What She Said...

 Thanks for sharing!

 Link wouldn't work for me

Chuffy, I had to copy and paste into my address bar, the link didn't work for me either.

Great article, Anne.  The bloom went completely off the rose, for me, in regards to CM, when a JRT got the best of him one episode. 

 Thanks.  I have read it now.  It was very well put.

My answer would be the same as the one i posted here:

http://community.dog.com/forums/t/99303.aspx

Very nice article.  I agree 110%.

 I particularly liked this bit:

One problem with the punishment-based methods used on the show is that they assume the dog will learn what it is doing is "wrong," thereby attributing dogs with the humanlike ability to determine right from wrong. Until dogs form the capability to speak and tell us what they are thinking at any given moment, assuming that dogs are driven by their conscience is anthropomorphic - using human explanations for dog behaviors.

Don't treat your dog like a human, but don't treat them like fake wolves, either.

It's something that occurred to me recently and has been bothering me ever since. That and the notion that a dog can learn that you are the leader through abstract things you might do, like eating before the dog. I swear a dog is not capable of reasoning like "He's eating before me. He must be the leader." or "She wants to go through the door first. She must be the boss of me." or even "Here's the human diving in to take care of my problems again. They must be the pack leader."

A well-written article and I think one of the most germain points is yes, dogs are not humans. Neither are they wolves. So, don't treat them like either species. Treat them like dogs, which are a different, distinct species, Dr. Wayne of UCLA in the 90's be hanged. So much has been made out of his research of one locus of mtDNA that led to to a soi-disant "affirmation" that dogs were barely domesticated grey wolves. If one wants to get down to DNA specifics, nDNA has a bigger impact and dogs resemble coyotes and jackals a little more in that respect, yet still, are not comparable to those species in the modern day aspect of their behavior and lives. Anyway, I'm also glad to see reiterated that many of the positive trainers were noted to have started with traditional punishment-predominant training only to find that truly understanding motivation, positive and negative, result in a better understanding training program then just assuming a plan works because it seemed to have worked, now and then. With some of those results, it would be akin to saying that a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.

JackieG

Chuffy, I had to copy and paste into my address bar, the link didn't work for me either.

Great article, Anne.  The bloom went completely off the rose, for me, in regards to CM, when a JRT got the best of him one episode. 

Not sure I've seen that one, but I have no doubt about what a determined JRT might be capable of.  

BEVOLASVEGAS

Very nice article.  I agree 110%.

I think that while i agree with the article, we keep on looking in the wrong places for a cessation of this kind of on going nonsense. The problem lays not with the dogs but the people that propose these concepts and ideas. I can't help but notice as Corvus has said the contradictory thinking that is needed to support this kind of training, and the almost complete lack of evidence based practice .

I have also found this kind of sad stuff with Religous cults , and Obession based disorders such as  families living under the cloud of gambling , addiction and child abuse.

May be we need to learn some of the lessons that have been learnt in dealing with people involved in these situations. The progress through the various headings is pretty much what you would expect of someone hoping to mantain a belief that isn't really based on reality.

poodleOwned

I have also found this kind of sad stuff with Religous cults , and Obession based disorders such as  families living under the cloud of gambling , addiction and child abuse.

This has come up before, many times, particularly the part about religion.  The way he is followed by some folks, it IS like a belief system, and they hold on to it even when clear evidence shows that the logic is flawed. 

Certain people think you are really just beaing mean, saying it to bait CM fans, or the debate is just getting heated when it's mentioned, as if the point itself has no merit.  For me, it's sort of refreshing to see it in a thread where there is no such argument, and hardly a pro-CM in sight.... because it's abundantly clear that this is not being said just to upset anyone, but is a cool, rational observation.  Nicely put.

I started a thread a while ago about the similarity between religion and beliefs about dog training (or even child rearing).  I noticed it because I read an article by Douglas Adams on religion.  Paraphrasing, he said that you can have quite a clear, logical, enjoyable debate about why people do the things they do, but if someone says "Oh no, I don't touch light swtiches on a Tuesday, because I'm Jewish."  you can't question it.  You just can't.  It's offensive.  It's wrong.  But.... why?  Surely beliefs and practises SHOULD be questioned, and survive only if they stand up to robust,logical debate?  Reading the very heated CM debates on here made me think of that article more times than I can count.

Have you been reading Salmon of Doubt, Chuffy? That book made me desperately unhappy that the world had lost Adams forever.

I think you are right, though. There comes a point in all of these discussions where there is a stalemate as people just believe something is fact and there's no arguing with them. It's like when my partner's parents watched my 15 week old puppy follow their 11 year old dog around the yard and told me it was all about dominance and my puppy was over-marking their dog's marking, even though their dog had lifted his leg on 15 different things in the last 5 minutes and my puppy was not even lifting his leg at all yet and had only been once! I said "Really, even in a wee little puppy?" Yes. Absolutely. It's all about dominance with dogs, right from the start. Why bother arguing?

And it doesn't matter what anyone else says, if someone is picking on CM it's tall poppy syndrome and they are jealous. Of course they will deny it. Even if it's true they would die before admitting it. And if it's not true, they will deny it all the same and they will be disbelieved because how you can't trust anyone to admit that they are jealous?
 

corvus

Have you been reading Salmon of Doubt, Chuffy?

I have read that book more times than I have had hot dinners.  

poodleOwned

I have also found this kind of sad stuff with Religous cults

Religious cults indeed. Do you know how you can identify one? They are the ones that dont respect someone else's way of thinking. They can NOT live thinking that there is a person out there that does not share their believes.

You can see it on the world's history. How many wars have started because a country does not share the same religion as the attackers?

You can see it right here in this forum. The search button can help. How many anti-CM threads are in here? How many anti-other trainers threads can you find? How many pro-CM people have started threads to question techniques not used by him? How many anti-CM people have started threads to question him?

Religious cults indeed.