Cesar, you once wrote: “When I learned how to be calm-submissive to my wife, it improved my marriage 100 percent!” But you are now divorced. Did your recipe for an “improved” marriage lead to its eventual breakdown? Were you resentful about being submissive? Was your wife looking for a partner and not a prisoner to…
For the sake of argument, let us imagine that Cesar Millan is right. We will imagine a universe where punishment causes no adverse psychological effects. In Millan’s reality punishment does not elicit fear and it does not cause aggression; punching a dog will not cause it to bite. Confrontational methods don’t result in defensive aggression;…
Another example of Brad Pattison’s twisted view of dogs seemed appropriate before the upcoming book review. When is submissive behavior an attempt at dominance? In an episode of At the End of My Leash, Pattison meets a black GSD with some fear-aggression issues that manifested in a lot of barking and some lunging. It also…
Dr. Marc Bekoff has jumped into the Cesar Millan abuse controversy (that there is a controversy baffles me) with an article titled “Did Cesar Millan have to hang the Husky” Dr. Bekoff makes an excellent case and I won’t go into any of the issues he brings up, instead my focus on the comments made…
Millan’s methods are a result of positive reinforcement. Not the dogs – they are not reinforced, they are almost always punished. It is Millan that has been positively reinforced. Once upon a time Millan met a dog’s aggressive behavior with aggression. He managed to stop the behavior and thus was rewarded for his aggression. He…
Science and Dogs 