Seeking definition

Emily the pitbull, IMO, was undertrained and excitable.  Yes, she was aggressive, but it was her frantic excitability that made her "red zone."  She was spazzed out, but never turned on any of the people involved. She was like a kid throwing a tantrum over a lollypop.  "I WANT TO EAT THAT OTHER DOG NOW! NOWNOWNOWNOW!!!" Granted, her tantrum was dangerous and her lollypop was a living being, but the fact that a pittie wanted to attack another dog?  Pretty darn normal. 

The red zone, when a dog goes into a frenzy such that they are unpredictable, loose their ability to focus on anything else, and just start going purely by their animal instinct to fight--to kill instead of being killed.

 
In which case, red zone is a misnomer. An animal will fight for self-preservation. Which doesn't make it a red zone dog. It makes it an animal fighting for its life. But it seems the term might be applied to highly reactive dogs that seem to go beserk in the presence of a trigger, be it human, animal, or sound, or whatever. In which case, IMHO, the proper treatment is not more punishment but seeking a different reaction to the stimulus by changing what that stimulus means to the dog. And/or, environmental management. For example, some people here don't like spiders. And they are not interested in getting over their thing about spiders. Best bet, stay away from spiders. Some dogs might be similar.

ORIGINAL: Ixas_girl
So, has "Red Zone Dog" been part of dog vocabulary before Millan, any one recall having seen/heard it?

^ Answering my own question, with a little drive around the google block:

Aphrodite Jones wrote a book about the San Francisco dog mauling case, called "Red Zone":http://books.google.com/books?id=CgeNU8IrRGIC&dq=red+zone+dog
"In January 2001, Diane Alexis Whipple bled to death in the hallway of her ritzy Pacific Heights apartment building when she was mauled by two Presa Canarios, a vicious breed of attack dog imported from the Canary Islands. After the lethal attack, animal experts testified that the dogs could not have been stopped, explaining that they had entered a frenzy called the “Red Zone.”"

Term for assessing shelter dogs:
"Dogs are color coded upon assessment.
Green: Adoptable with little or no work needed.
Orange: Potential problems fixable in time.
Red: Any dog showing aggression towards humans, or for that matter dog Vs dog aggression."
fromhttp://p205.ezboard.com/A-question-for-BC-folk/fdogcommunityfrm19.showMessage?topicID=307.topic

and the bulk of the rest of the entries are from Millan. I'm guessing he picked up the term from shelter assessment usage, since he has rescued and rehabilitated so many of these "red zone dogs":

He says:
"In my own dictionary, in order to be considered in the “red zone”, a dog has to be the attacker. Based on your description of Spike, he only becomes aggressive when people approach him, so he is not yet a red zone case." fromhttp://www.dogpsychologycenter.com/column/20061006.php

and
"A red zone is when a dog is in attack mode against another animal or a human. It is not a dominant or territorial thing. The intention of the red zone dog is to assault its target until he exhausts it. Until there is no life left," he says. "The sad thing is that a red zone case is never something that happens overnight - which is why it's so tragically preventable. It is my personal opinion that no red-zone dog should lose its life unless every possible avenue of rehabilitation for that dog has been sought."
fromhttp://www.pawspot.com/info/page/pawsitivelynews?entry=cesar_millan_the_dog_whisperer

and
http://www.dogchannel.com/dog-information/cesar-millan-dog-whisperer/article_story.aspx

My take on it is that "in the red zone" means in full on "attack mode" and a red zone dog is a dog very prone to going into that red zone.... CM might say, "extremely unbalanced".  Mind you thats a term that begs definition for me too.

I think "red zone" refers to the zone - the heightened state of aggression - not the dog itself.  A good dog can go into "red zone", just as a "red zone" dog can snap out of it and be a good dog.  My dog right now is skittish and overly submissive, obedient to a fault, but I won't say that there's nothing that might threaten her enough that she would attack or kill.  All dogs have the potential to be red zone, balanced, submissive, anything.  I think the "red zone" is when the dog's aggression (be it fear, dominance, whatever) has escalated to the point that physical intervention is really the only means of redirecting the dog.  I think "red zone" cases or instances are pretty rare (well, except in dog fighting).

Wikipedia defines Red Zone as:  Red Zone is a term designating unsafe areas .
 
So using Red Zone in a dog context would be "unsafe dog". 
 
Why? The dog is unsafe to others is a different dissussion.  Is it excitement?  DA? etc?

How about "unbalanced"?  That's got to be a CM term, I'd never heard it applied to a dog before, and still can't figure out what on earth it means. To me, an unbalanced dog is one who falls down a lot.

look beyond gravity

Unbalanced can be applied to more thinks that just gravity:
 
[linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbalanced]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbalanced[/link]
 
And those are just a few examples from so many others

I think "red zone" is a label applied as a marketing technique to dogs exhibiting any behavior that may raise the adrenaline levels of viewers.