Tawzer Dog Videos filmed my 90-minute Behavior Adjustment Training seminar in Novato last month, and it’s now available for sale in our online store (click here). We ship orders out on Fridays only, so if you’re looking to get it as soon as possible, then get it from the Tawzer website, when it becomes available.

Here are some clips from the intro of that seminar:

(if that doesn’t work for you, you can view it on YouTube).

We should get copies on Thursday, February 11th, so orders placed this week will *probably* go out on Friday.

I could use a lot of volunteers in Seattle. Are you interested? Here’s what I need:

1. Dog-human teams that can be decoys in a set-up for BAT with a dog-aggressive dog. The goal is to have the student dog remain calm and happy around the decoy, so it shouldn’t be very stressful on your dog. Decoy dogs should not be aggressive or fearful, and should be over 2 years old. I can usually keep the sessions aggression-free, but there is a risk that your dog will be barked at. When we work up close, there is always a fence between the dogs or the dog is muzzled (when I’m feeling very confident), so there is no risk of a bite. We start very far away and move closer as time goes on. Volunteers can opt out at any time.

2. Child-adult teams that can be decoys in a set-up for a dog that is afraid of children. The dog barks but has no history of biting or snapping at any humans. Again, all attempts will be made to keep the session happy and bark-free and we will set up barriers so that there is no risk of a bite. Sessions can take place wherever you’d like. One good location is an outdoor cafe in Ravenna where you and your child just have lunch as we walk back and forth. I’ll treat you for the meal! (This is my dog, Peanut. He’s actually a therapy dog for an assisted living facility, but we haven’t done enough training with children.) Kids 0-13 would be best, since he’s fine with people over about 4′6″.

One benefit of doing this is that your child can learn more about dog safety.

3. A puppy that is afraid of people.

4. People to serve as decoys for the puppy. I’d love to have a vet’s office willing to help me with this, so if you work at a vet office and could do the set-up there, please let me know!

5. Someone interested in running the camera would also be great!

A description of the technique and some videos of what it looks like are on the Ahimsa website: http://doggiezen.com/blog/bat-posts

Benefits to participants: Information on how to use BAT plus a week of free drop-ins to our Dream Dog program. Info on the Dream Dog program is at http://ahimsadogtraining.com/dreamdog

Session times vary, but usually they are something like 15 minutes (if that’s all the child can do) to an hour.

Let me know if you’re interested in any of these volunteer spots. Thank you in advance!!!

At some point, I will be doing a research study on BAT, and I will ask for participants with human-aggressive dogs. That will probably be Fall, 2010.

I figured it would help to give students a chance to see progress, so I have created an overview sheet for set-ups. Clients will make progress if they do set-ups correctly and consistently.  It’s not enough just to do one set-up, for any method. With BAT, expect the sessions to decrease in length and increase in quality of interaction.  I did about 20 set-ups for Peanut with adults, and he went from not being touchable by strangers to enjoying working as a therapy dog in an assisted living facility.  The initial sessions were long and the sessions at the end were short, only a few minutes. 20 may seem like a lot of set-ups, but it only took a month of Saturdays.

Click here for the BAT session Overview sheet. There is a blank form and the second page is a filled-out sample. You might not use the same decoy 4 times, but it allows for that. I usually use decoys 2-3 times max, because the dog starts to remember them. Print a new sheet for each decoy. When you print out multiple copies, you’ll need to set your computer to just print page 1. Fill out whichever rows you think are most important, and do this for each session.

Dog trainers and behaviorists: you can print this out to use with your clients, but please leave the contact info on there. If you are posting it on a website, please use a link instead of putting the file on your domain.

Let me know if you use this, either by email or using the comments section below!

Here are some highlights of that video:

• At 0:27, he actually does a nice look away and retreats, and I didn’t notice, because I was fussing with the camera. I called him back and we ’started’ our session, even though he was already starting without me. That’s the cool part about this method, that the dog can train himself after a while!
• 0:36, 0:37, 0:39 he sees the triggers and we push on because we’re not quite at his threshold – we’re working on head turns and this is still a very easy distance.
• 0:39, 0:46 I stop and he looks at me after only a tiny glance at the triggers (kids). I decide that’s not close enough, that he can handle more.
• 0:49 Looks away from trigger, 0:50 big nose lick. I miss this. Another casualty of filming and walking at the same time.  This would’ve been a good place to stop.
• 0:55, solid engagement with the kids, has enough time to look and see what they are up to, then turns to look at me. I mark with Good! and reward him by walking the other way with him, away from the kids. Note how fast he walks in that direction.
• 1:10 – some calming touch. Not necessary, but it’s what Peanut and I do.
• More aware of the kids now. I return to our same spot and do two more trials. During the walk-away on the 2nd trial, the kids follow us, and you’ll see him look back. I like trials 2 and 3 better than trial 1, because it seemed more directed at the environment, rather than an escape into mom’s eyes. I’m more than happy to be his anchor, I’m just glad when he doesn’t need it.

The second video is the use of the Premack Principle to practice heeling. Remember, BAT is not just for aggression & fear, but also for other problem behaviors maintained by the environment, like pulling. The point is to set the dog up to succeed, then reward with what they most want in the moment.

The Premack Principle states that the opportunity to perform a high probability behavior will reinforce the performance of a low-probability behavior. One way to think of that is that if your dog gets freedom to act like a dog as a reward for listening to you, you’ll get a better-trained dog (it’s broader than that, but it’s a good way to think of it). In the video, I have Peanut heel and he can chew his stick as a reward. I do this because he used to pull whenever he had a toy in is mouth, because he’d want to go enjoy it. Now he’ll trot along, waiting for permission to go chew.

This is now already a trained behavior, so I had him come with me and walk. But visualize smaller steps, like just coming with me as a rewardable behavior. In our real life, he can go quite a ways before I release him to go chew.

The Seattle positive dog trainers group had a meeting yesterday. It was the first time we’d met in about a year and I was going to see some people I hadn’t seen for even longer. It was at a home in the country, so we could all bring our dogs. Yay!

I love going places with my dog, especially now that he can handle it, most of the time. But sometimes, he can’t. I know he has these limitations, for now, because I haven’t done the work I need to make him more comfortable with, say, small children. He came to me, as a puppy, with a fear of just about everything, from dogs to kids to adults, wheeled things, etc. As I’ve mentioned before, he’s able to be a therapy dog and loves going to meet his fan club at the assisted living facility we go to.

But, and this is important, he’s not fine in all situations, and as his human with the schedule and the car keys, it’s up to me to make sure my dog is kept within his comfort zone until I can make that zone bigger through training.

So I look at the guest list the day before and it has something like 15 people and almost as many dogs. That would be ok. A little stressful, maybe a few high pitch barks at the beginning, and he’d be fine, especially since it could be outside. But read on, Grisha, before you commit your dog. 3 little people were also coming. And we might end up indoors, if the weather didn’t cooperate.

I blithely assumed they would be babes in arms, without actually reading further. Since the appearance of a toddler in a confined space is like a small nuclear bomb to Peanut, you’d think I would’ve paid attention. He doesn’t bite them, or even air snap or growl, but he does bark to wake the dead.

But I was selfish. For ME, I wanted my soulmate dog there, both as social support and to show how much progress he’d made, to my friends who hadn’t seen him for a while.

So we showed up and he did relatively fine, just shy, not completely out of his head, and it was looking like a good learning experience as everyone settled down, even though it turned out we were staying inside, not out in a wide-open space. He just ignored the two tiny babies. But what to his wondering eyes should appear but a (very sweet, calm) young girl. That would’ve been fine if he could play fetch with her, but that wasn’t possible in the house, with all of those dogs!

She did her best to help him stay comfortable, but to no avail, since he was what dog trainers call, “way over threshold.” I’d set him up to fail, and Surprise! He did. So instead of putting him just to the edge of his comfort zone and either doing counterconditioning or BAT, I was in ‘management mode’ and just did my best to keep him quiet.

That’s actually shooting myself in the foot, because a lot of what I do to shush him is probably teaching him that barking is good (like me paying attention to him each time he barked and telling him to Leave It – cues are reinforcers!).  Some folks might shush their dogs by yelling or popping on a leash. That doesn’t teach him that barking is good, but it DOES teach them that there’s something to fear in the situation. So it’s lose/lose once you put a dog into a situation that’s too hard.  At that point, I would’ve told my clients to put the dog away, say back in the (not hot) car, ignore the social group and do the relaxation protocol with their dog (click/treat for relaxation) or even leave. But my selfish needs got in the way again, and we stayed, where I could neither train nor really manage him well. I *was* smart enough to mostly stay in the other room where there was no child, and keep him on leash when she was around, but really, that was a Band-Aid, and too little, too late.

Dog fears pile up on top of each other, so that if a dog is a little afraid of X and a little afraid of Y, then X+Y is twice as stressful.  That’s why we hear people saying, “but she’s never done this before!” when their dog gets in a fight or bites the neighbor. Alone, seeing a dog at her house was not scary enough to get a growl, and neither was the appearance of the vacuum cleaner.  But if you put both together, her stress level is higher.  So for Peanut, I had lots of people (now minimally scary), plus lots of dogs (scarier), and a toddler (also scary).  That’s what I mean by setting a dog up to fail. In a real training setting, we’d have just the one new scary thing, like a toddler, plus lots of distance to make it easier, and a training plan to rehabilitate his fears.

Why am I telling you this story? In the hopes that you’ll avoid my mistakes!

All of us are human and have our own needs. The dog has needs, too, and we really need to take them into consideration before we put them in over their heads. It’s a good reminder for me, and something I hope you’ll think about, too. Think about this story and your dog’s needs the next time you:

• Go to a festival, pet store, or party.
• Foster, adopt, or board another dog.
• Have company over, especially if they have dogs or kids.
• Play loud music or get into a loud fight.
• Go on a trip and bring/leave your dog.
• Think about going to the dog park or place where your dog might encounter off leash dogs.
• Tell your dog to go say hi to someone s/he doesn’t want to meet.

Some dogs will be fine with those things. Some dogs won’t.  Just remember your dog’s boundaries, help train tolerance and joy to stretch those boundaries, but also keep your dog feeling safe!

Note to self: Read this post again next time I want to bring Peanut to a party or a dog festival!

p.s. I *was* happy to see that, in spite of this stressful situation, Peanut greeted the adult humans calmly, often with a ‘please pet me’ attitude, something I never thought possible for him. We are so close!

One thing I should mention is that the other dog is kitty-corner across the street, about 40-50 feet away from our first approach distance, maybe a bit more.

After a long break, we are doing her third session today, so stay tuned for video!

There are lots of different ways to do BAT, but the main idea is to use what the dog is already working for to pay for a new behavior.

In this case, the dog would bark/lunge at other dogs she doesn’t know in order to increase the distance between her and the other dog. So we do the session far enough away that she can be calmer* and we use ‘permission to walk away’ as the treat for soft eyes, blinks, head turns, etc. We mostly focus on head turns for this session, as that is a nice default behavior.

When you are doing BAT for fear or aggression, you can either change the stimulus (how close is the other dog, what are they doing, etc.) or you can change your behavioral criteria (what the dog needs to do before you reward).

If you are at the edge of your dog’s comfort zone, don’t make both of those harder at the same time. For this session, we pretty much took the same behavior each time (on the continuum of looking away) and changed only the stimulus (approached closer and closer to the other dog, had other dog move or not move).

We will still need to work toward variety in another session, so that if Cassie does a head turn and it doesn’t make the other dog go away, she will have other tricks up her doggie sleeve.

*Keep in mind, some dogs need to start really far away, so that the other dog is just a speck on the horizon. Starting too far and quickly moving the approach line forward is better than starting out too close.

*************

Session Transcript

Set-up is that the decoy dog is kitty-corner on public street (across the street, opposite corner, 50+ feet away from the ‘client’ dog. There are two handlers (Lori Stevens and Adriane Villanueva) and a camera person (Grisha Stewart). All three are professional dog trainers. Lori and Cassie are the ‘clients’ and Adriane is handling her dog, Penny, as the decoy.

The session was about 35 minutes. This is an edited version of the session. I no longer have the raw footage, so I will just call these trials 1-20 rather than what they really are, a sample of 15 of the the 60 (or so) trials.

In the initial set-up, Cassie had a double-ended leash attached to a harness in the rear and a Gentle Leader in the front. We changed this after it began to feel like the head collar was not giving Cassie enough freedom of movement (and it was distracting her).

The primary alternative behavior we rewarded during this session was a head turn, and most of them were toward the handler. In session 2, we began pushing for different behaviors, but we were working on getting one solid behavior down first, so we didn’t ignore head turns in an attempt to get variety during this session.

Both dogs approaching mark, Cassie leaving as reward. When leaving, Cassie was cued verbally to walk away, sometimes guided by the leash. The ideal is that the retreat is verbally/visually cued.

Trial 1: Alternate behavior rewarded: head turn away from decoy toward handler (0:13). She also opted for a sit when Lori stopped. Slight prompting from Lori as she leaned away from Cassie after they stopped.

Trial 2: Alternate behavior: head turn toward Lori, offered after long look at Penny while walking toward mark (0:32). Just before the head turn toward the handler, at 0:31, there was also a look away to the other side. That could have been rewarded instead.

Trial 3: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (0:49). On this trial, Lori waited until we were back at the mark, just praising some other good head turns without retreating. If we always took the first rewardable behavior, we’d never make it to the mark! Not rewarding every acceptable alternative behavior also helps make this good behavior harder to extinguish later.

(We started making the break between trials a little longer. Cassie likes to move and is a hard worker, so if we wanted a longer break, we could also do something during those, like tricks or other training.)

Trial 4: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (1:24). Tail was a bit higher for this trial. Head turn was prompted by Lori very lightly touching her finger to the leash, just a tiny flutter to help keep Cassie from ‘going limbic’.

(We took a slightly longer break and decided not to go as far forward the next round, to make success more likely. We were just getting started, so that mark was probably too close to the decoy).

Trial 5: Half-way to old mark. Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (2:02). By the time they left, Cassie’s head had turned back, so she did feel the Gentle Leader guiding her away. Ideally she wouldn’t feel any leash on the retreat, but that was just a little timing issue.

Trial 6: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy (2:34). On the approach, there was also ground sniffing that we could have rewarded

Trial 7: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (2:57).

(time gap and then decoy was moved to same side of street, across the intersection)

Trial 8: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy (3:03)

Trial 9: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy (3;17)

(Time gap – more trials and gear was switched to harness only with both front and rear attachment)

Trial 10: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (3:33)

Trial 11: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (3:51)

(time gap – Penny moved to same side of street, no longer moving)

Trial 12: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (4:04). Penny barked an Aussie hello at Cassie and she barked back. She was not super-aroused, so Lori waited for an acceptable behavior before leaving.

(We got another bark after a few more trials, so we mixed things up by adding click/treat plus retreat. The barking seemed like frustration rather than aggression. The click/treat/retreat bit was much easier and more familiar to Cassie. We could also just have increased our distance again, or worked in between trials. We clicked, retreated, then treated on the retreat. That way, the retreat stood out.

Trial 13: Alternate behavior: ground sniff on approach (4:41).

(time gap)

Trial 14: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (4:54). As they retreated, Cassie began to bark at Penny, but handler correctly continued retreating. (Penny had just seen a cat and was stiff during that trial.)

Trial 13: Half-way to mark. Alternate behavior: ground sniff on approach (5:06)

Trial 14: Alternate behavior: head turn away from decoy toward handler (5:20)

Trial 15: Alternate behavior: several head turns away from decoy toward handler (5:44). Actual click ended up being a look at the decoy, better would’ve been for a look away.

Now, if you’re one of those *crazy* people who just wants to keep their dog safe and happy, do the opposite of the suggestions below.

1. Don’t socialize your puppy with people, other dogs, new places, etc.

   Socialized dogs are less likely to become fearful or aggressive with strangers or other dogs.  If your dog bites or growls, you’re going to find it easier to put her to sleep.  So make sure you avoid the big targets of aggression when your dog is young, so that she’ll be surprised and scared when she’s older – kids of all ages, people with packages/canes/hats/etc., and other dogs.

   Fears piles up and lead to a bite. For example, being scared of noises, surfaces, and objects like the vacuum cleaner can also help her bite a child, because she’s already a bit nervous. So make sure she’s not exposed to those while she’s a puppy, either.  The time you have to watch out for is through about 12 weeks, but to be on the safe side, avoid them for the first 16 weeks of your puppy’s life, when she learns most quickly.   If you *do* expose her to new things, make sure it’s over her comfort zone to freak her out.  Whatever you do, don’t give her treats around these new things, or she might learn to like them.

   If you really must do puppy class for some reason, try to find a puppy kindergarten that makes you wait until all of your puppy’s vaccinations are complete, and only does obedience, not socialization. The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behaviorists says that with a good program, puppies should start school 7 days after their first set of shots (distemper, parvo, etc.) You don’t want a good program, so wait until you can find that perfect class that doesn’t socialize the puppies at a young age, or you might end up with a well-socialized dog.

   At the very least, make sure you don’t do any puppy class homework by socializing out in the world, and try to find a program where you can only go once a week, or again, you run the risk of socializing your dog and giving him a longer life.

2. Feed your dog so much that you can’t find the ribs.

   Obese dogs die almost a year sooner than dogs on the slender end of the spectrum.  So plump him up!  You shouldn’t be able to feel the ribs or see a waist.  Here’s how to tell you’ve successfully fattened up your dog:

   Make a fist with your left hand.  Run your right hand over the knuckles, the base of the fingers, and the back of your left hand. If you feel your dog’s ribs and it feels like the knuckles, the dog is too thin. That’s way in the wrong direction.  If your dog’s ribs feel like the base of the fingers, that’s a ‘normal’ weight.  To make your dog obese so you can get rid of him sooner, you want the ribs to feel like the back of your hand.  Like no ribs at all.  Here’s more info on how to tell if your dog is fat.

3. Don’t vaccinate your dogs.

   Diseases like Parvo and Distemper make for a painful death. If you want to get rid of your dog before you even have a chance to fall in love with her, avoid vaccinations.  Some people say you can also help by going the other way and *over-vaccinating* – that’s definitely a much slower way to go about it, though.Going to puppy class after your first set isn’t enough – they usually keep those darn places clean. But if you skip the shots altogether or, say, go to the dog park, you’re on your way to getting rid of that puppy.

4. Don’t teach your dog to come when called.

   When your dog gets near something dangerous or runs toward another dog that’s on leash most people expect you to call your dog.

   Now, you can always just not call your dog away from danger, but then you look like a bad owner. Just don’t train a command that means your dog should come right away. That way, you can shout, “Fido, Come!” and there’s no risk of him coming back to you, away from danger.

   Or only train him to come in the house, so you get the convenience of having him come to you when you need him at home, but not the unfortunate safety aspect of being able to call your dog outside. You could also train your dog that Come means “run away” by calling him for bath times, nail trimming, etc.

5. Walk your dog off leash and let him run up to other dogs, especially on-leash dogs.

   This is my personal favorite, though it will definitely make your neighbors mad. Some of them will catch on and start avoiding your house altogether. If you don’t want to make your immediate neighbors mad, just take your dog to the park (not a dog park, a regular, unfenced park) and let him run up to other dogs.

   Dogs that are on leash will be particularly upset by your dog approaching, so let your dog run up to as many on-leash dogs as you can.

   As your dog crosses the street to say hello to a dog with a worried human, simply shout, “Don’t worry, he’s friendly!” This is an excellent way for your dog to get in a dog fight or get hit by a car, so we highly recommend it for people who want to shorten their dog’s life.Heck, maybe even the other person is hoping you’ll end their dog’s life, too, so definitely let your dog run over and start a fight. If your dog is the one to snap first, be sure to say something like, “She’s never done this before,” whether it’s true or not.

   If your dog does manage to avoid the cars, and just gets injured in a fight, your dog is more likely to be aggressive next time. Then you’ll be able to put her to sleep with a clear conscience.

6. Walk your dog off leash on a busy street.

   It’s especially helpful to not train your dog to stay with you, but this will work eventually, whether you have trained your dog or not. You get to imagine the envy of other people see you with your off leash dog, so that’s cool. You also can allow your dog to run up to other dogs, as I mentioned before. But the busy street is perfect because she’s even more likely to get hit by a car.

   One day, a horn might honk at the same time a bicycle and a skateboard whiz past. A squirrel runs into the street and your dog, trained or not, has had enough. Then bam. Your ‘how to get rid of the dog’ problem is solved.

7. When you see a behavior problem, especially fear, biting, or growling, either ignore it or punish the dog.

   There are lots of small warning signs that are easy to ignore. So don’t bother learning about dog body language, and you get to automatically ignore them – stiffening near the food bowl, staring a little too hard at another dog, a high tail, a quick freeze, avoiding something scary. But when it gets to overt growling or biting, it’s harder to ignore. You’ll have to come up with some way to explain why you didn’t do anything about the biting, like justifying the dog’s actions – “he was just nervous with all of those people, that’s all.”Or if you’re not the type to ignore, you can always punish your dog’s warning signs. When he growls or snaps in the air, pop him with the leash, so that he never growls again. The beauty of it is that now he still feels upset, he just won’t show it, because it’s not safe. So instead of warning the child with a low growl, the dog is likely to actually bite.

   The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Science has released a pilot study that found that 1/4 of dogs trained with punishment/pinning/growling were likely to respond with aggression, versus almost no aggressive behavior that resulted from methods like the ones used at Ahimsa. So go for the correction approach, so you at least have a good chance of making the aggression stronger.

8. Leave your dog in the yard, unsupervised.

   Dogs that are tied up are dangerous. In 2008, 9% of dog-bite fatalities involved chained dogs and 78% of the human fatalities were by dogs in their own yard. So definitely leave your dog alone in the yard, to give your dog a better chance at biting and thus shortening his life.

So that’s it. There are other ways, like fencing your yard but leaving the gate off, taking your dog-aggressive dog to the dog park, not teaching your dog to wait at doors, or taking your dog to the fireworks display. Get creative, and I’m sure you’ll find more ideas to shorten your dog’s life.

If, on the other hand, you want your dog to live a long, happy, safe life, along with not endangering your neighbors, please avoid all of the above!

Any more ideas? Leave a comment!

“Positive” dog trainers throughout the Puget Sound can now celebrate a victory of science and learning over sensational TV.

Because Cesar Millan was coming to Seattle for Seattle Dog Winterfest, KOMO’s Problem Solvers began looking into the global controversy surrounding the methods used on the Dog Whisperer TV show. I was fortunate to able coordinate with the reporter and contribute to the story by providing details and Seattle-area contacts. They interviewed me, but my passion had me tongue-tied, so they didn’t end up airing it. Oh well…I have since thought of several quick sound bites!

Here’s a comment that I could have made, in response to the question of what I would say to Dog Whisperer fans: “Did you get a puppy to dominate, or did you get a puppy to love you? Dogs do whatever works. If your dog only gets his way for being polite, your dog’s inner Lassie will come out.”

Or maybe this: “Dominance is contagious. If you force your dog into submission, it may work for you in the moment, but stress may make her attack someone less pushy than you. Who wants to live in that war zone? In positive training, being polite is the only way the dogs get what they want. They work to win the Politeness Contest instead of the Dominance Contest.”

Of course, even those are too long for TV. I’ll get there someday on the sound bites. But that second bit is one of the reasons that the Dog Whisperer controversy continues. Dominance training turns the home into a group bent on dominance – it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

KOMO first talked with the American Humane Association, who said that they still agreed with their 2006 press release that the training methods on the Dog Whisperer show are outdated and inhumane.

KOMO 4 looked at the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior’s recent Position Statement saying that vets should never refer to trainers who rely on punishment and dominance-based training. KOMO also spoke with Professor Jim Ha from the University of Washington for the perspective from scientific research and got feedback from Brenda Barnette, the CEO of the Humane Society of Seattle/King County in Bellevue.

But best of all, they watched for themselves, as you can, to see what kinds of things are being done in the name of behavior modification and training. In case you think those techniques are necessary to rehabilitate aggression, THEY ARE NOT. Even “Red Zone” aggression cases, as he call them, can be rehabilitated without intimidation or dominance. Dogs do not need to be put in such extreme states of fear or arousal that they bite, growl, snarl, snap, etc. Putting a dog into a “Red Zone” makes for exciting TV, but flooding is not good dog training, and certainly not a technique that I’d hand to children via a G-rated TV show.

Even Cesar Millan admits, in his interview from Seattle, that this is not the only way. “It’s just my way,” he quips. It’s also the way of many other old-school trainers who worked before him, I might add, and they’re gradually getting replaced by people who keep up with science.

The very fact that there are other ways to handle all kinds of aggression means that these intimidation- and pain-based techniques are not necessary. It is what makes them inhumane.

Cesar Millan commented thats the American Humane Association’s statement that his techniques are outdated and inhumane is just “their opinion.” This is the organization that rates all television shows, the ones that make the standards for the statement, “no animals were harmed in the making of this film” that you see on most movies with animals. Their “Opinion” is important and weighed carefully by experts.

You can view the Seattle Problem Solvers segment by visiting the KOMO 4 news website.

(Those of you in Ahimsa dog training classes in Seattle will recognize the training center in some of the clips).

As a person that has taught hundreds of students force-free methods for handling dog aggression in my Growly Dog class, I like how KOMO wraps it up: “Don’t Try This at Home.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

It turns my stomach to watch him “train” dogs on the Dog Whisperer show, but I force myself to watch so that I know what misinformation people are being fed.

Dog Trainers and Behaviorists who use positive reinforcement or LIMA (least invasive, minimally aversive) techniques can clearly see that these traditional theories are very outdated. We rehabilitate dogs all the time without these techniques.

So why does this big controversy exist in dog training? It’s not because there are good dog trainers and evil dog trainers or trainers who love dogs and trainers who hate them.

One big reason there’s a rift in dog training is cognitive dissonance. If people who have been training for years using these methods wake up and realize that they have been causing unnecessary suffering all these years, they couldn’t sleep at night! Our beliefs do not lead to our actions. Our actions lead to our beliefs.

There are lots of crossover trainers, who used to train using force, choke chains, etc., but now use positive reinforcement. I admire the people who have made this switch and hope that Cesar Millan becomes one of them. Once he learns about modern dog training, he will truly be whispering.

Another reason is that people are unwilling to learn about the newer (last several decades or more) techniques. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, if your car gets 6 miles to a gallon, but still drives, would you say that’s broken? Probably not, but I’d still fix it!

But if dog trainers learned new techniques, they’d see they’ve been hurting dogs for no reason, and there comes our old friend cognitive dissonance.

Another reason that this rift exists is that people think punishment works on dogs, which isn’t supported by science.

The truth is that primates, including us, respond better to punishment than dogs do. We still learn better from positive reinforcement, mind you, so that’s the better way to train us all.

Dogs don’t understand punishment like we do. So if you train your dog primarily through punishment using pain or pressure, you have dog psychology backwards. In that case, you are trying to apply a human perspective, where punishment works fairly well. Don’t treat your dog like a furry person. Treat her like a dog, and train with positive reinforcement.

A final reason why people defend techniques used on the show so much is that some of the verbal parts of it are actually good. Many of the things he says about encouraging exercise, structure in the household, having rules and sticking to them, etc. are fine, though it can be hard for new puppy parents to sort out fact from fiction.

But it’s how those rules are enforced that boils my blood. So if you just listen to the show, rather than watch it, it’s not a terrible show. The problem is that those words and his friendly smile lull people into a calm submissive state (to quote Cesar), so anything he does is taken as a Good Thing, even if it’s putting dogs into a state of panic and then learned helplessness.

If you watch it with the sound off, you’ll see a lot of stressed-out dogs who eventually shut down and give up. The fear that caused the aggression is not gone. The dog just doesn’t have the energy or spirit left to defend itself. His “pack” is a study in Stockholm Syndrome, for dogs. (From Wikipedia: “Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in abducted hostages, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which they have been placed.”)

Related articles on our site:

• Dog Whisperer Training Techniques Inhumane
• American Veterinary Society of Animal Behaviorists Position Statement