This is an updated version of a previous post, which includes a few more insights, and a very helpful (I hope) graphic.
Cesar Millan: Pack Leader or Predator?
One of the constant bits of advice you’ll hear from Cesar Millan on The Dog Whisperer is: “you have to be your dog’s pack leader.” In fact on his website he even sells T-shirts and hoodies with Pack Leader printed on them. Millan is not alone. This is a popular notion among a lot of trainers, and has been for years.
This idea has a lot of appeal for most people. “Yes!” they think. “That’s what’s wrong with my relationship with my dog. He doesn’t see me as his pack leader!”
Here’s the problem though. According to David Mech, the world’s leading experts on the behavior of wild wolves, real wolf packs don’t have pack leaders. The idea that they do came from studies done on captive packs, culled from various sources, who didn’t know one another, and behaved more like rival wolves than true packmates.
Here are some facts about wild wolf behavior:
No wolf always walks ahead of the group when they’re traveling. They take turns. That’s a fact.
No wolf always eats before other members of the group. That’s a fact.
No wolf always goes through an opening or crosses a threshold before other members of the group. That’s a fact.
No wolf ever puts one of his packmates in an alpha roll. That’s a fact.
No wolf tells his packmates how to behave. That’s a fact.
Dominance displays are rare in wild wolf packs and usually only take place between the mother and father over how to disburse food to their young. The female almost always wins these battles by acting “submissive,” which would mean she’s supposedly subservient to the male, when she’s actually almost always victorious.
These are all facts. And here’s what they all add up to:
Yes, it’s true that in any animal group there will be one member who is more experienced, more knowledgeable, and who has more animal magnetism than the others. And most members of the group will tend to be drawn to or gravitate toward him or her. But animal magnetism—which is felt on a visceral level—is something quite different from rank, leadership, and authority—which are purely mental constructs.
There’s another factor. In wolf packs it was long believed that the alpha or leadership role changes hands during the hunt. We now know, through the principles of emergence theory, that the reason this seems to happen is simply because one member of the pack will have a better skill set for a certain type of terrain at some point during the hunt, or another wolf may have more emotional flexibility for adjusting to the changes in the prey animal’s energy during that part of the hunt, or what’s even simpler: one wolf may suddenly be in closer proximity to the prey at certain points, giving the impression that the others are now “following” his leadership when in fact the hunt is always led by the prey.
Going back to dogs, in any situation where dogs are in conflict it’s always about who has control over resources, i.e., things in the environment. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you automatically have more control over your dog’s environment than he does. Who has the keys to the car and the house? Who knows how to operate doorknobs? Who knows how to use a can opener? Clearly, if a dog is capable of perceiving things like leadership or superiority, your dog already sees you in that light.
So why doesn’t your dog listen to you the way the dogs on TV listen to Cesar Millan? Well, for one thing there’s a lot of stuff Millan does that ends up on the editing room floor. (I know for a fact that this is true.) Plus, to his credit Millan always seems to act fairly cool under pressure (as long as you don’t look at the anger sometimes simmering in his eyes). But ultimately he acts more like a predator than like a pack leader.
A predator?
Yes. The spatial relationship between two dogs or wolves takes place on the horizontal. Their eyes face each other. They’re on the same level. But the spatial relationship between dog and human is quite different. We move through space on the vertical. Our eyes are far above theirs. They look up at us, we look down at them. Spatial relationships—which are concrete and visceral—are far more important to dogs than intangibles like leadership or status—which again are more abstract and conceptual in nature.
This brings up an interesting point about wolves, which is that in the wild the only animal that poses serious threat of deadly harm to a wolf (other than homo sapiens) is the same animal the wolf usually hunts: elk, moose, deer, bison. These animals have sharp horns and hooves that could easily kill or maim a wolf. When a moose, for example, is running away from the wolf, the wolf is energized by its movement, and is highly attracted through his desire to chase and bite. But if a moose finds itself cornered, and as a result he turns and stares down at the wolf, brandishing his antlers, the wolf will stop dead in his tracks.
In the wolf’s experience the prey has now become the predator.
Note the similarities in the spatial dynamics between the moose and wolf on the left, and the dog and man on right. Then note how different they are in comparison to the spatial dynamic of the two wolves in the center.
I’m not suggesting that a dog thinks his owner is a moose. What I am suggesting is that even there were such a thing as a pack leader in wild wolf packs (which there isn’t), and even if dogs had inherited that behavioral tendency from wolves (which they haven’t), there is no way a dog could confuse a human being for another dog, i.e., his “pack leader.” It simply could not happen. As I said before, the relationships between objects in space is concrete while the idea of the “pack leader” is more abstract and cerebral. So when you add yet another cerebral element—that the human owner or trainer is a stand-in for or symbolizes the already abstract idea of the pack leader—you’re getting into mental territory that is way beyond what a dog’s brain is capable of.
The facts of nature and evolution strongly suggest that wolves, and by extension dogs, have a long adaptive history of being cautious about any animal whose eyes are set in a large head and are looking down at them from above, particularly when that animal is facing them directly. They would feel even more fearful or cautious if that vertical being happened to be coming toward them.
Now think of the way Cesar Millan acts when he enters a room and believes he’s being a “pack leader.” Picture the way he stands and stares down at a dog. The level of gaze he has seems “magnetic,” correct? The dogs are on their “best behavior.” Is that because they see him as a pack leader? Of course not. The spatial dynamic is nothing at like that between a supposed pack leader and another dog or wolf. But remember, when a moose suddenly turns and looks down at a wolf, the wolf stops dead in his tracks. And that’s exactly how most misbehaving dogs act when Cesar Millan enters a room. So the feeling Millan is actually stimulating in dogs is the polar opposite of magnetism or leadership.
It’s really just a form of fear or intimidation.
Another way to look at it is that when Millan acts the way he does the dog isn’t thinking, “I respect your authority and position of leadership over me, so I will do as you ask.” It’s far more likely that the dog is thinking,“What can I do to survive this moment? Show me how I can prevent myself from being killed.”
So why does Cesar Millan (and others like him) get results?
This “pack-leader” act essentially stifles the dog’s energy. Then, once that excess energy is contained (i.e., the dog is no longer bouncing off the walls), Cesar takes the dog on 2 - 4 hour walks, sometimes forcing the animal to wear heavy weights, or he puts the dog on a treadmill for several hours to burn off all that energy.
Is there a better way to teach a dog than by stifling his energy and/or wearing him out?
Of course. The more intelligent and effective option is to give the dog a positive outlet for his energy and emotions. That’s kind of what the long walks do, except that while long walks may wear a dog out, they don’t really satisfy his true energy needs. That comes through playing games that stimulate and satisfy his hunting instincts. For example, 5 - 10 minutes of playing tug-of-war—where you always let the dog win and praise him enthusiastically for winning—is roughly equivalent to a two hour walk in terms of the amount of energy expended. Plus, when played correctly, tug always has the positive side-effect of increasing a dog’s desire to learn and obey you. The same can be said for playing fetch for about 20 minutes or so.
Cesar does sometimes play fetch with his dogs, but from what I’ve observed he doesn’t know how to teach a dog whose energy has been stifled to become un-stifled it and or to teach the dog how to release his energy through play. From my perspective that should be the first order of business when working with any behavioral problem: teaching the dog to play.
Max von Stephanitz, one of the originators of SchutzHund, wrote, “Before we teach a dog to obey we must teach him how to play.”
There’s a great documentary called “In the Company of Wolves,” where Timothy Dalton goes to the Arctic Circle with David Mech and observes these wonderful animals in their natural habitat. (By the way, if you’ve seen footage of the wolves in Yellowstone, keep in mind that those wolves were taken captive in British Columbia, drugged, outfitted with electronic monitoring collars, and forcibly relocated to a completely new, and in many ways, quite foreign environment. So while they’re still living in the wild, Yellowstone is not really their natural habitat; not yet. So their behaviors are sort of halfway between those exhibited by a truly wild pack and a group of unrelated wolves held against their will in captivity.)
At one point in the Timothy Dalton film a papa wolf (i.e., the pack leader), rolls over on his back, “signifying submission” to his puppies, and encourages them to jump on his stomach and chest and even allows them to nip at his ears and nose. In other words, he’s playing with his pups. (Do you ever see Cesar encourage a dog “dominate” him like this? Why not? If his intent is to be a true pack leader why wouldn’t he want to imitate what a real pack leader, i.e., papa wolf, does?)
Immediately after I saw this documentary for the first time, which was in 1995, I decided to imitate what the papa wolf did with my own pup, an unneutered male Dalmatian named Freddie.
First I got down on my hands and knees, did a play bow. Then I started batting my hands at Freddie’s body, getting him riled up and in the mood to play. Then when he was really in the mood to play bite, I rolled over on my back, pretending to be submissive.
“Oh no! You got me! You killed me! You’re alpha! You’re the king dog!”
He loved it! First he jumped on top of me. Then he tried to get lower than me! Then he began to twist around the way dogs do when they’re rolling around in the grass on a nice spring day. When he was done he raced to find one of his bones and began chewing it, quite happily.
Later, on our evening walk—as he wandered a bit too far ahead of me—I sort of absent-mindedly gave him his recall signal, expecting him to do his usual routine, which was to cock his head, look at me, then look back at whatever he’d been sniffing, and then slowly come trotting back about halfway or, if I was lucky, a maybe a little more.
That’s not what happened.
As soon as I called him he turned on a dime, and like a shot, he came running back at full speed, ending up in a perfect sit right in front of me.
I was astonished! I tested him further by quickly giving him the down command. He dove into position as fast as he could, eager to hear what I wanted him to do next. This was totally amazing and unexpected. I had no idea why this happening until I realized that for some reason, when I’d acted “submissive” toward him a few hours earlier I’d changed something about the emotional dynamic between us. As a result he was immediately far more obedient to all my commands. Plus his response time went from semi-lacksidasical to lightning-fast!
Over the next few months I tried my “submissive” act on most of the dogs I was training (you have to know how to choose which dogs are ready for these kind of shenanigans and which aren't). And in every single case it made the dog far more responsive and quicker to obey.
Why? Because I did what a true pack leader—a papa wolf—does with his pups. I got down on their level and let them “conquer” me.
And here’s the real distinction, which goes back to the dynamic between the wolf and the moose. Remember, when the wolf is chasing the moose he’s releasing his energy in the most optimal way possible. It’s what he was genetically engineered to do. But when the moose stops and turns, the wolf is suddenly like a deer in the headlights, in fear for his life. He’s not a happy camper. So when Cesar Millan thinks he’s acting like a “pack leader,” he’s not only stifling the dog’s energy, he’s instilling a lot of fear into that dog, which would be fine, I suppose, if fear had a positive effect on learning. Sometimes it does (very rarely), but for the most part it creates an inability for the dog to learn anything new.
But when you become a prey animal, by getting down on the dog’s level and playing with him—which is closer to the way dogs learn naturally—you’re opening up an enormous encyclopedia of learning that goes far beyond anything that Cesar Millan or others with the pack-leader mentality could possibly imagine. (Maybe Cesar will get there one day, but he’s not there yet.)
If you want to be a true pack leader, just imitate the papa wolf. Get down on your dog’s level, act submissive, and encourage him to play with you. (Please be careful and use common sense though; don’t try this with just any dog, particularly one you don’t know very well.)
LCK
Cesar Millan: Pack Leader or Predator?
One of the constant bits of advice you’ll hear from Cesar Millan on The Dog Whisperer is: “you have to be your dog’s pack leader.” In fact on his website he even sells T-shirts and hoodies with Pack Leader printed on them. Millan is not alone. This is a popular notion among a lot of trainers, and has been for years.
This idea has a lot of appeal for most people. “Yes!” they think. “That’s what’s wrong with my relationship with my dog. He doesn’t see me as his pack leader!”
Here’s the problem though. According to David Mech, the world’s leading experts on the behavior of wild wolves, real wolf packs don’t have pack leaders. The idea that they do came from studies done on captive packs, culled from various sources, who didn’t know one another, and behaved more like rival wolves than true packmates.
Here are some facts about wild wolf behavior:
No wolf always walks ahead of the group when they’re traveling. They take turns. That’s a fact.
No wolf always eats before other members of the group. That’s a fact.
No wolf always goes through an opening or crosses a threshold before other members of the group. That’s a fact.
No wolf ever puts one of his packmates in an alpha roll. That’s a fact.
No wolf tells his packmates how to behave. That’s a fact.
Dominance displays are rare in wild wolf packs and usually only take place between the mother and father over how to disburse food to their young. The female almost always wins these battles by acting “submissive,” which would mean she’s supposedly subservient to the male, when she’s actually almost always victorious.
These are all facts. And here’s what they all add up to:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PACK LEADER.
Yes, it’s true that in any animal group there will be one member who is more experienced, more knowledgeable, and who has more animal magnetism than the others. And most members of the group will tend to be drawn to or gravitate toward him or her. But animal magnetism—which is felt on a visceral level—is something quite different from rank, leadership, and authority—which are purely mental constructs.
There’s another factor. In wolf packs it was long believed that the alpha or leadership role changes hands during the hunt. We now know, through the principles of emergence theory, that the reason this seems to happen is simply because one member of the pack will have a better skill set for a certain type of terrain at some point during the hunt, or another wolf may have more emotional flexibility for adjusting to the changes in the prey animal’s energy during that part of the hunt, or what’s even simpler: one wolf may suddenly be in closer proximity to the prey at certain points, giving the impression that the others are now “following” his leadership when in fact the hunt is always led by the prey.
Going back to dogs, in any situation where dogs are in conflict it’s always about who has control over resources, i.e., things in the environment. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you automatically have more control over your dog’s environment than he does. Who has the keys to the car and the house? Who knows how to operate doorknobs? Who knows how to use a can opener? Clearly, if a dog is capable of perceiving things like leadership or superiority, your dog already sees you in that light.
So why doesn’t your dog listen to you the way the dogs on TV listen to Cesar Millan? Well, for one thing there’s a lot of stuff Millan does that ends up on the editing room floor. (I know for a fact that this is true.) Plus, to his credit Millan always seems to act fairly cool under pressure (as long as you don’t look at the anger sometimes simmering in his eyes). But ultimately he acts more like a predator than like a pack leader.
A predator?
Yes. The spatial relationship between two dogs or wolves takes place on the horizontal. Their eyes face each other. They’re on the same level. But the spatial relationship between dog and human is quite different. We move through space on the vertical. Our eyes are far above theirs. They look up at us, we look down at them. Spatial relationships—which are concrete and visceral—are far more important to dogs than intangibles like leadership or status—which again are more abstract and conceptual in nature.
This brings up an interesting point about wolves, which is that in the wild the only animal that poses serious threat of deadly harm to a wolf (other than homo sapiens) is the same animal the wolf usually hunts: elk, moose, deer, bison. These animals have sharp horns and hooves that could easily kill or maim a wolf. When a moose, for example, is running away from the wolf, the wolf is energized by its movement, and is highly attracted through his desire to chase and bite. But if a moose finds itself cornered, and as a result he turns and stares down at the wolf, brandishing his antlers, the wolf will stop dead in his tracks.
In the wolf’s experience the prey has now become the predator.
Note the similarities in the spatial dynamics between the moose and wolf on the left, and the dog and man on right. Then note how different they are in comparison to the spatial dynamic of the two wolves in the center.I’m not suggesting that a dog thinks his owner is a moose. What I am suggesting is that even there were such a thing as a pack leader in wild wolf packs (which there isn’t), and even if dogs had inherited that behavioral tendency from wolves (which they haven’t), there is no way a dog could confuse a human being for another dog, i.e., his “pack leader.” It simply could not happen. As I said before, the relationships between objects in space is concrete while the idea of the “pack leader” is more abstract and cerebral. So when you add yet another cerebral element—that the human owner or trainer is a stand-in for or symbolizes the already abstract idea of the pack leader—you’re getting into mental territory that is way beyond what a dog’s brain is capable of.
The facts of nature and evolution strongly suggest that wolves, and by extension dogs, have a long adaptive history of being cautious about any animal whose eyes are set in a large head and are looking down at them from above, particularly when that animal is facing them directly. They would feel even more fearful or cautious if that vertical being happened to be coming toward them.
Now think of the way Cesar Millan acts when he enters a room and believes he’s being a “pack leader.” Picture the way he stands and stares down at a dog. The level of gaze he has seems “magnetic,” correct? The dogs are on their “best behavior.” Is that because they see him as a pack leader? Of course not. The spatial dynamic is nothing at like that between a supposed pack leader and another dog or wolf. But remember, when a moose suddenly turns and looks down at a wolf, the wolf stops dead in his tracks. And that’s exactly how most misbehaving dogs act when Cesar Millan enters a room. So the feeling Millan is actually stimulating in dogs is the polar opposite of magnetism or leadership.
It’s really just a form of fear or intimidation.
Another way to look at it is that when Millan acts the way he does the dog isn’t thinking, “I respect your authority and position of leadership over me, so I will do as you ask.” It’s far more likely that the dog is thinking,“What can I do to survive this moment? Show me how I can prevent myself from being killed.”
So why does Cesar Millan (and others like him) get results?
This “pack-leader” act essentially stifles the dog’s energy. Then, once that excess energy is contained (i.e., the dog is no longer bouncing off the walls), Cesar takes the dog on 2 - 4 hour walks, sometimes forcing the animal to wear heavy weights, or he puts the dog on a treadmill for several hours to burn off all that energy.
Is there a better way to teach a dog than by stifling his energy and/or wearing him out?
Of course. The more intelligent and effective option is to give the dog a positive outlet for his energy and emotions. That’s kind of what the long walks do, except that while long walks may wear a dog out, they don’t really satisfy his true energy needs. That comes through playing games that stimulate and satisfy his hunting instincts. For example, 5 - 10 minutes of playing tug-of-war—where you always let the dog win and praise him enthusiastically for winning—is roughly equivalent to a two hour walk in terms of the amount of energy expended. Plus, when played correctly, tug always has the positive side-effect of increasing a dog’s desire to learn and obey you. The same can be said for playing fetch for about 20 minutes or so.
Cesar does sometimes play fetch with his dogs, but from what I’ve observed he doesn’t know how to teach a dog whose energy has been stifled to become un-stifled it and or to teach the dog how to release his energy through play. From my perspective that should be the first order of business when working with any behavioral problem: teaching the dog to play.
Max von Stephanitz, one of the originators of SchutzHund, wrote, “Before we teach a dog to obey we must teach him how to play.”
There’s a great documentary called “In the Company of Wolves,” where Timothy Dalton goes to the Arctic Circle with David Mech and observes these wonderful animals in their natural habitat. (By the way, if you’ve seen footage of the wolves in Yellowstone, keep in mind that those wolves were taken captive in British Columbia, drugged, outfitted with electronic monitoring collars, and forcibly relocated to a completely new, and in many ways, quite foreign environment. So while they’re still living in the wild, Yellowstone is not really their natural habitat; not yet. So their behaviors are sort of halfway between those exhibited by a truly wild pack and a group of unrelated wolves held against their will in captivity.)
At one point in the Timothy Dalton film a papa wolf (i.e., the pack leader), rolls over on his back, “signifying submission” to his puppies, and encourages them to jump on his stomach and chest and even allows them to nip at his ears and nose. In other words, he’s playing with his pups. (Do you ever see Cesar encourage a dog “dominate” him like this? Why not? If his intent is to be a true pack leader why wouldn’t he want to imitate what a real pack leader, i.e., papa wolf, does?)
Immediately after I saw this documentary for the first time, which was in 1995, I decided to imitate what the papa wolf did with my own pup, an unneutered male Dalmatian named Freddie.
First I got down on my hands and knees, did a play bow. Then I started batting my hands at Freddie’s body, getting him riled up and in the mood to play. Then when he was really in the mood to play bite, I rolled over on my back, pretending to be submissive.
“Oh no! You got me! You killed me! You’re alpha! You’re the king dog!”
He loved it! First he jumped on top of me. Then he tried to get lower than me! Then he began to twist around the way dogs do when they’re rolling around in the grass on a nice spring day. When he was done he raced to find one of his bones and began chewing it, quite happily.
Later, on our evening walk—as he wandered a bit too far ahead of me—I sort of absent-mindedly gave him his recall signal, expecting him to do his usual routine, which was to cock his head, look at me, then look back at whatever he’d been sniffing, and then slowly come trotting back about halfway or, if I was lucky, a maybe a little more.
That’s not what happened.
As soon as I called him he turned on a dime, and like a shot, he came running back at full speed, ending up in a perfect sit right in front of me.
I was astonished! I tested him further by quickly giving him the down command. He dove into position as fast as he could, eager to hear what I wanted him to do next. This was totally amazing and unexpected. I had no idea why this happening until I realized that for some reason, when I’d acted “submissive” toward him a few hours earlier I’d changed something about the emotional dynamic between us. As a result he was immediately far more obedient to all my commands. Plus his response time went from semi-lacksidasical to lightning-fast!
Over the next few months I tried my “submissive” act on most of the dogs I was training (you have to know how to choose which dogs are ready for these kind of shenanigans and which aren't). And in every single case it made the dog far more responsive and quicker to obey.
Why? Because I did what a true pack leader—a papa wolf—does with his pups. I got down on their level and let them “conquer” me.
And here’s the real distinction, which goes back to the dynamic between the wolf and the moose. Remember, when the wolf is chasing the moose he’s releasing his energy in the most optimal way possible. It’s what he was genetically engineered to do. But when the moose stops and turns, the wolf is suddenly like a deer in the headlights, in fear for his life. He’s not a happy camper. So when Cesar Millan thinks he’s acting like a “pack leader,” he’s not only stifling the dog’s energy, he’s instilling a lot of fear into that dog, which would be fine, I suppose, if fear had a positive effect on learning. Sometimes it does (very rarely), but for the most part it creates an inability for the dog to learn anything new.
But when you become a prey animal, by getting down on the dog’s level and playing with him—which is closer to the way dogs learn naturally—you’re opening up an enormous encyclopedia of learning that goes far beyond anything that Cesar Millan or others with the pack-leader mentality could possibly imagine. (Maybe Cesar will get there one day, but he’s not there yet.)
If you want to be a true pack leader, just imitate the papa wolf. Get down on your dog’s level, act submissive, and encourage him to play with you. (Please be careful and use common sense though; don’t try this with just any dog, particularly one you don’t know very well.)
LCK
|
« Previous Cesar Millan: Pack Leader or Predator? |
Next » "Wait..." and "Okay!" |
Anonymous: "LCK," are you SERIOUSLY advocating dogs "Mouthing" your fingers??? Letting them BITE you??
LCK: As I said before, there is a monumental difference between mouthing and biting. They aren't even in the same universe as far as dogs are concerned. Mouthing is done to bond emotionally with a pack mate and biting -- at least the kind you're talking about -- is done to prevent oneself from being harmed.
And quite a number of trainers besides me recommend teaching a puppy bite inhibition by letting them mouth you, at least partially because it has a calming effect. When I use this techniques on adult dogs it's almost always because they were punished for their oral urges when they were going through their oral development stage and I’m trying to help move them past that past trauma. There's another factor as well. All behavioral problems are the result of too much energy stored as stress in the dog's psyche. The single most effective way for a dog to reduce his internal stress is through his teeth and jaws. Sometimes that comes through biting a tug toy or tennis ball, sometimes it can be done through letting a dog mouth your hands.
Anonymous: Playing tug to let them win all the time?? When this can knowingly turn possessive dogs into FAR more possessive dogs???
LCK: It puzzles me why some people are still mired in the old folklore about tug-of-war. There are quite a number of studies out showing that playing tug does not increase aggression or "dominance." Other studies show that that it actually increases a dog's willingness and desire to obey.
However, I'm not the type of guy who's big on "scientific studies." I like to test things for myself. And I can tell you for a fact that most aggressive dogs don't like to play tug, but once you can get them to play with you, and always let them win, they stop being aggressive almost automatically. However, since the idea of letting a dog win somehow means he's now the "alpha" is still out there causing the kind of confusion you're exhibiting. There is nothing better than playing tug-of-war with your dog, as long as you always let him win, praise him for winning, and always quit before he gets tired or bored with the game. There should be rules about who starts and stops each session (you'll like this:) The owner should be in charge of how the game is played. But other than that, it's the best training tool you could ever wish for.
I've been working with dogs for over 20 years, and when I first started out I used many of the same techniques Millan does. (There's nothing really new about them, they've just been re-packaged for TV.) I found for myself -- long before all these new studies came out showing the harmful nature of "pack leader" techniques -- that they almost always had negative side-effects. I also found out for myself how playing tug increases a dog's willingness to obey, and how it doesn't make dogs more aggressive, as you're suggesting. I've also learned that acting as non-threatening as possible (pretending to be "submissive") with aggressive dogs will almost always turn their aggression around in just a few minutes. I always do this in a controlled situation, as I state clearly in the article, I would never do it with just any dog. You have to get to know them first. And one technique I have to get dogs to calm down quite quickly is to let them mouth -- not bite -- my fingers.
LCK: That's practically all you need in order to see that there's often a disconnect between what Millan says about what he thinks a dog is experiencing and what the dog is actually feeling. Once you've been around dogs long enough, you learn to read practically everything you need to know about their emotional states by looking in their eyes.
And I never said that "Cesar's dogs" weren't happy. I said I'd seen him consistently mis-diagnose dogs, saying "See how calm the dog is now?" when the dog's eyes tell a completely different story. Plus, I wouldn't know anything about his personal dogs because I don't think I've ever seen him interact with them on camera.
Anonymous: Yet his methods don't work??
LCK: I never said that they don't work. I said that they don't work for the reasons Millan and others like him think they do.
I also suggested (quite strongly) that while a dominance trainer may be able to get rid of a specific behavior using these techniques, there are almost always negative side-effects that don't show up until months or even years later. I've seen it happen. I've worked with the residual effects from several dominance trainers who work in the New York City area.
Anonymous: Your statement that implies that there are negative events that do not make it through the editing is slanderous.
LCK: I already covered this on the other thread. It's not slander unless it's a spoken statement. My words are printed, not spoken. Anything in print that dishonestly portrays someone's character or behavior in a negative light would be called libel. Get your facts straight.
And what I said is not libelous because it's true.
Anonymous: What is true is that ... nothing is taken out because they don't want to show it.
LCK: No, that's not true. I know for a fact that this has happened. I'm not saying it happens all the time. I don't know if it does or not. But it has happened.
Anonymous: I have talked to people who have actually worked with Cesar or who have had their dogs filmed, and essentially saved from euthanasia who state quite the contrary!!!
LCK: So? How does their experiences disprove what I said? Just because that’s what happened with the people you’ve talked to doesn’t mean it never happens at all.
Anonymous: The people reading these articles are a lot smarter than you give them credit for and they are going to be looking for more evidence then "the look in their eyes" or "the angry look in Cesar's eyes"
LCK: Oh, I think once some people start watching the show with the sound off, for example, they'll be more able to override what Cesar is telling them about how the dog feels. Once they pay closer attention to those dogs’ eyes, their expressions, and their body language, and pay less attention to Millan's words, then they'll be able to see that many of these dogs are stressed, frightened, and anything but calm.
Anonymous: So no, Mr. Kelley, you should not be using his methods on your perfectly happy Dalmatian.
LCK: My "happy" Dalmatian had severe panic attacks for several months when he was younger.
I can't say for certain because this is only hypothetical, and is based on what I've seen Millan do with fearful dogs, but there's no doubt in my mind at least, that given the severity of Freddie's panic attacks, Cesar Millan would not have been able to help him. I could be wrong, but I would be very surprised.
Anonymous: If you spent more time LISTENING to what Cesar says than trying to find some evil shimmer in his eyes or sad look in the dogs eyes you'd know when his methods are appropriate or inappropriate to use.
I don’t think Millan is evil and never said so, or even suggested it. But you see that's just the problem. What he does and what he says are often two different things. I saw a clip recently where he approached a dog, the dog lowered his head, and Millan said, "See? He knows I'm the pack leader. That's how they react to the pack leader." Meanwhile what I saw was a dog who was simply feeling uneasy and nervous because of the way Millan approached him.
When I get that kind of “hang-dog” look from one of the doggies I’m working with, I always shift my posture and body language to make the pup feel more at ease. I don't want the dog feeling and acting that way. It's not a positive "mental" state.
Anonymous: As someone mentioned before Cesar advocates 45 minute walks at least once a day. I don't care that you can drain a dogs energy by having them bite you for far less time than that...
LCK: Once again, mouthing is not the same thing as biting. In some situations mouthing is a perfectly normal and natural way to get a dog to settle down. I’ve been doing it for years and it’s always worked.
And by the way, I think taking a dog on a long walk is also nice. I used to enjoy taking my dog on very long walks in Central Park when he was young and spry. However, my point was and is that when Millan uses or recommends long walks to "cure" behavioral problems that could be cured more readily using methods that address the problem directly, I think that's something that needs to be addressed, especially since it's related to his misunderstanding of how dogs "see him" as their pack leader. He's also recommended very long walks, wearing weights, for dogs that clearly weren't physically capable of such an ordeal. It seems to be the only solution he has for some behavioral problems.
Anonymous: you're wrong once again that he stares dogs down. You addressed this point in your comment above but it's a weak and untrue argument.
LCK: It can't be untrue if I've seen him do it. Like I said, he may say "No eye contact," but from my observations his actions often contradict his words./p>
Also, I'm not sure I would rely on your perceptions about this issue because you don't seem to have the same sense of importance I have when it comes to paying attention to what's going on in a person's or a dog's eyes.
Anonymous2: Perhaps one of the most poorly written articles I've ever seen, posing as fact. You should issue a disclaimer at the preface that "the following is an anecdotal opinion only" and that "no facts cited are necessarily supported by mainstream research." ... Worse, your opinion may be of value, but making up facts which are so easily refuted doesn't help you
LCK: The fact that wolves don't have pack leaders is the common consensus in the scientific community. It’s a fact because actual wolf pack behavior, observed over time by highly trained and educated experts -- many of whom initially believed that wolves fact have pack leaders -- supports this view.
No one wolf always walks ahead of the pack when they travel. No wolf makes an issue out of eating first. No wolf always crosses a threshold first. No wolf uses an "alpha roll" on a fellow pack member. No one wolf exerts more control over the rest of the pack's behavior than any other wolf. They all influence one another's behavior. Plus so-called "submissive" members of the pack actually exert more control over others than so-called "dominant" pack members do. These are facts. When you add them you get the fact that there is no pack leader in a wild wolf pack. The only other possible explanation for how the pack operates, is that it’s a cooperative, self-organizing system whose structure comes through individual choices of the pack members based on the need to sustain group harmony so that they can successfully hunt large prey together.
Here are some more facts: Wolves who settle near garbage dumps don't form packs. They have loose social arrangements, but they're not a pack. Coyotes sometimes form packs, but only when they need to hunt large prey. Clearly, pack formation is primarily (if not exclusively) a function of the need to hunt large prey. And since even the die-hard alpha theorists still believe that the "alpha role" somehow miraculously changes hands continuously during the hunt (meaning that who and who isn’t the "pack leader" at any given moment is always fluctuating) it should be abundantly clear that there is no one wolf who could rightly be called the pack leader by any knowledgeable person, ever.
But even if it were remotely possible for dogs to "instinctively obey their pack leader," the spatial relationship between two dogs (or two wolves) is dramatically different from the dynamic between a dog and a human being. We’re vertical, they’re horizontal. Dogs pay very close attention to such details, and none at all to what someone’s “rank” or “status” is.
That's where the other, more important part of my article comes in, about the sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle influence that beings with a vertical axis of symmetry have on other animals, even humans. This idea was initially put forth by Valentino Braitenberg a biologist who specializes in biological cybernetics. The idea has been picked up by Daniel C. Dennett, a recognized leader in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. And since the time Braitenberg's idea was first introduced numerous scientific studies have been done to test his hypothesis and they've all proven that it's correct.
So the thesis of my article is not based on opinion. It's based on what top scientists and researchers have proven to be true. And the thinks of the article isn't that Cesar Millan's techniques don't work, as Anonymous1 suggested, but that they don't work for the reasons Millan and others like him think they do. There simply has to be something else going on.
LCK
”Changing the World, One Dog at a Time”
Follow Me on Twitter!
Is Your Dog Dominant, Pt. I
Is Your Dog Dominant, Pt. II
Is Your Dog Dominant, Conclusion