CM and corrections

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your question, but CM has used e-collars.

Your question is vague - are you asking how does one make corrections w/o all of the above?
 
I have been teaching for 30 years and on occassion must make corrections - whether it is a leash correction, a "uh uh", a distraction, a bump on the hip - there are times when corrections are needed.  CM does get a lot of flak for making corrections - but dealing with some of the serious issues he does - and most of us must handle - I find no fault with his method.
 
And for the record - an "alpha roll" is putting the animal on his back and getting "in his face" so to speak.  CM does NOT do that - he places a recalcitrant dog on his side and lets him calm down - that technique was suggested to me by a breeder of Olde English Bulldogges - because I was having difficulty modifying the behavior of one.
 
dianeg

ORIGINAL: Scout in Canada

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your question, but CM has used e-collars.

Yep you completely misunderstood, and yes I know he does. However some people here slam Cesar's methods and say he's cruel or abusive to dogs (I totally disagree). So again, my question to anyone who uses corrections, like leash pops, pinch collars, and e-collars is, what makes what your doing any better than what he does, and therefore, why would you attack his methods. Now if you don't use these corrections, there's no need for you to answer.

ORIGINAL: gilbyd

Your question is vague - are you asking how does one make corrections w/o all of the above?

No, see above.

I can only share what I see Cesar doing as compares to using a correction "Koehler style" to administer a very direct positive punishment so that the dog associates an unpleasant experience as a reinforcer not to repeat the previous behavior.
 
 
Koehler style uses basic learning theory:
 
"Positive punishment" can be administered inside the "operant conditioning box", with no social action from another being involved to achieve a changed behavior pattern.
 
What I see Cesar using is what I think of as social learning. When he uses an actual "correction", it is not just "positive punishment" cause=effect, it is less aversive because he puts a communication/instruction/direction from leader to follower into the interaction as well.
 
There's more to contact with the collar and leash and/or with touch than meets the eye, too.
 
Communication is more than good/bad or positive and negative of conditioning. It's about mutual survival and social peace. []
 
 
 
 
 

Malcolm Gladwell got a lot of flak for his piece on Cesar in the New Yorker. He addressed some of the criticism in his blog [linkhttp://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/05/the_dog_whisper.html]HERE[/link]. These parts, inparticular seem to ring true for this thread:

I've received a far amount of feedback on the piece. One of the most interesting comments came from Janis Bradley. Bradley is the author of the book "Dogs Bite," which I referenced in an earlier post as one of the best things I've ever read on that issue. She's an instructor at the SPCA's Academy for Dog Trainers in San Francisco and is one of a number of dog behaviorists who are critical—to say the least—of Cesar's methods. Here is an excerpt from an email she sent me:

Here are the basics. On his TV show, the main method Millan uses for aggression is aversives (leash jerks, kicks, snaps of the hand against the neck, and restraint, among others) applied non contingently. The aversives are non contingent because they are so frequent that they're not connected to any particular behavior on the part of the dog—the dog gets popped pretty much constantly. This results in a state called learned helplessness, which means the animal hunkers down and tries to do as little as possible. This is what Millan calls "calm submission." It's exactly the same thing you see in a rat in a Skinner box that is subjected to intermittent shocks it can do nothing to avoid. This can happen quite fast, by the way, shall we say in ten minutes?

What you see on the Dog Whisperer, though, are highly edited snippets of Cesar's interactions with problem dogs. In the course of researching my article, I watched a good deal of unedited footage of Cesar in action, and I also accompanied Cesar on a number of his "house-calls." What you see, when you observe the unabridged Cesar, is something quite different. For instance, Cesar's "aversives"—to use Bradley's language--don't seem non-contingent when you see him in context: on the contrary, over the course of an hour or more with a particular dog, he might only "touch" the dog once or twice, and only in response to very specific behaviors. What you also realize is that Cesar's overwhelming focus is nearly always on the owners of dogs—not on the dog's themselves. He spends most of his time trying to teach owners how to create a healthy environment for their dog: the importance of regular exercise, of clarity and consistency in communication, and so on. And despite all his talk about dominance and being a pack leader, what is striking about Cesar viewed in full context (and this is one of the major themes of my article) is how paradoxically gentle he is. That's why, in the piece, I compare the way he relates to troubled dogs with the way movement therapists work with autistic children.

I think it is really easy for people - fans and critics alike - to get the wrong idea from the show. TV shows are edited for maximum entertainment, and watching a good dog be is MUCH less entertaining than watching a dog misbehaving. Nearly all trainers - including those who advocate as much positive reinforcement as possible - will admit that aversives have there place when used in the appropriate context and with correct technique.

I actually really enjoyed that New Yorker article. I read it right as I was in a fence-sitting place with Cesar. I had been a huge fan, and had started to have some doubts, but not enough to really make a complete decision yet. Basically what that article wound up screaming loud and clear to me was: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME. The article talks a lot about Cesar as sort of one-in-a-million gifted, and not in the area of dog ethology but in the area of kinesthetics. The way he moves and holds his body and interacts with dogs and humans alike is not something that can be taught really, it's something you got or don't got. And like Gladwell said in his blog, getting dog training advice from an edited TV show is really not such a splendid idea because it is heavily edited and there's a lot of important stuff missing. My problem is way more with the show than with the man anyway, though I do disagree quite deeply with him on a number of philosophical issues.

Anyway, I really recommend that article for fans and non-fans and fence-sitters alike. It is I guess a "positive" article about him, but it's about him much more than about his show.

ORIGINAL: houndlove

it's something you got or don't got.

 
Well i think i got it because it works perfect for me, but how i would know that now if i didnt try it first? []

I didn't realize that the people who use those same methods are the ones that take issue with him.  That sounds kind of stupid to me. 

 I will leave these forums with this, the people who complain about Cesar (especilly those who come here and say he's mean, or abusive to dogs) have no room to speak. Just go look at the clicker thread and read their thoughts on corrections, and lol how they justify what they do by saying, *well we just use fun and soft choke, pinch, and shock corrections, heck the dog even likes them*. To those who can see it is Cesar who is starting a wave in working with dogs on a natural level, one dogs understand, I hope you stay with what you can see actually works.

To all...I say, goodbye and peace.

How can you really say what is abusive? It can definitely be more than just the physical.

I don't consider Cesar to be abusive, however, I do see his methods as sometimes unnecessarily harsh. That's because in my world, creating fear, trepidation, anxiety, mental anguish, physical pain or even simply annoyance or irritability or defensiveness are all things I consider harsh and a last resort. That's just me. I pick methods I instinctively know my way around and am pulling away from corrections naturally because they don't put me in a very helpful mindframe and I don't think I'm at my most understanding when I'm doing things to my animals that I wouldn't like done to me. That's a personal choice and a personal stance based on who I am, nothing else. I can't be what I'm not, and what I'm not is a person that corrects anything or anyone, person or otherwise. I'm always gentle because I think it makes it easier on everyone involved. It doesn't make sense to me to do things to others I wouldn't like until I've exhausted all the teaching methods I would like. That's all. I wouldn't bash anyone for choosing a more direct or more 'corrective' path than I, but I maintain my right to feel disapproving of it. It's what makes me me.

Incidentally, Awsomedog, e-collars and prongs are illegal in my state, and in many others in this country. I'm not against the use of an e-collar that delivers only vibrations as a pager, but anything else is illegal anyway, so I don't have any choice about it. Frankly, I think we live quite fine without such training tools over here.

ORIGINAL: willowchow

I didn't realize that the people who use those same methods are the ones that take issue with him.  That sounds kind of stupid to me. 

Actually, the people who generally take issue with him are the "Positive Only" animal rights extremists. They can mostly be found at the APDT, the BARK rag, SFSPCA, American Humane Association, and PETA. The "Positive Only" authors, mentors, trainers, and owners who have become "believers in the cause", have morally entitled themselves to go after anyone who does not subscribe to *their* views of which tools, methods, or philosophies should be allowed by law to be used in dog "training". This is about control.

Cesar is just their main target because he is visible. But they all came bubbling out of the woodwork as soon as his show aired. A scary group which has at long last been exposed.

Jean Donaldson (author of Culture Clash) is the leader of this holy crusade. Janis Bradley, who's comments are in this article, is a collegue of Jean's at the SFSPCA, so her words are no surprise. Jean's first response to the original article was to get ahold of a picture of the dog (while in intensive care with tubes coming out of it) which was accidentally injured by someone at Cesar's center, and put this picture up on the net. What a sad and obvious bit of emotional propaganda, but typical.

It's a real eye opener to read everything which was said in response to the original article, and all of the comments in the blog after the APDTs started the ball rolling, and then other people in the dog world started calling them on their bad behavior and emotional propaganda. 

There are few lengths an extremist will not go to, in order to further their self-righteous cause. I can always spot them due to their emotionally inflammatory verbiage, usually beginning off the top with "pain, force, fear, abuse, barbaric, etc..."

Noone has to take my word for it, do some digging and research on the net, and see what you find. []

ORIGINAL: Awsomedog

 I will leave these forums with this, the people who complain about Cesar (especilly those who come here and say he's mean, or abusive to dogs) have no room to speak. Just go look at the clicker thread and read their thoughts on corrections, and lol how they justify what they do by saying, *well we just use fun and soft choke, pinch, and shock corrections, heck the dog even likes them*. To those who can see it is Cesar who is starting a wave in working with dogs on a natural level, one dogs understand, I hope you stay with what you can see actually works.

To all...I say, goodbye and peace.

If you do go to the clicker threads to look at that discussion, please pay particular attention to understanding the four quadrants of operant conditioning.  Members there were not condoning, but rather understanding, another members choice to use a discriminative stimulus.  Awsomedog is perseverating on an argument that makes no sense once you understand the nature of positive and negative reinforcers and discriminative stimuli.  His argument is simplistic and not based on scientific information.  On that thread, houndlove posted a very nice explanation of the terminology from Wiki, so that those of you who want to read the thread can at least have basic understanding of operant conditioning, if you aren't well versed in the lingo already.
This is a thinly veiled attempt at the "gotcha" game, and most members have stopped buying it, which is why many of them have enabled their block function when it comes to your responses.  If you really are leaving the forum, you have missed an opportunity to become better educated about clicker training simply because you have closed your mind and focused on trying to discredit a method you don't even understand completely.
Godspeed. []

I will leave these forums with this, the people who complain about Cesar (especilly those who come here and say he's mean, or abusive to dogs) have no room to speak. Just go look at the clicker thread and read their thoughts on corrections, and lol how they justify what they do by saying, *well we just use fun and soft choke, pinch, and shock corrections, heck the dog even likes them*. To those who can see it is Cesar who is starting a wave in working with dogs on a natural level, one dogs understand, I hope you stay with what you can see actually works.

To all...I say, goodbye and peace.

 
 
I respect your decision to leave, but I don't see the reason why. We all have different opinions and trying to change another person's mind is sometimes impossible.[8D]