Cesar debate thread

[chachi]

I really like Cesar but I dont think all of his training methods work for small dogs. Some are geared toward bigger dogs. I enjoy watching his shows though

[JoeyP]

This debate goes along with the whole dominance is good or bad debate
Cesar Milan is an advocate and a leader in .... when training a dog you must be viewed as a pack leader and therefore dominant

and as much as you want to believe that your dogs are human and dress them up and talk to them
I have news ..... they ARE dogs
and they will behave like dogs and have instinctual and situational behaviors like dogs

Is positive training worthwhile? Absolutely
But it doesn't negate the fact that you MUST be viewed as the leader for your dog

Now some dogs automatically see their owner as a leader and there doesn't need to be any special training in those cases
But when a dog Doesn't see you as a leader that's when behavioral problems occur
and can lead to aggression
can lead to confusion and timidity
and a whole host of other issues

I have never seen cesar abuse any of his dogs and I'd be the first to call him on it
but the use of dominance training is a useful and needed training device
in any household with a dog

[ARCHIE]

I respect Ceasar and think his methods for training and saving dog's
are unique. He has saved so many dog's, dog's that had no chance for
a loving home. They would have been PTS otherwise, so whatever method he
chose in traning them was fine with me. Who am I to argue the point anyhow.
I am no professional. Everyone has their own opinions, no matter what the
conversation is. You don't have to agree with him but you have to respect
the man for his ability to train dog's that otherwise would have no chance at life.
I have taken many of his techniques and applied them to Buddy. He has
saved my sanity more than once. His techniques work and I am very
pleased with the result. Buddy had a good chance of being the Yorkie
from Hell, really, his personality went from sweet to Alpha when he hit
a year old. What happened to my sweet boy i asked myself? Who is this
little beast? Dog's like this get turned into rescue or the pound because
people don't understand what to do. He saved me and saved Buddy from
being one of those dog's. Today he is sweet, loving and is trained well
and so am I, however his Alpa thought's are always in his head and I
am well aware of it. I totally enjoy his shows and his point's of view..

I also like Victoria but if I had to pick #1 it would be Ceasar.

[Britster]

Originally Posted by RoxyLuv

That's just it, QuickSilver. The boxer wasn't being trained & totally out of control, which is mostly what Cesar works with. I don't like the electronic control devices either, but sometimes an exception needs to be taken quickly.

I've watched Cesar over the years & I believe he has softened his ways. I've watched the reruns time after time. He seems to be learning new things. He never was one to do typical dog obedience as he works with very troubled dogs. Not sure he even knew much about sit-down-stay type of training. Don't think I've ever seen him work with puppies as many of us are working with.

I've seen him work with dogs who have had every dog problem we've ever dealt with over the many years we've had dogs. I feel so bad that those problems could have been fixed so easily if we just had known how. The problems we had could have been fixed gently too. I've learned a lot from him. I like Victoria too, but I really don't see much difference in what she teaches other than her softer approach. And I do see her taking an dominant/alpha/leader stance while she works. Just so you know, my definition of dominant does not mean abusive.

Basically I think we have something to learn from most any trainer regardless of their approach. I'm always looking for better ways of doing things & open to them.

Great post!

[chachi]

Originally Posted by JoeyP

This debate goes along with the whole dominance is good or bad debate
Cesar Milan is an advocate and a leader in .... when training a dog you must be viewed as a pack leader and therefore dominant

and as much as you want to believe that your dogs are human and dress them up and talk to them
I have news ..... they ARE dogs
and they will behave like dogs and have instinctual and situational behaviors like dogs

Is positive training worthwhile? Absolutely
But it doesn't negate the fact that you MUST be viewed as the leader for your dog

Now some dogs automatically see their owner as a leader and there doesn't need to be any special training in those cases
But when a dog Doesn't see you as a leader that's when behavioral problems occur
and can lead to aggression
can lead to confusion and timidity
and a whole host of other issues

I have never seen cesar abuse any of his dogs and I'd be the first to call him on it
but the use of dominance training is a useful and needed training device
in any household with a dog

I agree

[diane boden]

I can only 'speak' from experience. Many years ago I adopted a min-poodle from rescue who'd been spoilt rotten by the elderly couple, he'd eventually bitten their grand-daughter. There was a dog trainer at the time also advocating playing the dominant leader, I desciplined Brandy once, not aggressivly- he was snarling to claim the sofa. I did as this trainer suggested, got a towel, placed over his head and pulled him off telling him sternly no. That dog was shocked but my shaddow from then on as somebody had told him how he was supposed to act. Unfortunatly he went to bite my mom while I wasn't their and everyone else insisted he go back. If only Ceaser had been around then.
Watching Ceaser alowed mr to recognise Alfie was a pptentially domminant dog and I used some of his methods to show him he will not be allowed to take over. He is not fearful, loves people and other dogs, if he makes mistakes its my fault Rosie is gentler and happy for me to be in charge. Yes I use possative rewards when they're good or I'm 'TRAINING' them. But training ang disciplin are two very different things.

[diane boden]

Oh, forgot to say, I've noticed alot of Ceasers detractors point to a recent interveiw/ report done by a scientist admiting that they'd ' got it wrong' when describing wolf pack behaviour. They weren't actually 'packs' but family groups. They use this to prove Ceasers methods as out dated as this teory. Ecept Ceaser didn't learn his methods from watching packs of wolves, but packs of dogs on his grandfathers farm, packs formed in an artficial way by man, much the same as artificial wolf packs created by man for zoo's and parks which even the scientist involved admited would have a domminant Alpha dog/bitch leadership.
I hope that came out as I meant it to, as it's what I got from the vidoe clip I saw, possibly edited to say what its claiments wanted people to hear.

[RoxyLuv]

I don't quite get the difference between a pack & a family. The typical family has parents, grandparents, babysitter, teachers, etc who all play an alpha roll within the family. When no one is taking on that type of roll, the young ones rule the roost & there is caos. Herds have leaders, birds have a pecking order. Even in every group of people, leaders emerge whether voted into an office or not. It just happens.
I don't mean to imply that abuse is ever in order. I certainly had many rules, boundries & limitations that I had to live up to growing up, but I'd never accuse my parents of abusive behavior.

So are we getting really really technical over definitions of words to be politically correct?

[QuickSilver]

Let me add what I know here about packs vs. families. First, interestingly enough, we do not fully understand bird pecking order. Bird A can beat Bird B for a good food spot, Bird B can beat Bird C for another spot... and Bird C can beat on Bird A for the first spot. So dominance is not clearly defined, and even in wolf packs it is acknowledged to be fluid. Some wolfs are dominant in some situations but not others.

WRT to wolf packs vs. families, I think this is a valid criticism. The claim is that most of our studies are done on wolves (or dogs) forced to live with a large number of unrelated individuals. This can cause behavior that wouldn't be seen otherwise. In the wild, wolves are extremely shy. They generally only live in one family unit of two parents and one or more children. The father ranks over the mother, the mother ranks over the children, and the children rank by age. There is no question as to who is boss (note that baby wolves will still ferociously guard their food from everyone, suggesting that resource guarding is not a dominance behavior).

To demonstrate how different this is, I remember watching a wolf pack on APL where a female alpha wolf had killed her father to take control of the pack. Clearly this a night and day extreme, and one of the many things that makes me question dominance theory - how many people worry that their dogs may try to kill them in a bid for dominance?

I personally subscribe more to the idea that dogs see us as their mommies and daddies, which means that we automatically rank above them. That also doesn't mean discipline doesn't exist. This may be different when a large number of dogs live together, in which case pack theory may be more relevant.

To give another example, there are many "guard" breeds. A rottie may believe you are alpha, but still think it is her job to defend you. That's what they were bred for. At the same time, people will tell you that if a dog defends you, it thinks it's alpha. That doesn't make sense to me.

To use another example, I believe that insisting you walk through doors first has no analogue in the wild. How often are wolves squeezing through spaces single file the way we do for doors? However, I believe the discipline of telling your dog to position himself anywhere - front, side, behind - basically provides structure and rules, and that's why it has an effect.

Finally, we can take dolphins as an example, which are what Karen Pryor, the mother of positive training worked with. Dolphins are EXTREMELY rank oriented with each other, and often use force to maintain rank. Additionally cows are quite tough on their calves, in some cases even flipping them out of the pool for infractions. HOWEVER, you simply cannot train a dolphin with negative methods. Any kind of force won't work in the water, and they die of dehydration pretty quickly if they aren't fed regularly (they get their water from fish). So even though dominance and force are "natural" for dolphins, consider the amazing behavior we can train using different methods.

Okay, that's enough rambling for now.

[diane boden]

Thats why I get so confused by training methods. There seams to a different method for every trainer or rather for most a twist on the same methods. I didn't quite understand the video I watches as I love watching nature vids especially about wolves and in ones where the pack splits its rarely one member leaving, usually its a group of juvaniles, and many will stay together to form a new pack.
I did keep a pack, owning 7 yorkies at one point, if we'd had Ceaser over here back then we may not have had the problems with fighting we had. I now realise it was more my fault than theirs as I babied them to much and was too soft on them so they did what ever they wanted.
I expect better be behaved, they get regular execise. They still play around alot as there only young but I know when its escalating and I can steo in and stop it before it becomes a fight. Once they stasrt fighting its harder to stop it a second time.

[mscat]

Originally Posted by livingdustmops

It is no secret that I am opposed to his methods and I have also studied many books and articles in regards to this. I do listen to experts to draw my conclusions from this. I believe dogs should only be trained with postive methods. I realize many people can't understand what the harms is but many dogs have been mentally harmed by bad trainers and bad owners.

American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior: AVSAB Letter to Merial | Facebook

AVSAB Letter to Merial
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 6:59am
Dear Dr. Line,

The executive board of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior is deeply troubled to learn that Merial, a leader in the veterinary healthcare industry, is using Cesar Millan in a promotional campaign for Heartgard and Frontline. We are even more disturbed to find that Merial is cross-promoting Mr. Millan's behavior video as part of this campaign. Merial's executives may not be aware of the fact that the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists (ACVB), the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) and the Society of Veterinary Behavior Technicians (SVBT) have uniformly spoken out against the punishment-based techniques employed by Mr. Millan on his television show "The Dog Whisperer."

At best, the show is entertaining but misleading to pet owners. At worst, Mr. Millan's techniques and misinformation have contributed to increased aggression and anxiety or resulted in physical injury to the pet and/or pet owner. As practicing veterinarians, we all unfortunately have seen many cases of the latter. Merial claims to "enhance the health, well-being, and performance of animals.” The use of Mr. Millan as part of an advertising campaign speaks otherwise.

In these difficult economic times, it may be understandable that Merial would want to use a "celebrity" to advertise its products in a direct-to-consumer fashion. However, had Merial taken the time to investigate, it would have found that Mr. Millan's philosophy runs counter to the standard-of-care promoted by veterinary behaviorists and taught at veterinary schools.

We are deeply saddened that Merial's executives are not more supportive of the veterinary behavior community and its efforts to promote knowledgeable, scientifically-based, humane training methods. We remain concerned that your company's support of Mr. Millan’s controversial training methods through the distribution of his video and financial support of his show will contribute to the number of difficult dogs and injured owners that we have to eventually console, counsel, and reeducate. Perhaps Merial would like to support our efforts to counteract the negative impact of this unfortunate marketing choice that may ultimately serve to alienate educated veterinarians, dog trainers, and owners alike.

Sincerely,

E. Kathryn Meyer, VMD (President)
John Ciribassi, DVM, DACVB (Immediate Past President)
Karen Sueda, DVM, DACVB (President Elect)
Kari Krause, DVM
Kelly Morgan, DVM
Valli Parthasarathy, PhD, DVM
Sophia Yin, PhD, DVM
Laurie Bergman, VMD, DACVB

I am in agreement here! I have personally watched Cesar's shows, and recently have over the weekend. It was all about Chi's> The worst case was actually named the "devil Chi" Cesar traded this little chi for anther Pit bull , whose owner was a Pit Bull rescue , She could not control the chi's wild, agressive behavior, over all her other Pit Bulls ! The Chi would actully chase down the Pit Bulls !!!
I watched in horror and stunned that Cesar got down in the Hotel room , where th little Chi had hid himself , away, and heard Cesar say to the dog, you bite me, I'll bite u too. He was not kidding> That little Chi was very aggressive, afraide, and out of control, I did see that Cesar does use very aggressive methods as a way to control, dogs any way that he can, and that is a fact, no matter what the size . Their was no positive training, or special ways he was using on the dog. He has patience, an enormous amount of patience, however, he waits it out , in order for the dog to finally become submissive to him > much like breaking a untame , wild, horse. To me this is very much like what I compare Cesar Milan to. He is old style .Many may disagree, however, it is not the first time I have seen him be aggressive in his dog training "skills" It's not psychology, it is making the dog break down, to submit to the owner, to "give up" give in , in human words say "I surrender"

[Britster]

Originally Posted by mscat

I am in agreement here! I have personally watched Cesar's shows, and recently have over the weekend. It was all about Chi's> The worst case was actually named the "devil Chi" Cesar traded this little chi for anther Pit bull , whose owner was a Pit Bull rescue , She could not control the chi's wild, agressive behavior, over all her other Pit Bulls ! The Chi would actully chase down the Pit Bulls !!!
I watched in horror and stunned that Cesar got down in the Hotel room , where th little Chi had hid himself , away, and heard Cesar say to the dog, you bite me, I'll bite u too. He was not kidding> That little Chi was very aggressive, afraide, and out of control, I did see that Cesar does use very aggressive methods as a way to control, dogs any way that he can, and that is a fact, no matter what the size . Their was no positive training, or special ways he was using on the dog. He has patience, an enormous amount of patience, however, he waits it out , in order for the dog to finally become submissive to him > much like breaking a untame , wild, horse. To me this is very much like what I compare Cesar Milan to. He is old style .Many may disagree, however, it is not the first time I have seen him be aggressive in his dog training "skills" It's not psychology, it is making the dog break down, to submit to the owner, to "give up" give in , in human words say "I surrender"

I haven't seen the particular episode you're talking about so I can't comment on that. But I have a question... why is it OK for a dog to bite a human but a human can't "bite" a dog back? So, it's okay for the dog to do that to me but I can't do it back? I don't know, that just doesn't make sense to me. For example, if a little Chi was maybe biting on my feet, trying to attack me, I'm supposed to just allow it since I'm only allowed to use "positive" training? Sorry, but I'm going to let him know that's not okay and I'm bigger than you, lol.

Also, question, why shouldn't you let a dog surrender to you? It's much like punishing a child when they do something wrong... when you send them to their room to think about what they're doing and then they finally give in and break down and come down and apologize to you because they realize what they did was wrong.

And, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if making a dog summit to you and surrender is soo very life threatening to them, why are all the dogs he works with still happy, wagging their tail and a lot of the dogs he works with will give him kisses and be so excited to see him? He's obviously not psychologically harming the dog.

My dad's dog, Lily, she knows when she's done something wrong. If she starts growling at Jackson, all my step-mom has to do is walk over to her, above her, with her hands on her hips and say "Lily..." and Lily surrenders in that sense, by giving her kisses rather than attacking Jackson.

[Britster]

Originally Posted by RoxyLuv

I don't quite get the difference between a pack & a family. The typical family has parents, grandparents, babysitter, teachers, etc who all play an alpha roll within the family. When no one is taking on that type of roll, the young ones rule the roost & there is caos. Herds have leaders, birds have a pecking order. Even in every group of people, leaders emerge whether voted into an office or not. It just happens.
I don't mean to imply that abuse is ever in order. I certainly had many rules, boundries & limitations that I had to live up to growing up, but I'd never accuse my parents of abusive behavior.

So are we getting really really technical over definitions of words to be politically correct?

Great points.

Originally Posted by QuickSilver

Let me add what I know here about packs vs. families. First, interestingly enough, we do not fully understand bird pecking order. Bird A can beat Bird B for a good food spot, Bird B can beat Bird C for another spot... and Bird C can beat on Bird A for the first spot. So dominance is not clearly defined, and even in wolf packs it is acknowledged to be fluid. Some wolfs are dominant in some situations but not others.

WRT to wolf packs vs. families, I think this is a valid criticism. The claim is that most of our studies are done on wolves (or dogs) forced to live with a large number of unrelated individuals. This can cause behavior that wouldn't be seen otherwise. In the wild, wolves are extremely shy. They generally only live in one family unit of two parents and one or more children. The father ranks over the mother, the mother ranks over the children, and the children rank by age. There is no question as to who is boss (note that baby wolves will still ferociously guard their food from everyone, suggesting that resource guarding is not a dominance behavior).

To demonstrate how different this is, I remember watching a wolf pack on APL where a female alpha wolf had killed her father to take control of the pack. Clearly this a night and day extreme, and one of the many things that makes me question dominance theory - how many people worry that their dogs may try to kill them in a bid for dominance?

I personally subscribe more to the idea that dogs see us as their mommies and daddies, which means that we automatically rank above them. That also doesn't mean discipline doesn't exist. This may be different when a large number of dogs live together, in which case pack theory may be more relevant.

To give another example, there are many "guard" breeds. A rottie may believe you are alpha, but still think it is her job to defend you. That's what they were bred for. At the same time, people will tell you that if a dog defends you, it thinks it's alpha. That doesn't make sense to me.

To use another example, I believe that insisting you walk through doors first has no analogue in the wild. How often are wolves squeezing through spaces single file the way we do for doors? However, I believe the discipline of telling your dog to position himself anywhere - front, side, behind - basically provides structure and rules, and that's why it has an effect.

Finally, we can take dolphins as an example, which are what Karen Pryor, the mother of positive training worked with. Dolphins are EXTREMELY rank oriented with each other, and often use force to maintain rank. Additionally cows are quite tough on their calves, in some cases even flipping them out of the pool for infractions. HOWEVER, you simply cannot train a dolphin with negative methods. Any kind of force won't work in the water, and they die of dehydration pretty quickly if they aren't fed regularly (they get their water from fish). So even though dominance and force are "natural" for dolphins, consider the amazing behavior we can train using different methods.

Okay, that's enough rambling for now.

These are great points as well.

Ah, I hate training.

[diane boden]

I hate training too. You just can't apply the same techniques for all. Most people will get fairly well behaved well socialised pups who only need guiding through learning what we want and what we disaprove of so would never have to use too firm an approach. But some dogs are truely dominant and need experienced handlers. We are always encouraged when choosing a puppy to 'let them choose us' but over here we have a guy who actually lives with a wolf pack as a wolf and acoding to him the first dog to come forward is actually the dog verson of security. The dog/ wolf sitting at the back watching and waiting is the top dog. He simply sends in the troups first.

I have only had to disciplin Rosie by rolling her over twice as she's naturally submissive. Alfie on the other hand is another matter, not that he takes it seriously at times. Last time I did it to Rosie, he came over to 'help'. I didn't want him jumping on her so I placed my hand on his back as a reminder, he promply threw himself on his back and started sqirming backwards. I swear he was laughting at me as he did it, probably going ''oh no I'm being told off''. Out of reach he jumped up and ran off. BOYS.

[YorkieMother]

This debate has been an on going one for a long time. As long as he has been on air.
Do a search here under the name yorkie trainer and you will come up with lots of great stuff on why he is a FOOL. Just what he does wrong and how.
or yorkie Mother.

HE not only uses static mats but shock collers and has zapped a dog until it did a redirected bite on its owner.

HE was been cited by the Humanne socitey as well as those the are behaviousit for not only endangaering dogs but childer as well.

He using flooding that in fearful dogs is not a great idea and can back fire badly.

When the DVMs in the states have been asked by their assocication not to use his methods or recomend anyone using his methods that is a pointed comment on what he is doing is not a good thing.

JL