Dog training/behavior modification

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been watching Cesar Millan’s ‘The Dog Whisperer’ on the National Geographic channel for the last few months, and I was so darned impressed that I went out and bought his new book, ‘Cesar’s Way’. It’s a fascinating read so far. I’m about halfway through it, and I’m just mind-blown about how many things that I and some of my pet sitting clients have been doing wrong, according to his methods. His arguments make sense as far as I can tell.

Some of the points he makes are:

Dogs need to be walked, not only to relieve themselves, but to burn off energy that leads to frustration. Wild dogs and wolves patrol their territories and range out to hunt, so it is a sort of hard-wired behavior.

Dogs need to be calm-submisive before being rewarded in any way. Giving treats or affection when they are behaving in a hyper, aggressive or anxious manner only reinforces that behavior.

Dogs need a calm-assertive leader in order to be balanced and happy. Pleading, begging, yelling, or permitting bad behavior only makes look weak or unstable, and dogs don’t follow weak or unstable leaders.

A lot of pet owners are indulging bad behavior because we humanize dogs too much.

And lots more. Now, I work with a lot of laid-back dogs that do just fine with owners(and me) who spoil and indulge them, baby-talk to them, and generally don’t act like leaders, and they seem content enough, but I’ve also run into problem dogs who were nervous, hyper, aggressive, possessive, depressed and just weird, and I’m hoping these method will be more effective for my working with them.

Cesar’s methods are not for training dogs to learn tricks or obedience, he says, but to train people on how to let dogs act like dogs.

Any of you guys read the book or watched the show and want to discuss it? Any dog lovers out there think the man is somehow off-base?

2

I’ve caught only one episode of his show, but I liked him, and I saw his book at the bookstore yesterday and almost bought it. Unfortunately (or fortunately) my dogs aren’t obnoxious enough to justify the cost of the book.

I am curious, though - I would like to teach my dogs to not bark so much, and not to go ballistic when someone comes to the door. Any discussion on that in the book?

3

What’s always worked for me is to teach them a command. When they’re barking at something, say “Stop” or “Okay” (whatever you want to use). If you say it loudly and suddenly, they should pause for an instant. Praise the dickens out of them and give them a treat. After a few tries at this, start lengthening the time you require them to be silent before giving the treat. When they obey, praise them like they’ve just gotten Timmy out of the well.

My dogs are kind of stupid when it comes to the door. I can ring the bell myself and they’ll start barking. It’s great for practice time. If you’ve got a patient friend, have them come over and come through the door a few times.

4

This isn’t addressed specifically, except to mention that it shouldn’t be allowed, but I think it might fall under what he calls either hyper or overprotective behavior, depending on whether your dog is going crazy happy like it’s a game or going ballistic like they will eat whoever is trying to get in. Either way, it’s because you aren’t providing enough leadership. If you are the leader, your dogs will listen to you if you just give them ‘the look’ or a ‘shhh’ sound. Yelling at them, chasing after them, petting them to calm them down is the wrong thing to do.

Cesar’s recipe for a balanced dog calls for a lot more exercise than most people are giving. He recommends a minimum of an hour and a half of walking every day. His own dogs get about four hours of walkin/rollerblading, and then more hours of structured play. And the way you walk your dog is very important. He shouldn’t be leading or pulling, he shouldn’t be stopping to sniff every little thing. Except for a ‘play period on your terms’, Cesar advises that you get your dog to treat his walk like a job and take it seriously, and accept you as the boss who tells him what to do. After all, dogs and wolves in the wild don’t play most of the time, they have jobs and structured behavior, following a leader, and dogs were domesticated to work and they like having jobs.

Positive reinforcement, the giving the cookie when your dogs do it right, is ideal if it works, Cesar says, but if your dogs are hyper from not enough exercise or not enough to do, or they are a little too dominant and running the house because you let them, it may not be the solution.

You might be able to check this book out of the library, or ask them if they plan to aquire it if they don’t have it yet.

5

I watched several episodes of his show and learned a lot about not reinforcing bad behavior.

For instance, each time either I or my husband come home, there is a huge reunion of the pack. I don’t pet the dogs or acknowledge them until they are calm and they mellow out pretty quick. On the other hand, mr.stretch gets all excited with them and consequently the wild behaviour continues longer. The girls know that my husband and I are the alpha pair in the pack, but they also know that I’m the big dog. They know the way the pack works, and like any social animal they play their positions for all they are worth.

I also like to use Cesar’s theory of walks being working time. When I walk one of the girls, I expect them to behave–no pulling, walking at my side, sitting when we stop, keeping them from reacting to distractions to the extent possible. Mr.stretch lets them be more casual on the leash and consequently they don’t behave as well when he walks them. Mr.stretch has been much more difficult to train than the girls. :wink:

Another source I have found to be very useful is How to Speak Dog by Stanley Coren .

6

But…but…I love the “mama’s home” dance and the subsequent victory laps around the apartment! It makes coming home the best part of my day! Why would I want that to stop? :confused:

7

Heh. My dogs, walking an hour and a half every day? One big problem with that: there is no couch on a walk. They would die!

Seriously, they’re pugs, they have a huge house they chase each other around in every day, and they have a huuuuge fenced yard. We got pugs because they didn’t need to be walked every day.

I’m sure they (and most other dogs) would like to be walked for 90 minutes every day, but I do have problems with trainers who claim that this kind of time devotion is the minimum required. Face it, most people aren’t willing to put in this kind of time, and there are plenty of dogs who are happy and more or less well behaved on a couple short walks a day. Or in our case, a human at home pretty much 24/7, and plenty of exercise space where they can walk their own pug asses.

Interesting on the coming home thing, though. We’re like stretch: I don’t give the doggies a whole lot of attention when I first come home, but Mr. Athena goes ballistic with them.

8

I love the mama’s home dance too, but I have three Golden Retrievers and a 45 pound mutt. When I’m coming home with my hands full of stuff and I open the front door, I don’t need that kind of attention.

The Goldens have already side-swiped me and helped me sprain an ankle while playing and I’ve broken a toe in ‘let’s all go’ melee so I prefer that they love me when I’m prepared. :slight_smile:

9

I haven’t seen the show. (WE don’t get that channel, or I certainly would!) I am, however, big into dog training, and am an obedience instructor. I am on several training lists and message boards.

What I am hearing from the pros (and these are people who have been in the business for decades, and have had their OWN shows) is that Milan is basically BSing on his show. He is having a lot of problems that they edit out, and using methods that he isn’t talking about. Take his stuff with a grain of salt…

Another thing to think about - the more you regularly exercise a dog, the more stamina you build up in that dog, the more exercise it needs to remain relaxed. I wouldn’t run a dog for hours unless I was in training for sledding or some other sport that requires that stamina. If you can’t gain calm behavior and work with your dog without it being physically exhausted, you need to try another tack.

Some of the other ideas expressed in this post are pretty valid, although they have been around for decades and are not his brainchild.

10

I haven’t read Cesar’s book, but according to another dog book I read (The Dog Listener), your dog isn’t doing a Mama’s home dance. S/He’s doing a “my baby’s back” dance. The idea is that when your dog leaps around, and you respond to it, you’re letting the dog think that it’s in charge, and that it’s the one who’s responsible for you, instead of the other way around.

11

Anybody giving out advice on training dogs and raising children is always controversial, isn’t it? If person A says: Do this and that, you can be sure person B will object: Oh no, not this and that! You’ll scar them for life! and person C will shrug: I never did this and that and my dogs/kids are fine and person D will claim to have tried this and that(without the right attitude or without consistancy) and say it doesn’t work at all, and so on and so on.

I’m not proclaiming Cesar Millan the dog behavior messiah and I am not saying I agree with his ideas 100%. I don’t agree with any other person on this planet 100% about anything of any importance. I am just saying I am interested in what he has to say and that some of it makes sense to me, based on my own personal observations and experiences. Some of it I intend to try out and find out for myself if it is helpful.

I don’t think he’s claiming to have invented all this on his own; he gives credit to several other books in the introduction to his book. Just like every other person who writes a book on dog training, he learned from and was influenced by other people. As far as BSing on his show, I wouldn’t be surprised if it simply being edited for time and not showing the many repetitions of his explained methods makes him look a lot more like a miracle worker, but I would be very disappointed if you proved to me that he was secretly handing out a whole bag of snausages or slipping the problem dog a few grains of valium. I’d like to know where your sources get their info, if they aren’t speculating.

As far as the exercise goes, he admits in the book that plenty of dogs are doing just fine without it. He just seems to think on the whole that we should treat dogs more like their wild kin, and their wild kin do walk and run and roam a lot. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if at least SOME problems, in SOME dogs are related to boredom and lack of exercise, so it couldn’t hurt to try it.

Fetchund, I’d love for you to read the book for yourself, or watch the videos available at his website and draw your own conclusions. It’s a tax-deductable expense, right? I’d be very curious to hear your opinions after.

12

I don’t own a dog and do not ever intend to have a dog, but I love “The Dog Whisperer!” There is something *very * attractive about such calm competency. It’s a great show that teaches a lot more than just dog rehab.

13

From what I’ve seen on TV of wild dog and wolf behavior, the members of the pack left at home (lower status animals who are left to tend the young) greet the higher-status hunters in the same way, jumping and yelping. Puppies also greet their mothers this way, but I’ve never seen a mother dog do it when her puppies return from play.

I’m not an expert by any means, but the behavior seems more puppyish or submissive in nature than uplifting, status-wise. They greet us the same way pups greet their mother, or the animals left behind greet the hunters in hopes of a bit of meat.

Secondly, some dogs display submissive urination at this time, which doesn’t happen during a status challenge.

14

Based on the OP’s outline of the Dog Whisperer’s methods and ideas, I completely agree.

Our dog used to be treated as a “little furry person who happens to have 4 legs”. Then we had a HUMAN baby. Now our dog is a DOG and is treated as such.

We love her, we do as much as we can for her, but she is now lower in the pecking order, and as a result, to our surprise, she is MUCH better behaved and much more calm.

One of our dog trainers (we tried a couple of different classes for our hyper border collie) advocated views that are similar to the OP. We found it hard to believe at first, but now, we get it.

15

From what the book says, it’s not so much the jumping that’s the problem, but that people participate in the “dance” and respond to it in ways that the Alpha wolf would not, which causes the dog to think that it has the power. When you ignore it, and ignore the dog when you first return, you take away the dog’s power, and the dog learns to trust you. It’s basically all about being the one who acts instead of reacts. The book calls it Amichien bonding if anyone would like to google it and get more info.