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This is an authorized repost of this article. 

The full pdf can be found at this google drive link for more-professional-than-tumblr sharing purposes. 

I wrote this paper four years ago, and it still stands as probably the most important and widely read piece of my work. It’s official posting is moving to this blog because it needs to be seen and referenced as part of a larger educational effort about animal behavior and welfare. It’s been reposted to a number of sites. Some credit me, some don’t – all have been messaged about it. Some insist on sharing it with the inflammatory photos of Millan flipping off the camera, which were added by a third party and are consistently the bane of my existence. I consider them highly unprofessional as part of an academic essay, but without them functioning as click-bait I think it would be much less widely read. They’re catchy and inflammatory, but they’re not my addition.

Share this link, share the google doc – but please don’t share the versions with those photos. If you see them posted on your friend’s timelines or other sites, please, tell them those photos aren’t part of the original educational effort and ask them to support and share this version.  

The story I don’t often tell about this paper is that it came about as a result of a bet with one of my professors. I knew, as most people in the academic side of canine training do by now, that it was easy to disprove Millan’s theories as harmful using primary sources. I wanted to see if it was possible for someone who wasn’t a trainer, wasn’t an academic, to draw the same conclusions from a selection of well-cited books that could be pulled off a shelf. They had to be easy to read and accessible with very little background knowledge about behavioral science. I wanted to prove that with dedication and time literally any dog owner could draw the right conclusions about Millan’s work and do the right thing by their dog by switching away from it. She took me up on the bet, and I won.

If you care about animal welfare, please read this.

I’ve now been training dogs for a decade. I find Cesar Millan’s training theory and advice appalling. As a scientist, its obvious that his factual statements and derived conclusions are entirely wrong. As a trainer, I can tell how stressed and unhappy – not cured – the dogs portrayed on his show are. It’s covered up by rhetoric, the soundtrack and a voiceover. Tens of scientists, trainers and behavioral science organizations have spoken out against his theories. I’ve seen dogs mistreated by well-meaning owners who took his advice unquestioningly. Whether you’re an owner, a trainer or just someone who likes dogs, please read this. It’s important to be educated in the science behind training theories before espousing or applying them.

This paper has been written as a cumulative work for an intensive independent study [in 2012] on canine cognition and applied training theory. It aims only to represent logical conclusions as drawn from scientific sources and professionals in the field. You’ll notice the sources cited are credible books and web-sites – this is intentional. The goal was to write a paper with information taken from sources directly available to the common layperson. I’m happy to suggest scientific sources for more reading.

It has been pointed out to me that the mention of immigrant status in this is easily interpreted as discriminatory, and that was never the intent. I originally wrote this as a scientific paper, in which it was considered important to go into detail about his credentials. I included it in his background because it was something he emphasized in his own books as highly impacting his career trajectory.

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THE DAMAGE OF DOG WHISPERING: A CRITIQUE OF CESAR MILLAN’S THEORY OF DOG PACK DYNAMICS

Rachel Garner 4/25/12

INTRODUCTION

Theories of canine psychology and training derived from legitimate behavioral science have progressed greatly in the last fifty years. Unfortunately, the public’s most beloved source of information – The Dog Whisperer by Cesar Millan – advocates a theory in direct opposition to this progress. For the last eight years, Cesar Millan has put forth an abusive training theory predicated on disproven science, fallacious logic, and incorrect assumptions. Described by a New York Times affiliate as a “one-man wrecking ball directed at 40 years of progress in understanding and shaping dog behavior,” Millan mixes an overly simplistic and incorrect view of canine social structures with a lack of scientific knowledge. His philosophy centers around two main theories; that canines have an innate and ingrained need to function according to a ‘wolf-pack’ social structure, and that dogs need to live ‘as they did in nature’, before human intervention. Because the concept of dominance theory is central to Millan’s training philosophy, many other crucial aspects of a dog’s environment and psyche that should be addressed when dealing with behavioral issues are completely ignored. As a result of the Dog Whisperer’s popularized methods, many dogs with simple issues are handled badly and likely abused in the name of ‘pack theory’. The worst part is that the entire situation could be avoided easily. It requires only a small amount of research into the social and psychological lives of the common canine to understand where Millan’s theory goes wrong.

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