Just what methods you applied and used is not clear but aggression seldom just disappears and if you simply repressed it, it can come back with a vengence.

I can’t tell you how many people over the years believe that just because they have owned multiple animals of the same breed think that makes them qualified for dealing with issues exhibited by the breed.

Your particular breed of mastiff often exhibits more aggression that other breeds and although I appreciate your chiming in, I would ask you to do two things–the first is to get professional help by a qualified animal trainer (see the resource page).

Second, you obviously don’t understand positive reinforcement. All training involves positive and negative methodology but it is how the strategies are applied that get you the best behavior, a happier animal, and long-term compliance.

Less than a dozen animals does not make anyone an expert .

I’ve not seen the time clock in any of the episodes I’ve watched but I am not an avid television fan–plus since I had a degree in animal training and management I’m usually not entertained or enthralled with most of the series that tend to captivate the general public. (Been in my career way too long too 30+ years.)

Any trainer worth their salt gets an animal to respond quickly but it is the integration and longevity that matters and that has to be sustained by the owner. That takes practice and skill development.

Perhaps it is not the responsibility of the show but the edu-tainment trend is something I find annoying and something is broke when you have to plaster disclaimers all over the programming.

You might be giving the public too much credit or I might not be giving them enough but after years in the profession I think I have a pretty good thumb on the pulse of things.

Plus, I don’t actually consider it an instructional television show–it is an entertainment/reality show in my opinion.

“Con Cesar Millan: People mistakenly believe they are seeing real time training accomplishments and think they can get the same results quickly. They fail to understand that they are viewing edited clips of events that happen over time.”

Well, that’s a big assumption – that all viewers don’t understand the editing process for time’s sake. That said – I know people that work with Cesar I can tell you that yes, the results you see on the show do in fact happen that quickly. Also – in virtually every episode, you will see an “elapsed time” clock is showing you the actual time it took to change the dog’s state of mind, behavior, etc., regardless of editing down for time’s / TV’s sake.

Can the average person / dog owner attain the same results as quickly? Of course not. Now whether they believe that or not, well, that’s really not the responsibility of the show. The same can be said for any (yes any) instructional television show as well.

I think that Cesar Milan is good for the dog training industry in general. Before his show, I think there were a lot of people who maybe ran into a dog problem and then just figured the problem was with the dog, not the owner.

Now, whether people subscribe to Milan’s ideology or not, at least there’s more of a possibility that your average Joe-dog-owner will reach for the phone book and look for a dog trainer, as a result of the show.

I actually had a book that was sold that weaved both wild and domestic animal training stories with techniques inserted but was a bit before its time. The What Animals Can Teach Us about Spirituality actually had the working title of Animal Connection and contained some of the content from the other after I parted ways with the publisher (multiple subsidiary sales to new publishing houses got old).

Funny, I have been pondering the religion analogy as a blog post about all the BS currently circulating around the domestic animal training world.

I recently read something about CM by a trainer that was “calling him out.” In some cases, the strategy is to get attention and traffic from the topic.

However, in a discussion with another trainer recently we were talking about how we both like Victoria Stillwell’s approach better but find the show a bit boring.

In these days we are all getting conditioned to fast paced and repetitive messages.

Unfortunately, the showman always wins out with the ratings.

As far as proprietary or exclusivity, I am waiting for a challenge in court on some of these.

Early in my career I wrote a piece called New Age Animal Training: Innovation or Marketing?

One of the “leaders” in the “new” wave of animal training wrote me and asked me to take the term he had trademarked out of the article.

I did but people are trademarking phrases that are in the public domain and that they did not invent–and I think it will come to a head sometime in the future–hopefully sooner than later.

Also, there is a lot of intimidation circulating since the “real media” isn’t reporting news, just spouting commentary. Pop culture interest items the bloggers tend to be the ones heading the new media blast of talking about things others won’t and since televised media is about ratings, well…

I’ve worked with animals in every capacity and was amused when people started labeling those who began using more positive methods in their businesses as “cross over” trainers.

Puh-lease!

You find the hard lines in the medical versus alternative healing practices, too.

I don’t believe that there is an “us and a them” but only those who desire to move the relationships with and manners of animals forward.

Recently Mary (over at Stale Cheerios blo) wrote about the Baileys being early innovators but my own research shows efforts back into the 1800s in Germany.

Ever hear, “everything old is new again?”

Without any history or savvy about history people are just marketing to a new group–I should have got on the bandwagon early!

I”m not sure about the claim regarding exclusivity because you didn”t leave any examples and a lot of trainers speak and travel without a problem

That book is actually a compilation from a wide variety of zoo trainers but there are some outstanding training professionals across many industries.

My take is that if you are a good trainer, you evolve for the betterment of the species. But also, you do your job and don’t try to force your will on others either.

Just like positive training, adversives tend to work against you.

As to Cesar, he does have an amazing machine behind him. To the point of getting exclusivity built into his contracts. An absolutely amazing trainer who literally wrote the book (one of the definitive textbooks on animal training with positive reinforcement methods for zoos and aquariums) did a television series on using those methods with domesticated animals. His program ran in Europe, but not the U.S. because of that exclusivity clause. I was told this by the trainer himself, not second hand. That is my biggest problem with Cesar. I don’t understand why, if he believes so strongly in his methods, he should be threatened by competition from alternative methods.

I will say this, I have enough first hand experiences with traditional training methods creating more problems than they solved, that I was ecstatic to learn a method of communication with my animals that allowed for their cooperation in their training. There is a huge amount of fascinating science behind how and why positive methods work, but the bottom line is that they do work, and better, and I would never go back.