"Misguided Expert of the Year"

http://www.esquire.com/features/arti...Whisperer.html

The Dog Whisperer Should Just Shut Up

By Curtis Pesmen
October 2006, Volume 146, Issue 4

For Cesar Millan, the goateed toughguy, best-selling author, and
cable-TV star who throws down pit bulls, it's time for new rules. And
for countless dog owners, dog lovers, or stray humans skittish at the
big-ass Doberman mix approaching them in the park, it's more than a
matter of cult personality. We want our damn dogs to behave, and we're
afraid of losing flesh—or of having to surrender "untrainable" dogs to
the pound. Problem is, Cesar's ways, experts say, aren't the best ways
for dogs. Or for us. Yes, yes, his alphadog training tips make good
television and may provide fast results. But what happens when the
show's over?

"My position is, Millan is a poseur," Claudia Kawczynska, editor in
chief of The Bark magazine, says of the ex–dog groomer. "He is a
hairdresser, not the real guy in terms of being an expert. He doesn't
have credentials. And it is shocking to me how easily people are ready
to fall for it."

With approximately two million strays euthanized in the U. S. each
year, Kawczynska sees reason to worry: "He is doing a disservice to
the real experts in the field," she says. "He gives quick fixes, but
they are not going to be a solution for most families with problem
dogs."

Ken Ramirez, an animal behaviorist and the chief animal trainer at
Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, believes everyday dog owners need to learn
how to better observe and understand their dogs' behavior. Then they
can reward the behavior they want and either ignore, avoid, or
distract them from unwanted behavior. It's reinforcement versus
enforcement. While both he and Millan believe the average dog owner—as
well as dog—needs better training, Ramirez remains wary of instructors
who yearn to make animals learn through tough-love techniques, or
"aversives." "I may teach some of the methods Cesar uses," says
Ramirez, who also trains bomb-sniffing dogs and their handlers, "but
only as a last resort."

Millan fancies himself a faux wolf by practicing—and promoting—the
alpha-dog theory of training, whereby he "joins the pack" and gains
dominance. These alphatraining-yanking-learning techniques (in theory)
then transfer swiftly to the dogs' owners. All of which makes Millan
today a solid B-list Hollywood personality.

"The cause of most behavioral problems is miscommunication and not
dominance issues," says Patricia McConnell, Ph.D., associate professor
of zoology at the University of Wisconsin and author of For the Love
of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend. Either
dogs don't know what their owners want, she says, or we inadvertently
have taught them to do the wrong thing. "Most behavioral problems can
be solved by owners learning how to teach a dog what it is they want,
by using the science of how animals learn."

Yet the showmanship continues. On Millan's Dog Whisperer, he goes
house to bad-dog house, jerking leashes, shaking scruffs of necks, and
throwing the occasional kick—in a wolfmanto-wolfpack fashion, except
that the dogs aren't truly fooled. They don't believe he's a dog.
What's worse, says Janis Bradley, a San Francisco trainer and author
of the helpfully titled Dogs Bite, the dogs often fall into a helpless
state Millan calls "calm submission," but what trained behaviorists
see as possible chronic stress or "shutdown," which can lead to a dog
eventually fighting back.

On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 13:03:04 -0500, Gray_Wolf ,
clicked their heels and said:

either ignore, avoid, or
distract them from unwanted behavior.

doG forbid we actually tell a dog no or wrong! You can't avoid,
ignore, or distract from everything in life, nor is that normal for
any beings. We all learn from "correction". Some is nature - we
learn to not eat things that taste bad for instance. Sometimes, we
learn not to do things because there are consequences - running red
lights would result in a ticket at the least and a fatal accident at
the worst.

I just love the flowers and butterfly types. Why do we have war if
all we need to do is ignore, avoid, or distract?

--
Janet Boss
www.bestfriendsdogobedience.com