Slate mag's take on CM

It's kind of similar to my view.
 
I don't always use CM's techniques but I get the point he is trying to make and it has made me more reflexive. By that, I recognize my dog's drive and reasoning and work with that, rather than against it. Just as importantly, I read the body language he points out and that has allowed me to stop a behavior from escalating simply by catching the first sign and redirecting before it escalates. He once explained how to broadcast the right "energy." Speak, in your mind, what you expect. Recall to yourself a job or social role where you are in charge. No, the dog doesn't read your mind or follow the abstract construct of human language. What he does read is your body language and smell, both of which are affected by your attitude. So, you are broadcasting energy, whether CM has the scientific lingo, or not. Energy in the form of pheromones, posture, tone of voice. Simply put, energy is the transfer of motion from one particle to the next.
 
That doesn't mean you should "yank and crank." But define what you expect from the dog and then be consistent in that expectation, i.e., don't reward until compliance.
 

Oh, please.....  This guy is just your typical idiot dog owner who knows zilch about behavior and training, and is not expressing some "miracle" that happened solely because of CM.  Firstly, he completely pisses me off with his (again) simplistic view of positive training - where's the operant conditioning part that he should have tried????  It isn't about treats, stupid author! [sm=banghead002.gif]  But, yet, people on this board, who should know better, just go blithely along thinking this is proof that CM is just a fine guy and people are doing their dogs a favor by emulating him?  I hate to tell you all, but CM did *not* discover leadership techniques.  I have about a hundred clients whose dogs ignore them when they ssstttt at them.  If you want to believe in this guy, fine, but don't support your arguments with anecdotal and non-scientific evidence.  Tell me about CC, OC, CS, CR, Premack, +P, -P, etc.  And, tell me how the techniques worked over the lifespan of the dog, not for a week or even a month.  Then, tell me how they work for a thousand dogs and what behavioral issues they all presented with, not one unhousebroken Beagle.  Makes me wonder if the humans simply haven't discovered the new "spot".

I still can't see all the need for hostility over CM.  If there's nothing nice to say, don't say anything.  That would be like me bashing McConnell or some other well known "expert" that is well liked by some.  If I didn't like her, I'd have nothing to say.  What makes anybody else such an expert?  They all read books and have their own experiences to draw from.  That's it.  Nothing magical about any of it. 
 
The defensiveness boggles my mind.  Just a few weeks ago, everyone was patting the guy on the back from NY Times who wrote the op-ed.  I thought it was equally as much hogwash as apparently you feel the article at Slate.com is.  The op-ed author is also just a "typical idiot dog owner who knows zilch about behavior and training".  No difference at all. 
 
It's opinion and we're all entitled to it.  But, the flat out untruths and hostility towards CM is borderline weird to me. 

many of us are hostile to CM because every day we observe people doing unpleasant, weird, and unsafe things to their dogs (and to MY dogs) because they are trying to emulate his methods- which they loudly proclaim to all. I've never seen anyone do anything weird or unpleasant to a dog and claim they are trying to emulate Karen Pryor or McConnell.

Please pardon me while I rant....
 
So, the author of this article, Emily Yoffe, wrote a book about her beagle Sasha called "What the Dog Did". And even though I'm generally not in favor of the "My dog was soooooo bad/How bad was he?" genre of literature, I read it anyway.
 
And it of course INFURIATED me because not only is she clueless about Sasha, but she tells all sorts of other stories about friends and family who are also clueless about their dogs too. And it's all expressed in this "OMG our dog is sooo weird and bad, but cute so we'll put up with anything s/he does!" manner that just made me want to rip my hair out! None of the problems with the various dogs she wrote about in the book was really all that weird or complicated (the lab who eats anything, food or non-food; the akita who grows overly-protective of one person; the Braslian mastiff got from a wretched byb for all the wrong reasons; the beagle who can't be housetrained and bolts) and in fact, given the breeds of dogs so completely common as to be boring (if you say "beagle" to me, I'm going to say "bolter", if you say "akita" I'm going to say "gaurd dog"). Yet every single person in this book is totally blindsided by these problems, yells at the dog for a while, and then just gives up and lives with the vet bills associated with intestinal blockages, getting new carpets every year, relegating the entire basement to the dog, not ever having people over and never leaving the house. The end. Wasn't that a cute book about how much we love dogs?
 
Um, no. It's a stupid book about stupid people who don't love their dogs enough to actually see these behavioral problems for what they are (dogs acting like dogs) and correct them for the dog's own health and welfare. The lab who eats everything? Constant vomiting and diarrhea and finally surgery for a blockage all causes because these people apparently never heard of supervising their dog or crate training/confinement. How is a dog every year eating the child's birthday cake while it cools? Shouldn't that happening once clue the family in that while a cake is cooling on the counter the dog should be securely elsewhere? FREAKING. IDIOTS!
 
So, into this morass of stupidity steps Cesar Milan, who does actually have something useful to say: dogs need training, they need exercise, they aren't born knowing how to behave in the human world and just letting them get their way all the time is like letting a 2 year old get their way all the time: not a grand idea. And people are blown away by this amazing, profound information! It's really quite easy to see his appeal. He's quite right about all of the above and to a lot of people this is apparently Big News.
 
I just wish he'd stop there and stop giving the impression that people can do DIY dog behaviorism and that one method and one theory will apply to all dogs in all situations. If anyone ever TSST!s my dogs, I'll TSST! them right back with a quickness. Bad human. Think critically and do some more research before deciding all of a sudden that you are an expert on all things canid because of one TV show. Would you belive that I and others who work/volunteer in shelters have actually seen potential adopters walking around through the kennels TSST!ing the shelter dogs (like that's going to do a damn thing for their stress level)?!? That is what Cesar has wrought.
 
I purposefully avoided that Slate article and the attendant bulletin boards, even though I'm a regular Slate reader and occasional commenter. I think my head would explode upon contact.

this subject just NEVER gets old does it?

Houndlove - [sm=clapping%20hands%20smiley.gif][sm=clapping%20hands%20smiley.gif][sm=clapping%20hands%20smiley.gif]
 
Kate

[linkhttp://www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=nr_news_releases_dog_whisperer]http://www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=nr_news_releases_dog_whisperer[/link]

Nice post Mudpuppy.  I'm glad at least something is out there like that.

FWIW, I had an agility client with a rambunctios 2 year old male, recently neutered Standard poodle in class, who told me that after watching Ceasar Milan, he used the alpha roll on his dog when it went to chase the cat. [:@]  And that was to show the dog who was boss.  []

i'm not going to voice an opinion about c.m. but about the author.

she hasnt followed through on any of the training programs she has attempted for her dog thus far. that is obviously her dog's biggest problem. is there any reason to believe that she will continue with the techniques that c.m. has taught her? would be nice to get a follow up in a few weeks/months to find out.

Just so people realize this is NOT the American Humane Society that most people think of when they see those words.  This is a different group alltogether.  It's another CM bashing letter and nothing new.  You can find just about anything you want via the internet to justify any point you want to make.  That goes for me as well, so it's a moot point.  

ORIGINAL: Mastiff

I still can't see all the need for hostility over CM.  If there's nothing nice to say, don't say anything.  That would be like me bashing McConnell or some other well known "expert" that is well liked by some.  If I didn't like her, I'd have nothing to say.  What makes anybody else such an expert?  They all read books and have their own experiences to draw from.  That's it.  Nothing magical about any of it. 

The defensiveness boggles my mind.  Just a few weeks ago, everyone was patting the guy on the back from NY Times who wrote the op-ed.  I thought it was equally as much hogwash as apparently you feel the article at Slate.com is.  The op-ed author is also just a "typical idiot dog owner who knows zilch about behavior and training".  No difference at all. 

It's opinion and we're all entitled to it.  But, the flat out untruths and hostility towards CM is borderline weird to me. 

I'm with you Mastiff.  I don't get it either.  I've said before that I don't agree with every single thing that CM does, but his basic messages of excercise, disipline, affection, rules, boundries, limitations and being your dogs calm assertive pack leader are right on.  No, he didn't invent these ideas and this is nothing revolutionary, but he has a way of communicating these simple concepts better than than just about anyone out there in the public eye today.

THANK YOU houndlove! I read Emily Yoffe's book too, and you summarized it perfectly. I'm a little apalled that, years later, Yoffe still hasn't grasped the basics of training... her dog's "problems" currently include -
1. urinating in the house
2. begging for food
3. running out the door
4. bad leash manners
5. poor recall
...This is like a Greatest Hits list of owner gripes coming from people who have not trained their dogs. I'm also a little amazed that after claiming to have delved into the "dog world" as she did in her book, she doesn't recognize the obvious fallacy in the "my dog pees in the house because she doesn't respect me" whinge. Your. dog. is. not. trained. It's not rocket science. [8|]

Okay ...