cesar millan: i’ve trained the dog and now he is free of behavioral issues
me: you fucked up a perfectly good dog is what you did. look at it. it’s got anxiety
why are they doing the thing? i’m guessing trying to impress a mate with their legs
I don’t know what species this is, but googling ‘frog leg extension behavior’ found this paper:
Visual display in Blanchard’s cricket frogs (Acris blanchardi)
Abstract: Most reports of anuran visual displays (especially those involving extension of the back legs) are of tropical species living within noisy habitats. Here, we provide a descriptive report of visual displays involving back leg extension in a temperate anuran, Blanchard’s cricket frog (Acris blanchardi). We observed male cricket frogs engaging in bouts of display, lasting an average of 2.9 min and incorporating both visual and acoustic signals. In a typical display bout, frogs near each other began circling (during a chorus at the pond) within a small area while extending their back legs and occasionally vocalizing. Rarely, the frogs would attack one another by hopping onto, then off, an opponent. Bouts ended when individuals stopped displaying while remaining near each other. The most common behaviors observed during a display bout, in order of decreasing frequency, were leg extensions, direction changes, forward movements, and vocalizations. These observations increase prospects for the study of evolution of visual displays in anurans occupying relatively open, quiet habitats.
This one sounds like it’s an intra-male competition behavior, but I can’t tell if that’s for territory defense or mate aquisition. It probably depends more on the specific species represented, and could likely be either – although I’d guess more male competition because size/length of limbs is a ‘I’m bigger than you’ thing, and mate displays tend to more often represent fitness or reproductive quality.
We just talked about flagging/leg waving in Herpetology on Thursday. Frogs that do this apparently use it instead of calling due to competing sounds from their habitat, like flowing water.
The internet loves photos of ‘smiling’ dogs. But is that dog really happy, and how can you tell? It’s important to know the difference between a stressed dog, an overstimulated dog, and a happy dog – both for your own safety and so that you’re not sharing incorrect information that could get someone else hurt. Before you scroll down, stop and think for a second – what do you think a happy dog’s face looks like?
If you answered soft eyes, slack mouth and lolling tongue, you’re right! Unfortunately, because we’re primates, humans are cued to see tension around the lips and exposed teeth as a ‘smile’ – and in dog language, that means something totally different. A quick google search for ‘smiling dog’ pulls up these:
None of these are happy dogs. All show signs of stress. The signs to look for are tension around the lips/edge of the mouth, nose wrinkles, bared teeth, hard or squinted eyes, ears held farther back on the head, and overall tension. The last photo is probably an appeasement behavior, and the second is definitely fear with a potential for aggression.
Let’s look at some dogs showing happy smiles! Here’s the first google image for happy dog that I got:
Much better. Doesn’t that look like a happy animal? The skin around the mouth is relaxed, the mouth is open, the eyes are soft and there’s no tension in the face.
Now let’s look at some slightly more complicated examples, starring angerinyourbones‘s Spike and zookeeping‘s Ace. It’s important to know the animal you’re viewing when you try to figure out if it’s happy, because each animal uses different body language.
Here’s a great photo of Ace being super happy and smiling:
Erect ears, soft eyes, soft edges of the mouth (even though it’s open because he’s panting, they’re not pulled back tightly), loose face, hanging tongue without tension. In contrast, here’s Ace when he’s very overheated, but still smiley and happy. You can see that his face is still pretty soft even though it’s stretched because he’s panting hard.
Contrast that with this last photo of Ace below – this face isn’t a smile. Note how much tension there is in his face, especially around the eyes and the corners of the mouth. The tongue is pretty tense, too. Zookeeping describes this photo as him being overstimulated and very intense, fixated on her hand.
So that’s a good examples of how different dogs show stress/intensity/smiles differently. Lots of people would say that the third photo of Ace is a smile and the 2nd might be stressed, but it’s actually flipped. Remember – the more tense the muscle of the face, the less likely it is to be a smile.
Let’s contrast this with Spike! Here’s a great photo of him being fucking adorable and smiley.
Notice the soft eyes and face and lolling tongue.
Now compare that to the photo below. In the second photo, his tongue is lolling more but there’s also a little more tension around his eyes and pulling back the corners of his mouth. This isn’t a doggy smile, it’s a combination of overheating and stress. My big giveaway on calling that is looking how far back the corners of his mouth are pulled, because it’s more tension than would be necessary with his mouth open to pant that way.
Here’s a photo of Spike when he’s just plain overheated and not stressed – you can see how his face is a lot softer than the photo above, and there’s not as much tension in his lips.
This concludes dog smiles 101! Basically, look for soft features and a loose tongue. Check to see if the amount of tension around the lips is about the amount needed for how open the mouth is (and it’s not a smile if the mouth is closed). Eyes should be soft, ears should be wherever they normally sit on the dog’s head when it’s active and alert.
I’ll leave you with a photo of my surrogate baby, Avalanche, and his killer smile.
Hey, follower folk! Why Animals Do The Thing now has a Patreon account, because we’d like to turn this hobby of blogging about animals into a sustainable educational website.
If you’re not aware of Patreon as yet, it basically allows people to pledge money on a monthly basis to support creators in continually producing content – the way old rich dudes in the Renaissance would support the artists they liked so that they could paint without worrying about starving to death.
As an educator, I’d love to devote more time to this blog – especially to continued research and writing really in-depth posts on some of the questions and submissions we get. I really wish I could spend all day writing about animals and having awesomely nerdy coversations with our followers, because it’s my favorite part of running this space. Collaborative education is fantastic! But… that takes time away from things like working to earn money to, y’know, not starve to death! In order to help support this goal, I created a Patreon account to help fund it and the time I’d like to put into it.
If you’re interested in helping support the work that we do here, please, consider pledging to fund our work. If this works, you’ll see a drastic upswing in daily content due to the amount of time I’ll be able to dedicate to working on our posts. Patreon is a great venue for this because we’re not just asking you to give us money – we’re held accountable by the site to continue producing the content you’re pledging to support. If we don’t produce, the project stops. It also allows you, the patrons, to get personally involved in the content we produce.
The reward amounts are purposefully super-low because really, we’re on tumblr and we’re all pretty broke – but if you can literally throw a dollar our way a month, that helps! (Ramen is like 79 cents, right?). For about the price of a cup of coffee, you can also bother us endlessly with questions we’ll prioritize answering, and for like two cups of coffee you can pick post topics! (This is great if you like to make other people learn about stuff you think is cool, or have complicated questions). If there’s interest, we might build up to more intense rewards like creating video logs, running skype chat sessions, or giving in-depth behavioral advice.
The Patreon is run entirely by me (Waltz) – Moose is helping out when she has time around school, but isn’t associated with the funding or the commitments that your donations support.
So, check it out! Let’s see if we can make this a full-time thing and spread the love of actually cute fuzzy things and correct science.
For almost two years, I felt like I had failed as a dog owner because my Bully mix (Pitterstaff/AmBully, at best guess) turned out to be dog aggressive.
“It’s all in how they’re raised!” is a sentence that makes me cringe. Anyone that owns a DA APBT or Bully breed probably knows what I’m talking about. While it is a great sentiment on the ability of dogs to overcome horrible situations, it ignores essential facts about canine behavior while simultaneously putting the blame on dog owners.
One of the first pictures I have of Zuni and I, on a camping trip in early 2012.
Zuni, my craigslist rescue, wasn’t even a year old when I got her. Her history before being picked up off the streets by a friendly married couple is unknown. But she was a fantastic dog and I took her absolutely everywhere with me – she even came to my high school once and assisted me with a theater presentation. We went to the dog park weekly, ran agility, practiced obedience, and played disc anywhere there was enough space for her to run. When I started working at the kennel, she would go to daycare during my shifts. Zuni was so good with other dogs that she was used as a neutral dog to test newcomers for the daycare program.
I did everything right with her. Knowing her breed, I felt an additional sense of responsibility. I couldn’t raise a dog that would contribute to the “dangerous pitbull” idea. But I can’t control genetics and breed tendencies. My breed isn’t dangerous, but ignoring what my breed was meant for is absolutely dangerous.
Around two years of age, the dog aggression began. We consulted with several trainers and tried so many methods that it makes my head spin thinking about it. The best answer we could get from anyone was that she was fear aggressive. I worked with that for nearly a year, but couldn’t ever agree with it. I know fear aggressive dogs, I work with them frequently. Zuni’s behavior and body language certainly wasn’t fearful – she would strain at the end of her leash, every muscle standing out, eyes locked onto another dog with an intensity that terrified most people. It was the same way she looked at squirrels. I’ve broken up two fights, and both times I knew she’d never quit until she couldn’t get to the other dog.
I didn’t make any progress with Zuni until I accepted the fact that dog aggression was a part of her temperament. I stopped blaming myself for her behavior and I stopped seeing her dog aggression as the sign of a “bad dog.” I stopped trying to make her like every dog she met and instead taught her to ignore other dogs in public and focus on me. I don’t allow people to bring their dogs near her and we certainly don’t go to the dog park anymore. I took months introducing her to Maya and making sure that they had the space that they both needed. She’s able to run agility without losing focus and has done narcotics detection drills off leash in a room with 30 other dogs.
Zuni’s happier now, I’m happier now. Life goes on.
I’ve reblogged this before and I will reblog it every time I see it.
I have been asked to do a behavior assessment and to share some much-needed education with an owner who feels entirely overwhelmed by her poor pup. Her son purchased Bella from a “wolfdog” breeder in Aloha, Oregon, who told him she was “70% wolf”; the breeder explained to the young man that he needed to dominate the dog by rolling her onto her back and biting her ear or nose if she did anything wrong, “because that’s how wolves do it”.
In truth, Bella does not appear to have any wolf in her, let alone the 70% her breeder claimed she was. She attacks “without warning” because she has been heavily conditioned through force to avoid warning behaviors such as growling or baring her teeth.
Following my assessment, the plan is to find Bella a suitable behaviorist who can help undo the damage her first owner has done. If she recovers, a proper forever home will be found for her and she will start a new life with folks who will not misrepresent or mistreat her.
Recently on Facebook a picture came up in my feed regarding wolfdogs. Looking through the comments, it seemed everyone and their grandfather owned a ‘wolfdog’. Some I took the time to look through their pictures of. Didn’t see any wolfdogs, but I did see photos of people doing things like having 2 grown men hold down a muzzled husky/malamute/other(?) mix because, “Nail trimming is hard when you deal with wolves.” Also read plenty of comments about how you need to “dominate” your ‘wolfdog’ and “it’s super important to make sure they know you’re the boss.” There were people excusing their poorly trained dog’s behaviors on “well it’s because they’re 96% wolf” and justifying their brutal treatment of their mixed breed dogs because “that’s how wolves are treated in the wild by their alphas.” There was enough misrepresentation and misinformation about canine behavior and training to make you want to turn off your computer for a week.
THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is why people need to knock it off with continuing to spread this kind of BS.
Why do they sound like someone’s vehicle has a fucked ignition?
Did someone flood these foxes engines?
^^^ exactly my thoughts
fun fact! red foxes make this sound when they have meet their perfect mate or soul mate would you have it! so basically they’re just screaming for all the other red foxes that they have found their love and for all the others to fuck off
@why-animals-do-the-thing can you confirm the last comment? I’ve been wondering about this for literally months and I can’t find a source that gives me a straight answer.
“Foxes do this when they meet soul mates”: definitely not. It sounds cute, but endless anthropomorphism.
This looks like conflict resolution in a tense situation, to me. Actually fighting is really detrimental to most animals so anything except dire conflict is resolved with vocalizations and threat postures instead of actual aggression. That’s what this looks like – a type of stereotyped (ritualized) conflict.
At first, this looks like aggression, due to the posture, the sound, and the body language of both animals. It’s really hard to tell at first what this is because the vine loops every 3 seconds or so and there’s really no extra information.
@cybervulprince tagged us in a comment looking for a response to this vine that actually did a great job breaking it down:
it looks more like aggressive or play behavior to me. it makes me think of the thing cats do where they just glare at each other and sort of lazily, slowly bat at each other until one eventually pounces, but those foxes look super tense and fluffed-up and have their ears back which makes me think aggression.
That sort of stiff posture is almost always indicative of stressful situations in animal interactions. In dogs, we call it a ‘freeze’ It’s hard to see if this is a full freeze because foxes are so fluffy and the vine is so short, but that’s basically what we’re looking at. Open mouth behavior is also always part of conflict or threat behaviors. Animal don’t have to open their mouths like this to vocalize, so it’s a point to note that it shows off their teeth. They’re also opened with tight, stiff lips, which we know reflects interactions that are more stressful.
So we can tell something tense is going on here, but why do the foxes make this noise? Here’s a sort clip of a red fox scream. While both sexes can and do scream, it’s normally a sound made by female foxes. It can indicate fear and often is used to define territory and fend of rival foxes during the mating season. (It seems to be a myth that foxes scream during sex – most of what I can find says that it’s common during the mating season, but more as a territorial behavior than a copulatory vocalization. Copulatory vocalizations tend to sound very different and carry much farther because they exist for very specific evolutionary reasons relating to sperm competition. Yes, in humans too).
What mostly confirms for me that this is a ritualized way of resolving a tense situation without conflict, though, is a vine on the content creator’s vine account that was uploaded to the same account shortly after the one that went viral. It looks like it as taken almost immediately afterwards. In it, the postures of the animals has changed – one fox is much lower now, in an appeasement posture, and the other is crouched so that it can lean over the lower fox (weigh placement is a very important part of conflict resolution in most animals, because it determines what behaviors you’re able to do quickly if it escalates). In another video on the account, it looks like there are at least five foxes in close proximity in the same enclosure, so it’s understandable that you’d have social interactions and different aggression issues going on between that many individuals.
Tl;dr: Screaming foxes are aggression/conflict resolution, not soulmate bond anthropomorphic nonsense that the internet thinks is funny and doesn’t fact check.
“Here’s a good example of moon eye (and lip licking/pinned ears/spatula tongue)”
Waltz:
Yes, it is! And I like the phrase moon eye instead of whale eye because it’s more accurate and descriptive. Great breakdown of the body language for the small dog.
To clarify for non-dog folk, this is whale eye because it not only involves the half-moon shaped whites of the eyes, but because the face is stiff and the eyes are tense and wide. One of the important features is that the gaze during whale eye is directed at the a source of the discomfort (although it’s hard to tell in this if that’s the gum or the other dog, due to how brachiocephalic the small dog’s head is).
AKA: A Comprehensive Argument as to Why I Hate Cesar Millan:
Every one of Cesar Millan’s clients and fans has two things in common: they love their dogs and they don’t know the first thing about training them. An untrained dog in a household can be a burden and a pain, or even dangerous, depending on the dog. It’s only natural for these people to want to seek help for their problems so they can live in harmony with their pets. But Cesar himself poses an even greater danger to these unsuspecting clients and fans: bad training advice. Cesar Millan and his faulty theories are a danger to dogs and the public and should not be endorsed by a company – National Geographic – whose reputation is based on integrity and scientific fact.
It’s also only natural that these clients, with no training or knowledge of dog behavior would trust a dog-training TV program aired by National Geographic , a long-standing company with an impeccable reputation that few people bother to question But the problem with trusting blindly, is that even National Geographic makes mistakes sometimes. Such is the case when they decided to endorse Cesar Millan AKA The Dog Whisperer.
There are many reasons why his show would be appealing to those unfamiliar with animal behavior as a science. He’s charismatic, he exudes confidence, he always knows just what to do in any hairy situation, and most importantly, he solves problems quickly – which is exactly what fans and owners who don’t want to take the time and effort to train their dogs in the first place want – a quick fix. To the untrained eye, Cesar’s TV program might seem like a doggy miracle hour – out-of-control dogs with atrocious behavior problems turn into loving, obedient pets, all in the course of an hour. Clients are stunned! How on Earth does he do it?!
Anyone with a trained eye can tell you: he cheats.
Cesar Millan preaches a theory based on dominance and submission. He even creates his own language to describe problems dogs can have: Red zone dogs: aggressive dogs. Calm-assertive: what a good owner should be. Calm-submissive: what a good dog should be. In his book, he explains that there are two types of aggression in dogs: dominance aggressions, coming from dogs who are “natural leaders” and not being dominated by their owners properly and therefore become aggressive in an attempt to make up for their owner’s lack of leadership. The other aggression he describes is fear aggressions: in which fearful dogs behave aggressively as a means to repel things that they dislike – and for both of these problems, he offers the same solution: dominance.
He claims that most problem dogs simply don’t respect their owners enough and don’t receive proper discipline. He denounces people that anthropomorphize their dogs and shower them with affection, telling them they have it wrong. They do, but the problem is that, according to the current science of animal behavior, Cesar has it wrong too. This conjecture is supported the vast majority of experts in the field, many of whom are happy to help illustrate why:
The majority of Millan’s theories stem from research done on wolves “in the wild.” The problem with this is that for the majority of the last hundred years, up until 1975 (the year wolves gained endangered species protection from the government) it’s been difficult if not nearly impossible to find a wild wolf pack due to extensive efforts to eradicate the species. In an article featured by the Canadian Journal of Zoology, David Mech writes, “Most research on the social dynamics of wolf packs, however, has been conducted on wolves in captivity. These captive packs were usually composed of an assortment of wolves from various sources placed together and allowed to breed at will,” (Mech, 2). This meshing of random unrelated individuals created a very different social dynamic than those found in wolves in the wild; specifically concerning the occurrence of fights for dominance.
Adult wolves placed in a precarious social situation, will fight with each other, for control of food and resources, and – supposedly – rank in the pack, the strongest, most ferocious animals coming out on top. This is where the concept of an “alpha” wolf stemmed from, and what dominance trainers in the field today fall back upon when asked for a scientific basis for their methods. The problem with this is the fact that wolves in the wild do not form packs in this manner. Mech writes: “Rather than viewing a wolf pack as a group of animals organized with a “top dog” that fought its way to the top, or a male-female pair of such aggressive wolves, science has come to understand that most wolf packs are merely family groups formed exactly the same way as human families are formed,” (Mech). According to David Mech, who is the founder of the International Wolf Center, has studied wolves for 50 years, and has published several books on the topic, these family groups do not compete for dominance. The parents become the leaders of these groups, the pups following the parents naturally and learning from them. In other words, there are rarely, if ever, fights for dominance amongst wild wolves inhabiting the same pack. To base a dog training theory on this faulty concept of wolf behavior is bad science, yielding inaccurate and ineffective results.
The second problem with the wolf pack theory of dominance is outlined by Wendy van Kerkhove in her study on the social behavior of dogs: “It is further assumed that what is true for wolves also is true for dogs; it follows, therefore, that if a stable social hierarchy is established among the dogs in a family home, peace and tranquility will prevail” (Kerkhove, 280).
Unfortunately, as hundreds of years of evolution can tell us, dogs are not wolves. Nor does their behavior emulate that of their wild ancestors in any comparable way. This is because the dog is a domesticated animal – one we, as humans, have created for our own benefit and along the way, we have shaped them behave not like wolves, but exactly as we wish them to. If we want a companion to help us herd sheep, there is a breed for that. If we want a dog to bring back prey during a hunt, there is a breed for that. If we want a dog that will hunt rats underground, there is also a breed for that. We have even created breeds for cosmetic reasons – we’ve all seen a few purse dogs in our lifetimes. Thus, these hundreds of years of unnatural selection and selective breeding have resulted in a species that behaves very differently than its ancestral predecessors. As Alexandra Semyonova explains in her study of the social organization of dogs: “it seems reasonable to propose that the behavior of wolves and domestic dogs may differ as much as the behavior of chimpanzees and humans do” (Semyonova, 2) So if a dog is not a wolf, then why is Cesar Millan insisting upon treating them like they are? With better, more effective methods available, selecting this type of faulty methodology is nothing short of blatant irresponsibility. It is the job and obligation of the leading stars in any scientific field to promote the most recent and best supported science.
The uses of terms such as dominance and submission have a detrimental effect upon the general public and its view of how to behave towards dogs. Cesar further perpetuates this misconception by not only using them to explain dog behavior, but implements this faulty viewpoint into his training theory. What results is a lot of confusion for the dogs, potential danger for the owners, and a giant headache for behaviorists.
See, dogs are more like vending machines than wolves – you put the money in and if you push the right buttons a candy bar pops out. Their cognitive make-up consists of input and output: “If I do this, this will happen.” They learn through classical and operant conditioning – learning by association. In this sense, they are very much like human babies. Where they differ is in the ability to use reason. A dog does not have complex motivations for its actions It only knows “safe” behaviors – things that will not get them punished. And “unsafe” behaviors – things that they associate with punishment. A dog doesn’t understand why two things are associated, it only cares that they are. They learn best through operant conditioning, pairing a desired behavior with a subsequent reward. With this method, it is possible to train a dog to do practically anything through reward and repetition. This is about motivation. You wouldn’t go to work if you didn’t receive a paycheck, would you? And you’d probably work harder if you thought it might get you a Christmas bonus, right? Why should dogs be expected to work for free?
However, Cesar doesn’t use this method when he’s trying to “rehabilitate” dogs. He uses aversive tactics such as corrections when a dog fails to do what is asked for him (regardless of whether or not the dog understands what was asked) or techniques such as flooding or restraint to keep the dog in check. This isn’t behavior modification. This is behavior suppression. The dog will continue to engage in the undesired behavior when the owner isn’t around. The only difference is that the dog has now learned that acting in a specific way in the presence of the owner is “unsafe.”
Watch an episode of the Dog Whisperer and you’re likely to see examples of this supposed rehabilitation. It involves choking dogs out with their leashes when they react undesirably; it involves forcing a dog to confront objects or situations they’re desperately afraid of (a technique called flooding); it involves exercising a dog to the point of exhaustion so they simply do not have the energy to react negatively; it involves “alpha rolls” – a move in which he will flip a dog onto its back and pin it down belly up until the dog stops struggling. His reasoning behind this particular move is that this is what wolves do in the wild to assert authority. What he fails to inform the owners of is that wild wolves offer this behavior voluntarily, they aren’t forcibly pinned down. He also fails to realize or mention that the only time a true alpha roll occurs in the wild is when one wolf intends to kill the other. So an alpha roll for a dog involves being delivered a serious threat of intent to harm and a healthy dose of piss-your-pants terror. Not exactly the best way to build the dog’s confidence.
These aren’t training tactics, they are enforced submission; and from the viewpoint of the dog, they are terrifying to the point of being traumatic and damaging psychologically – further impounding the dog’s behavioral problems. Worst of all, they don’t work. None of these things will ever make a dog decide on its own to stop behaving the way it has learned to behave. In order to modify dog behavior, a new, more acceptable method of behavior must be taught. That cannot be done by manhandling one’s dog and forcing unpleasant things upon it. It involves real actual teaching, slowly and step by step. They must also be provided with a motivation to alter their current behavior. This is different for every dog, but common motivators are food and toys. If there is no motivation, no practical reason for the dog to perform the desired behavior, then training becomes less effective if not rendered entirely void. While aversive techniques may work in some instances for a short period of time, since the behavior has only been suppressed and not altered, it will not take long for the dog to revert to its old habits.
Cesar also fails to address the fact that all aggression in dogs stems from fear. There is no such thing as a dominant aggressive dog. Dogs behave aggressively as an outward manifestation of their lack of confidence. If dogs aren’t given guidance and direction and taught that things they fear will not hurt them, they will react aggressively whenever they are confronted by their object of fear and their threshold for stress is surpassed. Dogs react badly to other dogs because of past trauma, or because they misinterpret the body signals of the other dog, or because of simple fear of the unknown – some owners do not take seriously the task of dog-on-dog socialization in the critical early stages of life. Those that do not socialize their dog set them up to fail by marking all other dogs as something unfamiliar and therefore potentially “unsafe.” Dogs react aggressively towards people for similar reasons, with a lot more emphasis placed on misinterpreting our body language. Dogs are also highly superstitious concerning their associations and learning, thus, it becomes very easy for an unwitting owner to attempt to punish a dog for a bad behavior and for the dog to associate that punishment with something other than the owner intended. For example, slamming a door in the face of a dog attempting to run out of it might not achieve the desired result of causing the dog to fear running through the doorway. The dog may, instead, generalize its fear to include all doors, and not the actual act of running through the doorway – thus the behavior fails to be addressed or corrected and now, additionally, the owner’s dog is deathly afraid of doors. This is an incredibly easy mistake to make, even with the best trainers because timing an action and a consequence (positive or negative) is incredibly tricky and takes considerable practice. But the underlying, unspoken problem with this method in general is the use of fear or aversive techniques to insure behavior.
This means the dog is only doing things because it is forced to, or because it is afraid not to. And since we all agree that people seeking professional training advice do so because they love their dogs and would rather modify the dog’s behavior than give it up, we can assume that these people do not wish to inflict harm or undue stress upon their beloved pets.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what they’re doing when they turn to Cesar. Aversive and abusive techniques are Cesar’s specialty, though that’s not how he explains it on the show, that’s the magic of him having created his own language, it’s not abuse, it’s “dominance!” It sounds better that way, but only for us; certainly not for the dog. By taking advantage of his clients’ obvious lack of knowledge concerning behavior, he tricks them into believing he is solving their problems. And because they see him as an authority figure – he must know what he’s talking about, he’s on National Geographic channel, after all – these owners are more than happy to stand back and applaud as Cesar abuses their dogs to force them to behave in a way the owner finds acceptable. These people thank Cesar for his invaluable help when all he is doing is instilling in these peoples’ beloved fur-babies something called learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness is what occurs when a creature has decided that there is nothing it can do to help its situation and stops trying. It is a heartbreaking condition of abuse and defeat. In the legal system, we apply this term to the condition seen in long-term victims of domestic abuse and there are no positive connotations associated with the term. So do people really want a trainer that uses the same types of methods an abusive husband uses to dominate his wife anywhere near their pets? It wouldn’t seem so, but that is the seductive influence of Cesar Millan. He uses techniques that scare and hurt peoples’ pets right in front of their eyes and they still view him as a miracle worker.
He’s not. What he is is a fraud. If it weren’t for the blanketing effect of the unwavering endorsement of the trusted scientific authority National Geographic and the effect of social psychology, pet owners would see his harmful actions and not give him the time of day. But because National Geographic and Cesar himself portray Cesar as a trained professional, he is seen by the average viewer with no prior knowledge to be an excellent authority, and thus, they do not question him when he pins a person’s dog down despite the fact that the dog is writhing in fear and that in the long term, this traumatic action will have no positive effect.
So if Cesar’s methods are baseless, the public is left to wonder why National Geographic continues to endorse his show. The reason, sadly, is the same reason all other terrible shows are on the air: publicity and profit. Cesar makes a formidable amount of money from his clients, his books, and his show; and National Geographic gets to share the profits from that last source. They also gain viewership. However, that’s about all they gain. Why they would choose to stain their impeccable reputation by backing junk science is a mystery. In a response letter written by Andrew Luescher – a veterinary behaviorist whom National Geographic requested review Cesar’s show before it went on the air – begs the question: “The show repeatedly cautions the viewers not to attempt these techniques at home. What then is the purpose of this show? I think we have to be realistic: people will try these techniques at home, much to the detriment of their pets,” (Luescher, 1) he goes on to denounce the training methods utilized in the episodes and ends with a plea not to air the show: “My colleagues and I and innumerable leaders in the dog training community have worked now for decades to eliminate such cruel, ineffective (in terms of true cure) and inappropriate techniques,” (Lueshcer, 1). Indeed, Cesar’s methods seem to be causing quite a fuss among reputable dog trainers. Lueshcer is not alone. Among trainers an outcry can be heard – these people do not wish to be represented by Cesar, or his primitive, ineffectual training techniques. Nor do these professionals wish for his personal philosophy to be available to the public – a domain where faulty information can do significant damage in the hands of well-intending pet owners who don’t know enough to sort the good advice from bad advice.
Letters of denouncement of Cesar have poured in from many dog training professionals – Ian Dunbar, Karen Pryor, Pat Miller, Dr. Nicholas Dodman, and Dr. Suzanne Hetts – all long-standing and highly respected individuals in the field of animal behavior and dog training. They have all written to National Geographic with their concerns. Even organizations are weighing in. In a letter to the makers of flea control products that endorsed Millan, The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior states:”The American College of Veterinary Behaviorists (ACVB), the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) and the Society of Veterinary Behavior Technicians (SVBT) have uniformly spoken out against the punishment-based techniques employed by Mr. Millan on his television show “The Dog Whisperer” (Meyer, et al., 1). With such strong letters and voices pouring in from so many sources, it seems impossible that National Geographic could so unceremoniously ignore and suppress this information. And yet, they continue to endorse Cesar and stand behind him and his show. This has become an issue of increasing concern for those who have dedicated their lives to this field and work every day to counteract the methods that Cesar teaches to his clients.
American Humane, too denounces the Dog Whisperer: “As a forerunner in the movement towards humane dog training, we find the excessively rough handling of animals on the show and inhumane training methods to be potentially harmful for the animals and the people on the show,” said the letter’s author, Bill Torgerson, DVM, MBA, who is vice president of Animal Protection Services for American Humane. “It also does a disservice to all the show’s viewers by espousing an inaccurate message about what constitutes effective training and appropriate treatment of animals” (Blauvelt, 1). This excerpt is typical of the letters National Geographic has received on the subject. In fact, it is difficult if not impossible to find a professional opinion of Cesar that does not include some sort of warning against imitating his actions in any situation. Most, in fact, warn that to do so could result in a dangerous situation for either the pets or the owners and may result in injury.
It’s pretty much unanimous across the board – Cesar’s way is not the way. There are very few – if any – professional trainers worth their salt who support or utilize his methods. But this cannot be said for the general public, who don’t have the benefit of years of training and experience available to help them spot the deception. This discretion should have been caught by National Geographic. They should have made the responsible choice not to further perpetuate punitive techniques that cause more harm than good. Obviously, National Geographic was made clearly aware of this discrepancy between methods deemed acceptable and what is presented in the show. And yet they decided to consciously ignore the advice they requested from multiple reputable sources, since the show was aired and remains on television to this day. National Geographic still owes the nation an explanation as to why they are ignoring good science in favor of sensationalism. But that is a question the entire dog training community is waiting for an answer to; in the meantime, it is the unsuspecting viewers and especially their pets that will continue to suffer.
Works Cited
Blauvelt, R. “Dog Whisperer Training Approach More Harmful Than Helpful.” Companion Animal News. Fall 2006. 23; 3, pages 1-2. Print.
Kerkhove, Wendy van. “A Fresh Look at the Wolf-Pack Theory of Companion Animal Dog Social Behavior” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science; 2004, Vol. 7 Issue 4, p279-285, 7p.
Luescher, Andrew. “Letter to National Geographic Concerning ‘The Dog Whisperer.’” Weblog Entry. Urban Dawgs. Accessed on Novermber 6, 2010. (http://www.urbandawgs.com/luescher_millan.html)
Mech, L. David. “Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs.” Canadian Journal of Zoology 77:1196-1203. Jamestown, ND. 1999.
Mech, L. David. “Whatever Happened to the Term Alpha Wolf?” Weblog Entry. 4 Paws Univeristy. Accessed on October 16, 2010. (http://4pawsu.com/alphawolf.pdf)
Meyer, E. Kathryn; Ciribassi, John; Sueda, Kari; Krause, Karen; Morgan, Kelly; Parthasarathy, Valli; Yin, Sophia; Bergman, Laurie.” AVSAB Letter the Merial.” June 10, 2009.
Semyonova, A. “The social organization of the domestic dog; a longitudinal study of domestic canine behavior and the ontogeny of domestic canine social systems.” The Carriage House Foundation, The Hague, 2003. 38 Pages. Print.
Everyone should read this. The dominance theory is dead, stop referring to it in any sort of training situation.
PiraticOctopus 