Cesar Millan
posted by Hillie.
I recently have been introduced to Cesar Millan, who is better known as the host of the National Geographic show The Dog Whisperer. At first I was somewhat skeptical mostly because I hadn’t heard of him and it was just a co-worker telling me of his methods, but after reading some web pages about how to take care of your dog, with lessons taken straight from Millan, I decided to order the Mastering Leadership DVD box set.
I didn’t find anything cruel about his methods. None of them actually harm the animals, and if you think that his methods “upset the dogs” then you are also asserting that you have some kind of empathic ability to read the dog’s emotions. After only using his methods on one walk, the change in my dog’s behavior was a night and day difference. Now people will argue and say that the changes are only temporary because it’s an easy rebuttal. See, it’s difficult to see into the future, and thus impossible for anyone to really be able to combat that argument. I’m not saying this is their intention, but it is definitely the outcome.
Cesar Millan says that it’s the people that need the training, not the dogs. He is right on so many levels, except that he is committing a generalization here because not all humans are completely ignorant of Mother Nature, although, regrettably, most are. Let me talk about the different arguments I have seen the past couple days against Mr. Millan’s methods:
Many people, including veteranarians have said that his methods are cruel and outdated. I don’t see anything cruel about his methods. In the DVD’s I have seen four methods of creating a consequence:
- Jerking the leash quickly to the side, while being high on the neck. How is this cruel? Many people yell at their dogs and spank them when they do something wrong. Usually this happens some time after the incident in question which does absolutely nothing for the dog except to make him avoid the current situation, and possibly make him fearful of the owner. The reason the leash is kept high on the neck is because if it falls down near the shoulders that’s going to fail because the dog will only see that action as passive, or worse he will see it as a challenge, like a tug of war. Also Millan stresses that there should be no tension on the leash at any given time. Dogs do not want to be on a leash, and that is why when you remind them that they are on a leash they will struggle or pull away from you or not want to do what you want them to do. How would you react if someone suddenly started pulling you around by the neck?
- The claw to the throat/near the throat (simulating a bite)
This is cruel? My dog acts like she could care less when I do this to her, it does not work on her at all. How is this cruel? How is something that a dog’s own mother does to it cruel? If a dog gets hurt in the least, it yelps. Period. - The soft-nudge to the side (aka the kick)
This too, is no way hurts the dog. People see him nudging the dog with his foot and suddenly it becomes “Oh my God he kicked the dog!” It is an overreaction on the part of the human.
- Not letting the dog out of a particular area as a form of punishment.
Again, how is this cruel? Now this is one that we do to our own children and do not think it is cruel. The only reason I bring that up is because the reason why the people think these methods are cruel is because they are relating to the dog as if it were a person.
A fifth method I’ve heard about is the alpha roll, although I have not seen it, this was described as rolling the dog on his bag and forcefully (I’m assuming not much force is required unless the dog is chaotic) keeping him there until he submits by holding him down by the neck. This too I would think is not really cruel, unless it causes the dog pain, which again, the dog would yelp. If the dog doesn’t like it, well, that’s too bad right? I mean that is what discipline is, having a consequence, and if you have no consequence how will the dog know? Even potty training uses consequences. You have to be right on top of them with it or they won’t learn.
A dog is a dog, it is not a person. When you call the dog fat, it does not get its feelings hurt, even if it understood what you were saying, it would still not get its feelings hurt. Why? because being fat is only bad because we have it in our minds that being anything but skinny is a bad thing.
A lot of the naysayers are right about one thing though. Cesar Millan’s methods are outdated, and outdated is just what we need. Think about it. We live in a modern world where man does not respect nature. Man does not respect his environment. Man thinks he is the center of the universe because of his science. What do you see when most people criticize something? You see them shout off quotes from people they believe are an authority over everyone else in the matter. In this case, you see them quote veterenarians who are agains’t Millan, saying things such as this:
Millan’s techniques are almost exclusively based on two techniques: Flooding and positive punishment. In flooding, an animal is exposed to a fear (or aggression) evoking stimulus and prevented from leaving the situation, until it stops reacting. To take a human example: arachnophobia would be treated by locking a person into a closet, releasing hundreds of spiders into that closet, and keeping the door shut until the person stops reacting. The person might be cured by that, but also might be severely disturbed and would have gone through an excessive amount of stress. Flooding has therefore always been considered a risky and cruel method of treatment.
This from Andrew Luescher, DVM. — Anyone who thinks exposing a dog to a cat or a squirrel and commanding it to sit still and be calm is comparable to locking an arachnophobic man in a room with spiders until he stops reacting is a zealout. I am sorry. First of all, this further proves Millan’s idea that humans are the ones who need training, because dogs are no where near as complicated psychologically as we are, and this is a vet saying this. Herein lies my point: These people get quoted because they are so-called authority figures. They are a Doctor of Veterenary Medicine. So that means that they immediately are an authority on dogs? Was their chief instructor at medical school a dog? No, it was a human being just like them, who taught them the things that they believed to be truth and fact, yet suddenly because they have a DVM after their name they have credibility over someone who does not.
Science is the source of man’s arrogance and a source of his ignorance, and this, ladies and gentlemen, is the modern world we live in– If it hasn’t been proven by science it’s a fraud– If we cannot see it with our eyes, it’s a fraud. However, a lot of Millan’s ideas actually have been proven by science. Everyone who has taken a Psychology course should know the name Ivan Pavlov, but the reason people believe Millan’s methods are cruel is because they are thinking of these animals as human. They are not.
This is why I say that Millan’s methods are outdated, and why I say outdated is not necessarily bad. We live in a modern world where dogs are required to be leashed. Why? because if not they will run out and get hit by a car, or attack another person, or attack another dog, or the dog runs away. Why? because the people do not know how to handle their pets. They treat them with love and affection in complete ignorance of the carnal animals that they are. So what happens to these dogs? Well, most of them get euthanized, which is a euphamism for killing. Now who’s talking about cruel. Do you really think that your neighbor’s family is going to care that you killed him with a lethal injection so he couldn’t feel any pain? No, and neither will the cops. A hundred and fifty years ago people didn’t keep their dogs on a leash. There wasn’t any push to put your dogs on four different medications to keep him healthy, yet somehow people still successfully kept their dogs in line and alive despite the odds, why? because they had to. We no longer have to keep our dogs in line, because we can just put a leash on them, and regardless of how they try to resist, we have control over them regardless. Now we have leashes for children, and soon there may even be laws to keep your child on a leash when outside, and perhaps then people will think disciplining children is cruel.
A lot of what Cesar Millan says mimics the beliefs of indigenious people who understand Nature and understand animals. An understanding that is sorely missed in today’s society.
I’ve also read this:
Mr. Millan builds his philosophy from a simplistic conception of the dog’s ”natural” pack, controlled by a dominant alpha animal (usually male). In his scheme, that leader is the human, which leads to the conclusion that all behavior problems in dogs derive from the failure of the owner or owners to dominate. (Conveniently, by this logic, if Mr. Millan’s intervention doesn’t produce lasting results, it is the owner’s fault.)
Women are the worst offenders in his world. In one of the outtakes included in the four-DVD set of the first season of ”Dog Whisperer,” Mr. Millan explains that a woman is ”the only species that is wired different from the rest.” And a ”woman always applies affection before discipline,” he says. ”Man applies discipline then affection, so we’re more psychological than emotional. All animals follow dominant leaders; they don’t follow lovable leaders.
This from Mark Derr, author of the book “A Dog’s History of America: How Our Best Friend Explored, Conquered and Settled a Continent.” — Now this is clear proof of someone letting their emotions get in the way of rational thought. Women are the worst offenders in his world? It’s more like he is trying to exemplify the fact that men and women have different psychology. It has been proven, over and over. Gender and culture greatly affects peoples’ way of thinking, and to call that racist or sexist is simply showing your ignorance. It is really the reason why so many men cannot understand women and vice versa, and what’s more, Millan has never said that the pack is controlled usually by a male. In fact he always reiterates that sex has nothing to do with the dog’s ability to be a pack leader, so that is just outright misinformation, and then the implication that Millan has devised a scam in which he fools people to believe their dogs have been rehabilitated when the effect is only temporary, claiming that if the dogs return to their normal state that it is the owner’s fault. It is. When you go on a diet and lose weight, if you gain it back, it is your fault– Your fault for thinking that a diet is just a means to lose weight. If the diet itself was a scam, it would not have worked in the first place.
All in all I find a lot of the criticism against Cesar Millan’s methods to be ridiculous and unfounded. I have known people who have used Cesar Millan’s methods and the effects were not temporary or transitory, and I know with confidence that one day I will be able to walk with my dog, without a leash, and be able to keep her under control and still have a happy healthy friend in her. Others will continue to go to a trainer that will simply teach their dog to sit, stay, fetch and heel and most likely their dogs will still have the behavioral problems they had in the first place, or worse, they will be medicated beyond consciousness to keep them in line, as many humans and some dogs are today. Many of these dogs will be abandoned because of this, and many of them will be killed. Not euthanized, KILLED. We as a people need to stop using euphamisms and talk about things as they are, because then just maybe something will get done about the injustices in this world.
I will leave you with one more message. If you know anything about tracking animals, you know that domestic dogs are the only animals on the planet whose tracks are chaotic and random. Could this be due to the fact that the majority of dog owners do not give their dogs the exercise to expel this excess energy from the dogs? In the wild this energy is expelled by hunting, gathering food, etc. Think of our excess energy as obesity. If we were really doing all the things we were meant to be doing as humans, we would not be the only species who is consistently overweight unless we dedicate a huge part of our lives to working out in a gym.
Tags: cesar milan, dog whisperer, ivan pavlov
March 11th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Dear Hillie,
My name is Melissa Jo Peltier and I am one of the executive producers of Dog Whisperer as well as Cesar’s co-author on his past three books.
I commend you on a clear, logical, methodical defense of Cesar and the spurious (and, it always strikes me, remarkably emotional) arguments against his techniques. If you read our first three books, CESAR’S WAY, BE THE PACK LEADER, and MEMBER OF THE FAMILY, you will learn in even more detail why these anti-Cesar folk are misinformed and off base in their often mean-spirited and surprisingly ad-hominem critiques of his methods.
Cesar himself will be the first to say that he isn’t perfect, and what’s wonderful about him is that he is always reading, studying, observing, and adapting and expanding his methods and ideas. Cesar believes dogs are his teachers, more so than he is theirs. No one method is the same for any one dog. But cruel or “aggressive” he is not. Having worked with him for over six years now, I can say from experience that for Cesar, the dog’s well-being always comes first. He won’t even allow us to do second takes on something if he feels it won’t help the dog’s rehab! “Dogs can’t understand take two,” he always says. Frustrating from a production standpoint, sure, but also a mark of Cesar’s integrity and the seriousness with which he takes what he does.
I could go on and on in this regard, but I’ll add just two points to the excellent arguments you make above:
1) The whole “flooding” issue: We at Dog Whisperer are still amazed that the short clip of Kane the Great Dane on the shiny floor is STILL used to show Cesar being “cruel” to an animal. In BE THE PACK LEADER, we explain flooding, which is now called “exposure” in psychological circles. Yes, it is used to cure phobias in humans - in a responsible way (and no psychiatrist in his or her right mind would ever overwhelm an arachnophobic with a closet full of spiders, no more than he/she would put someone afraid of flying into a bi-plane for his first trip in the air). But one of the reasons it works well with dogs (in the hands of a trained professional or experienced, responsible owner) is that dogs have no “story” attached to their phobias. They only have experiences. Once the experience is changed in their minds, it’s over and done with.
The Kane/Shiny floor story was actually the second story we shot for the entire Dog Whisperer series - segment two of over 130 episodes so far. We put a clock on how long Kane stood on that floor, shaking and drooling. I believe it was around 11 minutes. That episode was shot six years ago. We also keep in touch with everyone from past episodes on the show. Kane the Great Dane has had NOT ONE episode of phobia since that day. Not one. His owners say he is the happiest, most well adjusted dog they could hope for. To this day.
I would ask critics of that episode - if you could go through eleven minutes of discomfort knowing you’d come out the other side cured of whatever issue ailed you, would you do it? Hell, I’d do a month of waterboarding if I knew I’d come out at the end of it having finally put to rest an issue or two from my childhood!
2) The critique that “Cesar’s techniques are temporary fixes.” We blew that one out of the water when my partner and I wrote an episode guide with follow-ups for the first three seasons, DOG WHISPERER, THE ULTIMATE GUIDE. Of nearly all the stories we did, (about 6-8 of the owners we couldn’t make contact with), between 81 and 85% of the owners reported lasting improvement or “cures”. Most of the owners who had less positive results admitted they had not wholly followed through on Cesar’s advice, either due to choice, time limits, or their own frustration. We saw much higher “cure” percentages from the second and third seasons, when our show budgets got bigger and we were able to bring Cesar back for more follow-ups to many of the tougher stories.
A final note - as we point out in BE THE PACK LEADER, our dogs’ problems are so often mirrors of our own issues. Cesar’s visits often point out issues in the owners lives that they simply can’t or won’t face. Perhaps that’s why his critics are so irrationally enraged at a very basic, straightforward man who only wants to save innocent animals from possible euthanasia, and/or from living lives imprisoned by fears, phobias, or aggressive instability. Cesar’s methods involve going inside oneself and looking honestly and our own motives and methods as they involve our companion animals.
Thanks for this wonderful blog post, and I hope you continue to watch our show. We’ve got some incredible episodes and life-changing stories coming up in this fifth season.
Melissa Jo Peltier
Executive Producer/Writer
MPH Entertainment, Inc.
March 11th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Wow. Thanks for that reply, and those really insightful comments.
From what I can tell it seems like Cesar has a way of just telling people how things are, or what he believes, without sugarcoating it, and some people just cannot take “You’ve been doing everything wrong” without getting extremely emotionally upset.
Most of the time it’s not the owner’s fault. Dogs don’t come with an owner’s manual.
I actually know someone whose pet is on anti-depressants prescribed to the pet by a veteranarian as the only way he has found to control the dog’s destructive behavior. I, too, thought that was the only solution when I did not know better, but I still did not like that solution one bit.
June 26th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Hillie, great job! And no hatters so far. It’s hard to argue common sense and logic…
I had the greatest opportunity ever spending a year working on a dairy farm when I was 18. At 48, to this day, I’ve never learned so much about nature and animals in a single year. I’ve always had a special bond with dogs (I’ve had 13) but the teachings by George the farmer connected the dots in terms of how work with nature not against her in day to day life.
Men and women that were raised on farms (my wife was) learn that from the start to be calm and in charge. I NEVER saw a farmer beat their animals or harm them in anyway. The animals knew and respected the owners and behaved as the humans wanted and were very calm and relaxed. And guess what? no PhD’s, none of the scientific theories, etc. that comes out of these “modern” techniques.
Then I find Cesar! He connected the dots that I didn’t know I didn’t know. He says, the correction should match the intensity of the out burst. To redirect negative fixation or staring down another animal, one should snap the leash and that doesn’t work, a tap between the leg and the ribs. The flipping on the back and “bite” the neck is if the dog went to the “red zone” and bit another dog, etc. to get them to submit and take them back to a calm submissive state of mind.
At the end of the day, corrections get fewer and further in between when the human maintains the structure. When owners get lazy, the dog will start behaving badly again.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Thanks. Unfortunately though it seems pretty easy for these people to argue just using their doctorates or what not as validation.
I recently read an article entitled “Why Cesar Millan is hated by most dog behaviorists” and it barely mentions Cesar at all. It talks about the striking of dogs as corrections and other such things, and doesn’t mention Cesar AT ALL except in the title and then a sentence in the middle of the article saying “Enter Cesar’s methods.”
So anyone who is ignorant about Cesar’s methods is going to associate these negative things with Cesar because well “they must be right they went through veterinary college.” but little is it known whteher or not these people are even the vets or behaviorists at all, it’s just some dude writing a blog. Who is this guy? Most people will never do the research.
December 15th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Hillie - What a great article!! As someone involved with dogs and dog performance (agility) I have heard my fair share (and then some) of Cesar haters. I must also say that my dog is e-collar trained as well; or as most people will say “shock collar”, a collar which not only corrected and controls her issues, but made our relationship much better. And for all those nay-sayers out there, when I pick up the collar to put it on my dog, she gets excited and happy! But that is another subject for another day.
Having recently seen Cesar live (an amazing experience), I can say that he is an amazing person with a great out look. To say that his opinion of women is low or cheauvinistic is just plain wrong! Listening to him talk about his wife is proof of that. To say Cesar uses no positive reinforcment and is all negative reinformcement is wrong! There are many episodes of Cesar using food rewards for dogs. Each dog is different and if something is not working he tries something else.
One of the great examples he gives is how people react around horses versus dogs. The calm exhibited around a horse is natural to keep the horse in a calm state. Conversely, people that see dogs tend to get excited and/or throw caution to the wind. Not looking at how the dog is reacting to their approach and thinking “all dogs love me so this dog must too”; not always the case.
Of course as a human, you need to be in charge, not your dog. But all too often we see dogs that are in control (or out of control) and owners that are miserable. Call it Pack Leader; Human Leader, “Mom” or “Dad”; it is a concept that works. Dogs can not rationalize a situation or consequences; that is the human’s job.
As it says on his show “Don’t try these techniques without consulting a professional”: you know why? You “broke” your dog, so you probably need help to fix him or her. Working with dogs that have issues is NOT easy by any means. Your timing needs to be EXACT!! You have about 5 seconds to get it right or it is too late. And a dog is not going to know “sit”, “down”, or have a recall just because you call him. Dogs need to be taught. Once I got the help I needed with my dog and took control, the change in her behavior was almost immediate.
It always amazes me how vehement and emotional Cesar’s detractors are while his supporters, while as passionate, tend to be a bit more reasonable in argument and discussion.
In the end, everyone must find the method that is right for them and their dog. But, whatever, the method BE CONSISTENT!!! Once a dog is “trained” (or whatever) don’t think you never have to do anymore work with the dog and it will alwys be the same. Even though I have not trained with an obedience trainer in a few years, I “work” my dog every day and it pays off. We walk everywhere off leash; she has great recall; and everyone that sees how well she responds and listens either is amazed or says “I wish my dog was like that”. I always tell them: “Your dog can be, if YOU put in the time”.
Again, thatnks for the great piece and thoughful argument.
December 16th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Yep. So true. I think people see one episode or part of an episode and then it’s like a virus effect. It spreads so quickly and then suddenly all these people think Cesar is evil.
I’ve recently seen a vet make a post where she posted a clip from the show, saying turn off the sound so that you aren’t distracted by his voice. Now you see first he kicks the dog in the abdomen! Then he lifts the dog up by the neck as it *gasps for air* and finally he throws the dog on its side as it’s *gasping for air* and its tongue is blue.
So obviously the person is making clear assumptions about what the dog is doing from a television clip. I could do the same with wrestling on TV. Ok everybody! Forget that this is television first of all, forget that it’s easy to fool the eye. Now see, he just slammed this guy into his knee, and smashed a metal chair into his face, look at the guy writhing in pain! Why is this guy not on death row?!??!?!
But I think really education is needed. These people do not REALLY understand what Cesar is doing. They can’t. Yeah there are some people who just can’t get with the program. The ones that won’t discipline their dog because they think it’s mean and they won’t adopt the concept of discipline but without discipline.. it’s hopeless except for those happy go lucky dogs that are rare.
The other thing I read about sometimes is punishment. “using punishment as a training aid is bad” You bet it is! Only problem is they’re accusing Cesar of doing so. oh my. How many times have I heard the discipline vs. punishment mini-lecture from Cesar on the show