Cesar Millan is suffering quite a lot of very scientific criticism and probably will either change or fade away. Positive trainers are more vocal and there are a lot more of them since accredited schools actually teach positive training based on behavioral research done at universities around the country. Positive training has moved from theory to fact, and dog owners are reaping the benefits of less stress and better relationships with better behaved dogs.

But what about me?

Kody and I now have a little strip of back yard and all of our journeys outside are off leash. We only go about 50 feet but one thing I’ve learned about Kody is he doesn’t like walks, he’s more than happy to go back inside and usually has grabbed a pine cone to trade for a treat once we get in.

Occaisionally when it’s warm he wants to stay outside. This means me sitting in a patio chair and him laying on the patio calmly watching the kids laugh and scream and play in the pool. He loves to watch them. This is the dog that used to bark at everything.

We “brush” Kody’s tooth with the crown every night. Right now I just rub it with my finger but it’s getting easier every time. This is not just Kody learning but I’m learning the best way to reach in. We’ve been making progress for months but its not the kind of thing you can rush into. Eventually we’ll use a toothbrush, but no rush. By the way, Kody loves this. As soon as he’s had his dinner he’s gesturing that he’s ready to have his teeth brushed. When he knows it’s going to happen he runs around like a puppy. So I know I’m doing it right. It’s a bonding time.

Life is pretty smooth. I never thought I would appreciate a dog so much. Every day I have at least one moment of complete awe at how awesome he is.

There can be no doubt Jennifer Arnold knows her stuff when it comes to training dogs. As the founder and CEO of Canine Assistants, Inc. in Milton, Arnold and her staff have taught thousands of pups to become service, companion and seizure response dogs for the handicapped.

Now Arnold, whose nonprofit organization was featured in a PBS documentary, has penned a book about her teaching philosophy and experience. “Through a Dog’s Eyes” (Spiegel & Grau, Random House, $25) details how Arnold rose from her teenage battle with multiple sclerosis to found Canine Assistants in 1991. Along the way in her much-anticipated book, she debunks popular dominance-based training methodologies, details her observations about the bond between man and animal and shares her method of “choice training.” Arnold’s teaching is heavily based in positive reinforcement, a concept that rewards the dogs for good behaviors and gives the dog freedom to make the right decisions.

Jennifer Arnold: Canine Assistants founder pens book, takes dominance training to task

However, the alpha roll itself is probably not so great.

Is it really cruel to perform an ‘alpha roll’ on your dog?

In the end, it comes down to which method science can prove works (not only for dogs, but humans too.)

Cesar Millan or Victoria Stillwell? Who Would You Rather Have Train Your Dog?

One thing bugs me, and that’s that although Victoria doesn’t train like Cesar Millan, she’s started talking like him. This has been a common theme on all the episode this year. She says things like your dogs need to respect you and you need to be the leader. You could find a way to make these phrases fit good training, but really dogs don’t have a concept of respect. Basically they respect what gets them good stuff. If you want “respect” from your dog, carry bacon and give it to her. If you’ve seen the movie As Good As It Gets maybe you remember the scene with the dog and the bacon.

I personally don’t believe dogs have a strong concept of a leader, but what concept they do have almost any owner fits. You feed them, protect them, take them to pee and poo and control just about everything. Don’t worry, your dog definitely sees you as a “leader” as much as they have a concept of that. Dogs do “crazy” things for two reasons: they are following their instinct or because they are rewarded for those things (or both).

When it comes to training, I’m getting better. As I learn I see the ways in which I have rewarded some of Kody’s undesirable behaviors. But it can be tricky, because I also see the ways in which my desire not to reward behaviors has backfired.

I can’t totally explain it, but I have recently almost completely extinguished some of Kody’s barking at the slider by rewarding it. Ignoring the behavior, in this case, actually makes it much worse. I’ll tell you exactly what I’ve been doing.

It used to be that Kody would bark at something out back and he would get fixated on it. I knew timeouts would probably work for this, but the behavior didn’t happen often enough to keep a leash on Kody. I had seen my trainer do a type of thing where she rewarded bad behaviors before, so I decided when Kody would bark I would try saying, “What’s going on? Thank you for letting me know.” Then I would walk over to the slider and take a look at what was going on making it very obvious to Kody that I was doing so. We would be there together looking. I would make some positive statements in a positive voice, like, “Oh yes, there’s ducks out there, we like ducks, that’s really great.”

Well, that’s it, and it works. I’m guessing Kody’s instinct was to tell the other dogs or people that there was an intruder. When I ignored him, he felt compelled to continue to monitor the situation. But when I listened, investigated myself, and approved of the situation, he felt the situation was done and could move on. Now when he sees things out back, even squirrels, his behavior is much more mellow, but I’m still sure to take note and thank him.

Okay, I got a little off track, but my point is that Kody’s undesirable behavior was most likely not because he didn’t “respect” me, or because he didn’t see me as the “leader”. It was the opposite of that, and the fact that he was following his instinct. I started acting like Kody expected me to act, and all of a sudden he became comfortable.

Now, while this has worked the honest truth is I’m not exactly sure why. I can guess at Kody’s motivations all I want, but I will never know fully what he’s thinking or feeling. However I can say that in my search to find positive ways of training I am succeeding and both Kody and I are much happier for it.

As for Victoria Stilwell, I don’t know why she’s quoting Cesar Millan while teaching better methods, but just ignore what she says and pay attention to what she does and I think you’ll be better off. This was a good episode.

I never thought a dog would be this naturally fearful. Throughout this process I’ve blamed myself, blamed Kody, and blamed just about everything and everyone else, but this is just who Kody is. It explains why my dog experiences are so vastly different and more difficult that other people’s. Now that I have some perspective and realize it, though, we have begun to make real change.

Now I watch for any sign of fear, and that happens quite often, and when I see it, I don’t question or criticize it, I accept it and make a plan to quickly make Kody feel better. I don’t think dogs learn much while they are afraid except to be afraid so it’s good to get them out of that mode.

With an understanding of this I can understand how to go about certain challenges. I decided to switch Kody from a collar to a harness, and I knew it was going to be some work. He was excited about the harness, but he also rolled over with a little fear when it got too close to him. I expected this, and I already had chopped hot dogs. As soon as Kody got close to the harness, he got a hot dog. We did this a few times, then I started feeding him hot dogs though the neck opening of the harness, at first making sure he didn’t have to get to close, and then gently placing the hot dog in more challenging places as Kody got comfortable with it. We progressed to the point where Kody was practically getting the harness over his head to get the treats. But I had no intention of putting it on. Kody will put it on when he’s ready by sticking his head all the way through the neck hole to get a treat. No rush. The harness now means the most fun game is about to happen, and nothing else matters. After one game of this, Kody later found his harness and indicated that it was fun and he wanted to play that game again. So we did. Success! I’ll let you know if we ever get it on.

Part of the reason Kody has trepidation about the harness is that we tried them out when he was younger when I didn’t realize he was so afraid and I did many things wrong. Obviously not so much that a few treats can’t quickly change it. At the time, I believed Cesar Millan when he told me to purposely put my dog in situations he feared (the technical dog training term for this is “flooding”). Poor Kody!

Now everything’s fun and positive for both of us. I have had to learn a lot of patience with Kody, but it has really changed the way I view the world, myself, and challenges. Sometimes we’re just not ready to do that scary thing, and that’s okay. Just take baby steps and make it fun.

Aside from Kody’s fear, one of the reasons I started this blog is because I started to realize dachshunds are just not like other dogs. You can’t expect them to behave like a lab because their nature is to behave completely differently. They can be trained very well, and training can change what they want at certain times or in certain situations. But you can’t change what they naturally want, which is to be one with their nose and go wherever and however fast it takes them regardless of a leash. I can positively entice Kody to walk on a loose leash, but I can’t make that be his natural instinct. I’m sure over time, he will start to want that more, but there’s no need to rush it. After all, life should be fun, right?

I’ve been doing a lot thinking lately about Cesar Millan and what makes him so popular. And I think I’ve got it. As a way of manipulating people it’s brilliant, and it’s been used for literally thousands of years by many different people. (Obviously, not just for dog training!).

Step One: If you’re Cesar Millan the first step is to understand your market. The world is filled with really “good”, naturally calm dogs. Think about it, most people put in only a minimum of effort with their dogs, and that actually works out pretty well for them. Most dogs are good at adjusting and just end up fitting into their environment whether that means hiding away most of the time or just laying on the couch.

Step Two: Now, because we can’t speak doggy language without some work, a whole bunch of these people with good dogs are going to have small issues. Find those people and get them on camera! All their dog needs is basically some structure and attention in it’s life, and it will be a perfect dog. You come in, wave your magic wand, (and tell them the dog needs structure and attention), the dog is “cured” and you are hailed as a genius! Even better, all those people tell their friends you are a genius.

Step Three: Those people don’t have the money or power to make you a national figure, you need celebrities to do that. You’ll notice that Cesar drops celebrity names like crazy in his books. He’s especially fond of Oprah, the most powerful woman in the world who, with a mere mention, can cause books to fly off the shelves. Luckily celebrities often have these dogs as well, so you do the same for them, but you do a lot more. First of all, you know that all celebrities really feel kind of guilty about their wealth and power. They secretly think they don’t deserve it, and really, they don’t deserve all the money they have, even if they are good at what they do. So you fix their dog, but then you say something like this, “Hey, Will Smith, it’s been great working with you to fix your dog. But I can tell, you’re a natural, you’ve always been the pack leader in life and you get it. I’m sure that’s why you’ve had all the success you have, because you’re a naturally strong person. But isn’t it sad about the people who don’t have as much success as us? I wish there were some way we could work together to get the message out to the others who are struggling so much. Hey, how about if I wrote a book and mentioned you and you came on my TV show? What a great chance for you to use your celebrity to save the world!”

Celebrities eat this stuff up. They are all alone in the world with almost nobody who can truly relate to them. They feed off of people who either tell them how normal they are, or people who tell them they just naturally deserve what they have and wouldn’t it be great to “help the others”. If you do this enough times you’ll be nationally known.

Step four: try to remain somewhat credible. To stay at the top you’re going to have to show yourself saving some hopeless cases. So what you do is invent a term like “red zone” dogs. You find dogs that appear to be “red zone” (but really aren’t) and then you cure them (isn’t video editing wonderful!) If you accidentally choose the wrong dogs, you just take them away to your “Dog Psychology Center” where, by the way, no actual psychology takes place. So nobody will ever see your failure again.

Step five: rake in the money. You’ve got a TV show where you do the same thing every week. You’ve got a canned spiel that will work for newspapers and talk shows. You’ve got books to sell by the millions. And here’s the best most important part:

You’ve got a whole set of people out there that had great dogs and didn’t know it. You’ve convinced them that they are the pack leader. These people, and celebrities, when seeing other people with “bad” dogs, will judge them. They will say, “That person is not the pack leader. They need Cesar’s books and DVDs.” (Which by the way, they’ve never read or watched because, frankly, they didn’t need to.) There’s no real way of measuring “pack learderness”, so they can never be proven wrong.

Cesar has built this whole mega business without helping anyone who actually needs help. He helps only those that think they need help, but really don’t (or need just a little help), and they never know the difference. There are still half the dogs out there that need basic or extensive training, and they will never be helped by Cesar, his TV show, his books, his celebrity minions, or anyone who has a naturally good dog. He has actually made it worse by dividing the groups, but he’s made millions doing that, and that’s what’s important to him.

Still skeptical?

Let’s talk briefly about breast cancer, since breast cancer awareness month is almost over. Statistically some people with breast cancer die, and some people go into remission. I don’t know what the exact percentages are, but it doesn’t matter for this discussion, so let’s say it’s 50/50. Knowing this, I tell everyone that “thinking positively” will cure breast cancer. The half that live don’t know why, and they’re look for a reason because it would be so unfair if it was just random. They’re so emotional, they’ll sing my praises to the highest mountain. The half that die, well, they don’t live to tell anyone my methods don’t work. It’s painful to talk or think about them, so people don’t. Kind of evil, huh? That’s both literally and figuratively The Secret.

Cesar Millan is The Secret for dogs (and a total douche.)

But for those of us without a pack, training is the best way to handle feeding times. Every trainer out there has some ritual to make feeding time as easy as possible for the human and to teach and reinforce self control in their dog. This isn’t about power or control, it’s about making life with your dog pleasant for both of you. Feeding time is one of the biggest rewards your dog has during the day. You can use it to your advantage to help your dog see that being patient and calm leads to good things.

For dinner, Kody gets kibble, but Kody’s favorite meal is lunch. I prepare it at the same time I prepare my own lunch, and it’s very good (and healthy), so he’s always very excited for it. When it’s ready, I have Kody go outside the kitchen, he knows he should be on the carpet. Now he knows the cues and does this automatically. He usually sits, but sometimes lays down, which he chooses is not important to me, but it should be one of the two. I give the command, “wait”, which Kody knows means to stay were he is until I release him with, “okay”. I put the plate down on the ground and will remind him he’s waiting with a “good wait” if see he’s getting antsy. When I have stood up, he gets the “okay” and goes to his food.

I’m writing about this today because Kody surprised me and decided to make a break for it early. Usually I’ll notice the signs before he moves, but I didn’t today. I was a little bit panicked because I didn’t know if I could stop him mid-run. Without lifting the plate back up (I honestly didn’t have time), I said, “No, no, no! Out!” He turned around and went back to the carpet! I was so proud of him!

I have pulled a bit of a Cesar Millan on you. I have told you this great success story but I haven’t told you how to do it. If you go to a positive training class they will quickly and easily show you how to train your dog to sit and wait. Then you’ll just use what you learned at the class at feeding time. It’s just not the type of thing you can share very well over the internet. You need the instructor there to help with any special issues your dog has or notice anything you’re doing that might be misleading the dog. It will be fun for both you and the dog. Positive training is like a game for a dog, they really like it. Then you too can have calm feeding times!

But there’s an interesting moment where again Victoria speaks out against Cesar Millan’s methods, like so many other trainers are these days.

Victoria: What sort of training styles have you done, have you had trainers before?

Nicole: This guy came in from a certain camp, he said, “Well you need to be the alpha dog.” And so it was a lot…

Victoria: But you’re, wait a second, you’re a human, you’re not a dog.

Nicole: Yeah…

Cut to Victoria speaking to Camera:

The training that Nicole has received with her dogs before from trainers, um, is very much of the pack theory, alpha based, you’ve got to be dominant over your dog kind of methodology. That’s very old style training and has been shown to be flawed in many many areas.

A number of times this season Victoria has gone out of her way to make it quite clear that she does not approve of Cesar’s methods. I’m glad, because we need informed trainers to speak out about it. I think by not mentioning his name, yet still making it clear what exactly is being talked about, Victoria’s doing a good thing.

Cesar Millan may, and probably will change his approach sometime soon. He’s also not the only advocate of dominance theory, so there’s no need for Victoria to criticize him by name.

First, instead of praising a dog with “good sit” or “good wait”, she often praises with a generic “good dog”. She’s missing out on a chance to further reinforce the command.

Second, she will repeat the command instead of repeating the praise. So out of one side of her mouth she says don’t repeat commands and then you see her saying, “wait… wait… wait…”. Repetition is necessary to help a dog add duration to a command. But repeating the praise, “good wait”, let’s the dog know he’s still doing the right thing and should continue until you release. You’re just repeating the praise, reassuring the dog he’s doing good. You’re not repeating the command which will confuse a dog, possibly making him think he’s somehow not doing he right thing right now.

Third, she doesn’t put the dog’s name before the command. It’s better to always give a command like, “Kody sit”, “Kody wait”, or “Kody down”. It has the benefit of the dog knowing who you’re talking to if there are multiple dogs or if you ever decide to adopt another dog.

Fourth, she doesn’t use an official release. Especially for commands with duration like wait, your dog needs to know when it’s ok to stop. This is why you use a release, which is generally, “okay”.

So a good example of a full cycle of communication for an extended sit and wait might be “Kody sit… good sit… Kody wait… good wait… good wait… good wait… okay!”

The Good

Victor takes Victoria on a walk and the pit bulls are pulling like crazy. She asks how he is walking these dogs and without mentioning any names he shows exactly Cesar Millan’s method of leash tugging. She smiles knowingly and says, “Uh huh… well it doesn’t appear to be working does it?”

Victor’s experience was similar to mine in that Cesar Millan’s method seemed to be making his dogs anxious and actually pull more.

The Bad

As usual, Victoria shows her gentle techniques to make the dogs sit and wait at the door, and Victor is clearly amazed at how easy it is. But when they are on a walk, Victoria at one point waits 20 minutes for one of the dogs to offer her a sit. This was strange because there is a gentle, no-touch way, to make a dog sit that doesn’t take 20 seconds usually. I’m pretty sure Victoria knows this. I didn’t understand why she was waiting there 20 minutes for a sit. It certainly wasn’t that waiting in this case would make for better training. I have no idea what she was doing.

The Lovely

As always, it was an enjoyable episode. They even managed to slip in a minor “Victor Victoria” moment for us to enjoy. Victoria Stilwell remains the Mary Poppins of dog training.

I’m glad they mention that nobody’s questioning Cesar Millan’s intentions, only his methods. I think everyone agrees Cesar wants what’s best for the dogs, he just may not be going about it in the best way possible.

First you need to know a little about me. What my friends always say about me is that I do things all the way. I never do anything unless I really plan on doing it. And I learn from the best and want to understand everything.

So when I got a dog, Cesar Millan appeared to be the best. I read both his books, and got his first season DVDs. And for nine months I was telling everyone how great he was, and they were usually agreeing because everyone loves Cesar.

The problem with Cesar is that while he tells you what to be, and he tells you how to feel, he doesn’t often tell you what to do. And after a while, you find yourself saying, “I know I’m supposed to be the pack leader, and I know I need to be calm assertive, but I have no idea what to do when my dog behaves this way.”

There were times when things didn’t add up. When I went on walk with Kody he was just such a barker, and a leash puller, and a ground sniffer. I took what Cesar had told me and I tried to implement it, when he sniffed I held his head up with his leash like Cesar told me. I had the control he said I would, but someone who saw us asked me if I beat my dog. That was not fun. I jerked on his leash right at the right moment when he would get the idea to run up ahead but it didn’t seem to do much except make him really angry. My dog did not want to be held back. And a couple of times I even alpha rolled him just like Cesar did, and even the receptionist at my vet did this once to show me how to stop him from barking. However, I pretty quickly learned alpha rolls don’t do much.

I kept trying and trying. But as time moved on, I realized that other than leash jerking, and tsssst, I didn’t have much I could do in any given situation. And it seemed like I was using those way too much and they weren’t working.

So long story short I went to training. They didn’t use any of Cesar’s methods or attitudes and our life got exponentially better after that. I finally knew what to do with my dog.

It turns out my dog didn’t need to face all his fears. He didn’t need to walk right by my side and not sniff anything. And I wasn’t a bad person for my dog not doing those things. I was far more calm now than when I was jerking on his leash and tssst-ing all the time. And far far more calm that when I was alpha rolling him.

Now I could look back and see how Cesar’s methods had actually made my dog more aggressive. How jerking his leash actually made him afraid of going on walks. How tssst-ing actually was sending him “negative energy” which is the opposite of what Cesar says to do. Hold it, how can a guy who claims to send “positive energy” promote leash jerking, alpha rolls, and tssst-ing? None of those things are remotely positive.

Now that I was finally living the good life with my dog, all of Cesar’s talk seemed like nonsense. He tricked me. He roped me in with half truths. He told me dogs were different than humans and I shouldn’t treat my dog like a baby, which is true. Then he told me I had to “be the pack leader” which was false since I was living great with my dog without ever thinking that. He told me to send “positive energy” and be “calm assertive”. Those things sound so nice. And then he told me to jerk the leash and do alpha rolls. False. He told me not to be nice to my dog when he was being bad, and he told me I could only give affection to him after applying “discipline”. But it seemed like his version of “discipline” didn’t work with my dog. So when was I to be nice? Never?

So what I’m trying to get at here is that while most of the emotion has faded because things are so good now, I was very angry with Cesar Millan. He told me to do things that hurt my dog. That is the last thing I wanted to do.

So that’s the deal. Cesar will come up a bit more, there are a few articles I want you to know about. I wouldn’t expect you just to take my word for it. But much like my training with Kody, I will focus on positive stuff on this blog.

The attitude Cesar Millan promotes is, “Be the pack leader.” He blames bad behavior on dog parents who are too soft and have unwittingly let their dog be the one in charge. To fix this, he says, you must take back control and let your dog know who’s boss.

“Be the pack leader” is basing your whole relationship with your dog on a power struggle between the two of you. It’s adversarial, not cooperative. This attitude scares people into thinking they need to show their dog who’s boss. It promotes many otherwise kind people to take and unkind tone to, and sometimes an unkind hand to their dogs. Worse, it gives unkind people an excuse.

There’s something attractive to us about watching Cesar Millan run around showing those dogs who’s boss. That dog that peed on your carpet? Show him who’s boss! That dog that doesn’t sit when you ask? Show him who’s boss! In fact, for anything your dog does that you don’t like, even if it’s your fault, show him who’s boss! Tsssst! Tsssssssst!

Does this sound healthy to you?

Here’s the thing, when you learn to be a good dog parent, your dog will know who’s boss. You have all the advantages and he thinks you’re really cool. You are (usually) bigger. You have these wonderful arms and fingers to do stuff with. You can open and bring the food. You can open doors. In fact, you seem pretty much in control of everything, and he’s well aware of it.

Some owners ignore their dogs, don’t feed them, don’t walk them, and don’t play with them. In this case the dog may be living it’s own life. And if this person now wants to be a part of his life, well, this dog has a schedule. He’s used to something totally different. So what should this person do? Stop ignoring, start feeding, start walking, and start playing. Make it fun and give it time. Unfortunately those owners rarely change.

Fortunately if you’ve read this far, you are probably not one of those owners. Your dog doesn’t think he’s the “pack leader”. So don’t worry about it. If you feel nervous, trainers recommend feeding your dog once or twice a day for 15 minutes instead of leaving the food out. That will only be good for your dog. If you don’t play with your dog much, just be sure to have a little play session a couple of times a day. He just wants to be around you, so let him be near you.

You don’t need this negative attitude that you have something to prove to your dog. If your dog pees inside, you’re not a good potty trainer, yet. If your dog doesn’t sit, then you’re not a good sit trainer, yet. Both of these things are easily done, but they just take time and learning.

So put away the cans of coins, stop tsssst-ing to your dog, sit down, relax, and gather your thoughts. The first thing you can do is stop being mean to your dog. When you see him doing something you like, or peeing outside, say, “good dog!” Be really happy when he does something good, or even when he’s just not doing something bad. Do this all day every day.

Now that’s an attitude change, from “bad dog” to “good dog”. It’s going to feel weird, but once you get used to it, you’re going to love it!

If your dog pees inside all day and you don’t know how to stop it, just ignore it. There are three facts that you’re going to have to accept here. 1. Your dog pees inside. 2. You have no idea how to fix it. 3. Punishing him will not fix it and may make it worse.

So let it go, and praise your dog for the good things he does. I’ve been hinting at the right attitude to have. It’s to love your dog, to give your dog plenty of opportunity to succeed, and to praise your dog for any and all success. Potty training, sitting, rolling over, everything will be accomplished through this attitude. Am I saying that one sentence is all there is? Yes. For a normal dog owner like you, definitely yes!

And now is the time for learning how to apply this attitude. There are positive ways to potty train your dog. Teaching your dog to sit, down, and wait? Super easy!

We’re going to explore a lot of these ideas in the future, but I’ll tell you what you can do now. Find a dog training class for you and your dog that uses positive methods such as luring (call them and ask.) Go and have fun. It may just change your life, it changed mine.