A Level-Headed Look at Dominance, Cesar Milan and the Alternatives

Thanks Cindy for posting this excellent article. The video clip of David Mech is also a must-see, as he is the wolf researcher who first referred to certain wolves in a pack as the "alpha pair" and his original information is what is often cited when people discuss dominance theory as it pertains to rank order.

Nicole Wilde
www.phantompub.com
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/NicoleWilde

Seeing these Cesar Millan clips displaying his flaws so clearly is a bit disturbing. Partially because I fell for it and know many others have too. Partially because it's sad to see someone describe happy playful behavior as dominant behavior that "men" should be threatened by. In one moment he made a whole room of men scared of a dog that loves them. What a jerk.

However, with pages like this and hopefully more popping up on the internet, many people will see how easy it is to positively make changes in their dogs' behavior and live better lives with their dogs.

Everyone should do these side by side videos. Because Cesar never really solves a problem, he never shows proof that he succeeded. But other trainers do, they show before, during, and after training. They show happy, playful, well-behaved dogs having a great time after only minutes of fun work.

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http://doxienews.com

Ooo that looks interesting - I'll give it a proper read later. Thanks!

Buffy

You might enjoy 'Fighting Dominance In A Dog Whispering World" (DVD, if the name isn't exactly right it's close. :)) - Ian Dunbar & Jean Donaldson

That is a great website that Dr Sophia Yin put up. Recently, I submitted an article to the Canadian Association of Professional Pet Dog Trainers (CAPPDT) to be published in their newsletter. It is about the topic above but with a special twist - research on observational learning. The editor said it would be published. The original version was online. But after being attacked online by some people who are okay with the techniques used by Cesar Millan and having some of them show up at my work place to show me how dog training is really done (the dog was being jerked on a prong collar to the extent it yelped), I got so scared I withdrew my article from online. It was a shame because I put a lot of effort into reading those peer review journals. So, I thought CAPPDT would be a good place to have it.

My dog's trainer has been putting articles out in her waiting room about this topic too. That's good of her.

People at a dog park I used to go to didn't have a problem with prongs, choke collars, strangling dogs, kicking dogs, hurting them to get them to sit, forcing them on the ground, pinching them, slapping them, etc. To them it was normal and I was like, "I did not come her to see a dog being abuse!". Then, my little dog got attacked by a larger one. That caused him to dislike big dogs, which he was been trained to like since I got him. So, I started looking for answers regarding Cesar Millan. Now, I go to another dog park where only on 2 occasions have I seen a dog on prongs. And now my dog has improved.

Recently, I discovered "Bark Busters" being promoted at veterinary hospital. I asked my dog's trainer about them and she said they throw choke chains and bean bags at dogs. She asked me to check it out online and I did. From what I gather, they use the same philosophy as Cesar Millan but the techniques are not as severe.

I had a trainer who read my website. One time I posted a blog post about how The Queen was breeding mixed breed dogs (Dachshund/Corgi). My point was that if The Queen finds mixed breed dogs acceptable, then maybe it's time to get over our purebred fetish and start intelligently mixing breeds to improve the health of dogs. Controversial, sure, and please don't get sidetracked onto that topic.

But what I wanted to post here was that it was like throwing a match onto gasoline for this woman. She misinterpreted everything I said from then on. Some of her finer points were:

• Mixing breeds would be the end of everything. (Yes, everything.)
• The Human Society and dog rescues were the real cause of dog deaths, not the puppy mills. (It was a fascinating bit of logic, by shipping dogs around so they could be rescued, for instance after a large puppy mill bust, the rescue organizations were at fault for flooding the markets causing more dogs to be killed. Don't try to make it make sense.)
• Her stated enemies on her website were anti-shock collar groups and positive training groups.
• She also claimed my dog wasn't that close to me and lots of other personal hurtful stuff.

I think there were 36 comments when I finally shut them down because she had started posting only personal attacks. She recruited a couple of friends who were equally irate. Despite the strong emotion, I tried later to read through them slowly and understand her point of view because I was just curious, I was going to annotate the comments, but she and her friends just literally weren't making any sense at all. I couldn't even parse the sentences. I ended up deleting them because they were such a mess.

Then the woman started posting snide comments on other posts. Like, "Why don't you just give your dog more treats." and "More treats ought to do the trick." About once a week she would try to post a new comment. She would try posting through new accounts. And she had a dog training business!

My point of all this is to say that sometimes, in the case where the person has made a choice, people's choice of training techniques is often very closely related to their personalities. Which can make our job of trying to be reasonable all that much more difficult.

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http://doxienews.com

what a coincidence. I am writing a book aimed at the new pet owner regarding canine body language and I had just finsihed writing my thoughts on the so called "dominace theory" training and how I believe the very word is mis-interepted by these people.
Incidently, I was verbally abused by a man for having a Halti on my rottweiler. he accussed me of cruelty and told me I should use the collar he had on his german shepherd - you guessed it, he was using a prong collar. he insisted that the collar he used did not cause pain, where as the Halti I used was inordinatly cruel because it would lead to neck problems etc. I told him I didn't need to use force or jerk the dog around with the Halti. I also asked him if he would be prepared to wear his own collar himself - he didn't answer that question. I also told him the collar he was using was frowned upon by the RSPCA (I am from Australia and the RSPCA have actually managed to have this collar banned from import I believe, but unfortunatly we have some horrible people manufactoring them here now).

This is awesome! Thank you, Cindy, for posting the link to Dr. Yin's article. I had the great pleasure to meet Dr. Yin several years ago.

This link is from Dr. Yin's website. Just had to share this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIpxI5QGmcg

Thank you so much for your very helpful article, and for pointing us to Dr. Yin. I recently read Cesar's book, and just couldn't quite "buy into" the whole dominance/pack leader thing. I admit I'm not a dog trainer, but it just doesn't feel right to do it that way. The positive training methods explained by you, Dr. Yin and others are much more in line with my desire to have a relationship with my dogs, not dominate them.

Nancy
www.lovable-golden-retriever.com

Doxie,

I hope this will be allowed to be posted since you brought it up. You have since deleted all those comments that were in total 30, and quite a few of them yours.

The problem with your points were that you say there are no responsible breeders. That simply breeding dogs are people causing dogs deaths. And that instead what should happen is that only dogs irresponsibly produced from puppy mills and people who allow their unfixed dogs to wander should be available.

However, the point that people, who don't know the trainer you are talking about largely and who were't friends but follow her blog were trying to make is:

1. Breeders that are responsible spend a lot of time and energy health testing their dogs, and making sure the temperments being nutured are appropriate.
2. Breeders have waiting lists for their dogs, so their dogs are spoken for (for responsible breeders).
3. Breeders who are responsible cover costs for unforseen health problems, or may rehome a dog that was not appropriate for the family.

Responsible breeders dogs never make it to the shelters. However, shelters are becoming the "other pet stores". I felt these points made sense, and everyone else seemed to understand them.

Please remember as a first time dog owner of a couple of years, you may not be totally in the loop regarding dog issues that others are up to speed on.

Maurice Peaches
All Good Doggies

I didn't find this to be a site about dominance at all. It's about what is not dominance, which many are aware of. I didn't look through all of it, but I did not see an example of a dominant dog.

Occaisionally there are dogs out there that have a deep desire to be in control of the situation or resources. Some of these dogs train up fantastically, and have very little issues later on. Dominance is not the same as aggressiveness or fearfulness. Though a dominant dog can also have fear and aggression issues.

I saw very basic discussion on this site, none of which seemed to have anything to do with what dominance is or acknowledging that dominance even exists.

Maurice Peaches
All Good Doggies

Unfortunately Cesar is a mild case as compared to Canada's Brad Pattison. From what I've discovered Animal Planet is now airing his show under a different name than what is aired in Canada. It's called 'In the Doghouse' I don't know when it's being aired. The biggest problem I see with him is that he teaches people to go out and 'train' other people and their dogs. This to me is very scary.

Dog Star Daily, I apologize.

Maurice, your tone and some of your points are strikingly familiar.

Everyone else, I will briefly mention this and not post to this topic again regardless of the reaction. This is the formula I posted in the comments on my blog. Looking at this formula you can draw your own conclusions, and if you want you can place blame which will be entirely your opinion. You could imagine all sorts of political opinions I might have, but please don't. I'm just stating a fact, I'm not assigning blame or dislike or anything of the sort. This is just the formula we have to work with when trying to prevent the euthanizing of dogs.

dogs born - dogs adopted or purchased = dogs euthanized

There are almost limitless ways we can manipulate this formula to achieve the desired result (or at least my desired result) of 0 dogs euthanized.

Have a good day,
Matt

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http://doxienews.com

Pattymac...from what I've heard, Animal Planet still has to air those shows, starting this month, but they are not promoting them due to being better informed of Pattison's methods and the many video clips of him mistreating dogs that are circulating the internet. I don't know if that's true, but a search of their website shows NO promotion of the show, just a listing of upcoming episodes that you'd only find if you looked for it. HOORAY!!

Maurice/Robin...lovely to talk to you again! I also didn't see any dominant dogs, even the one's Cesar declared as such. Maybe you'll find more usable info when you have the time to read/watch the entire webpage. It's probably not as fun as most, since it's all facts instead of opinions, but still a lot of good info I think.

~ Cindy

Thanks Cindy,

It's always nice to see great websites shared here.

I stumbled across that "In the doghouse" show and was astounded. The guy was a huge jerk to the people as well as the dogs. I thought it was odd that they buried his name in very fast running clips at the end. Now it makes sense.

Tail wags,
Marie

Great site - although some of the cesar clips were very disturbing. The pit bull as an example, in my opinion it was plain abuse the way she was treated. Disgusting.

I didn't see any 'dominant' dogs at all either! As for the 'dominant' cat - 'dominance' in a cat?? It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Buffy

Facts that had nothing to do with dominance. I actually scanned through most of the reading on the site, and saw little of worth there. I did not view all the videos.

What is fun is facts based upon results or science. I don't find facts and theories or laboratory tests very enlightening, as pet dogs do not live in laboratories.

And Cindy I have talked to you as Maurice not Robin, but interesting assumption on your part.

Maurice Peaches
All Good Doggies

" 'dominant' cat - 'dominance' in a cat?? It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. "

Have you ever met a 'submissive' cat? haha. I'm dying to watch those clips but I'm moving right now so I don't have computer speakers... Anyone who tries to dog-train a cat is definitely in for some nasty surprises... I can say that much without seeing the clips. :)

Found old speakers! Have sound!! LOVED the cat video, hehehe. Too funny. Anyone notice he's sitting on a glass coffee table? I waited and waiting for it to collapse but no luck. lol.

My 8 month old maltese is showing new signs of what I think is dominance. When coming back from him evening walk, as we approach home, growling, nipping at my feet, very bad behaviours. This has happened a few times in the house too. This is not his normal behaviour and although still not perfect he is I think doing quite well. Anything I should look for? Do? Stop doing?? Someone walked by and commented that he was quite dominant...is that a bad thing?

Maltese, This is a perfect example of the circular logic created by dominance theory. So, let's say your little dog IS being dominant. How do we know he's being dominant? Well, because he's nipping and growling. Why is he nipping and growling? Well, because he's dominant. The problem is, if this were correct, what does it mean for you and the dog? Does it mean that you are now forced to punish, dominate and become a adversary? I think that's your only choice when you think in terms of dominance. Here's how I see it: Your dog is growling and nipping at your feet as you approach your home. These are behaviors, not character traits. Somehow, these behaviors are being reinforced, otherwise the dog wouldn't continue the behavior. Maybe he likes the attention he gets when he does these things. You will always get more of what you pay attention to. The answer...decide, clearly, what you would like your dog to do instead and train/reinforce that new behavior. For me, even if we agreed that your dog was doing these things because he's dominant, it wouldn't change a thing. That's one of the many reasons that I find it a waste of time to even think about it. Either way, it's our job as dog owners to train the behavior we want. I hope you'll find some info on this site to help you in your training, or contact a Certified Pet Dog Trainer (CPDT) in your area. You can find a trainer at http://www.apdt.com

My puppy is doing this when we're out in the garden.  She thinks it's fun, and I must admit that I've been reinforcing it by laughing at it.  It's the only place she does it.  When outside, I have her attention on my hand, because I constantly feed her for attention.  So....Maltese, you could teach your dog to pay attention to your hand.  In the house, reward for a hand touch, and then use the hand touch on the walk, once your dog understands what is wanted.  That's just one of the things you could do.

While laughing at your dog will probably reinforce a behavior slightly, depending on how involved you get, it's probably not that reinforcing. When my dog would poop he used to kick and bark, and it was so very very cute, I couldn't help but snicker. I would try to put my hand over my mouth or look the other way, but the real reason it was reinforcement was that I didn't know what to actually do to stop the behavior. I didn't try anything because he was so good at pooping outside I didn't want to mess that up.

When I hired a trainer recently, we started using the clicker and she taught me to click before Kody would do something bad if I knew it was going to happen. Well, it wasn't even one our main issues, but when Kody finished pooping I just tried clicking right after he was done before any of that could happen. The first time I did it, he came to me for a treat and didn't kick or bark. Then I clicked and treated again, to really reinforce that he should just stay near me calmly. He quickly got into a pattern of not kicking or barking at all, for the most part, treat or not. So as you can see, my laughter was doing a pretty cruddy job of reinforcing the behavior.

When you learn real training methods to change behavior, I bet people often see, as I did, that the things they thought they were accidentally doing to reinforce behavior weren't a big deal after all.

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http://doxienews.com

Actually, I have found that laughing is quite a strong reinforcer.  I am a clicker trainer, so if I wanted a different behaviour, it wouldn't be hard to get.  Since the behaviour doesn't bother me, I'm not trying to get another behaviour in it's place.  (I only need to put a hand near a pocket, and she stops the behaviour and watches me.)  I've found laughter, smiling, "nice" facial expression to be very reinforcing to dogs, since our facial expressions indicate to the dog whether we are pleased or not with the behaviour they're doing at the time.  But obviously this will differ from dog to dog, breed to breed, and owner to dog.

About the firefighters and the dog: why can't they just learn to not leave their food on the table?  Isn't it common sense that if you leave food out around a dog they are going to try to eat it?  My dogs do that all the time with me, and I just try not to leave my food out where they can get to it.  I noticed they had a bench.  That is obviously how the dog is getting on the table.  They could: 1. get chairs instead of a bench, so the men could learn to push the chairs in when they leave the table, or 2. get a baby gate and don't let the dog in the room at meal-times.  As for the third example, I have two dogs.  I've only had my dogs for about the space of 3 months, but Liberty doesn't roll Justyce, my puppy, over like he described.  In fact, she never rolls him over.  He offers him her belly, I think, but she never forces a roll.  I'm no professional dog-trainer, but based on what I see I don't think dogs EVER do that.

Hopefully, Animal Planet will come to their senses and dump Brad Pattison like he deserves. And you are right Patty, his fake certifications are about as dangerous to dogs as you can possibly get.  With no experience, but a paper in hand there are 3 trainers in my city that use his abusive methods.