggressive dog and left.
Afterwards, I overheard the tan lab's owner say that his dog had been coming here since it was a puppy and had never been aggressive ever before. THEN he made his dog lay down and stay until he released it. The dog literally layed down for 10 minutes while humans, babies, and other dogs ran around him. The minute the owner said "okay" it jumped up and ran around with the other dogs.
I don't know about you guys but I've never seen a dog that well trained (in real life). It was amazing!
Here's the real point of this post:
The guy said all he'd done was read Cesar Milan's books. I love the Dog Whisperer and watch it all the time, but I don't feel like we can train our tiny Yorkies the same way he trains dogs. My biggest concern is that Cesar predominantly works with a training collar and we can't even walk our dogs on a collar! How can we apply his training techniques to toy breeds that are at risk of collapsed trachea?