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Originally Posted by livingdustmops  ....As a side note I spent my summers at a girls ranch in Wyoming and they broke horses in a couple of days by beating the crap out of them and using a lot of cruel methods. This has gone on for how long until the horse whisperer came along and showed a whole new method to train horses - sure it takes longer but the same results without hitting the horses or hitting them with jackets or riding them until they almost collapse. |
I read something (I believe by Karen Pryor) that was very interesting about horse breaking. She talked about this old, mystical way gypsies broke wild horses in just a few hours. They would get in a pen with a wild horse, and the horse would go berserk for a while, and then unbelievably, he would be quietly following the human. It was very dangerous because of course you could get kicked in the head by the horse.
This method has been used since the beginning of civilization, and it is just in the past century that the technique was assessed, and it is really quite simple (though still, not recommended at home!). The horse desperately wants to get away from the scary human, and is bouncing every which way in his attempts to escape the pen. Random chance dictates that some of these wild movements will bring the horse closer to the human. At that second, the human drops her hands and backs up. The horse learns that the only way to get the human to move away is to approach her! This method (not the enclosed pen, but the reward of distance) is now used with many fearful animals. It's actually a basic application of positive reinforcement.
I just re-watched a couple of Cesar's eppy's, and it's true that a lot of them don't use insane force. I am finding them really interesting in terms of dog body language now that I know a little bit more about that. A lot of advice Cesar gives is basic, like with the pink maltese - if your dog is excited to the point of peeing, don't get her more excited.
I still do find him frustrating because I feel like his language is very imprecise, but I know that's a personal thing. It does annoy me, though. Like he flagged this dog as "in an unbalanced submissive state" because the dog was lifting his paw, and Cesar said that's a predatory signal. It CAN be a predatory signal, but it can ALSO be an appeasement gesture, and it seemed pretty clear the dog was trying to appease (it was paired with lip licking, etc). Also, Cesar's "magic" way of getting dogs to sit with the "sshhhh" noise: Sitting and laying down are both appeasement gestures.
I feel so unbalanced after I watch his show!
