Send your questions to The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan

[RachelMumsnet]

Great news for all those in The Dog House. We've been given the opportunity to send our canine questions to none other than the Dog Whisperer himself, Cesar Millan. Cesar is over in the UK to promote his forthcoming new series of the UK version of 'The Dog Whisperer' which will be aired in UK on Nat Geo Wild in early February 2011. We'll be filming some members of Mumsnet HQ (plus dogs) putting your questions to Cesar in January and we will be airing the film across the site at the end of January, to coincide with the launch of his new series. To stand a chance of getting your question to Cesar, post them to this thread before end of Tuesday 21st December 2010.

No dogs who will work for treats are much easier to train than dogs like mine. I can see this with my puppy.

For example: Puppy loves playing with other dogs. When she sees other dogs she will pull at the leash to get to them. 'Look at me' has been clicker trained at home. When she pulls I give look at me command. She does so instantly because she wants the chicken more than the other dog. After a couple of days as soon as she sees another dog she looks at me in order to gain a treat.

The Devil Dog likes playing with other dogs. Unfortunately he gets far too excited and bounces all over their heads. Other dogs do not like having scruffy terriers climbing on their heads and so they bite him. A fight ensues. Look at me has also been trained at home. But TDD is not interested in the chicken or his raggy rope. He wants the other dog and nothing else will do.

When he pulls towards the dogs I have to turn around and walk in the opposite direction until he is walking calmly again (this is the punishment bit, we have taken away the reward of getting closer to the other dog). Once he is walking calmly again we can turn around and walk back towards the dog, but the second he pulls towards the other dog we turn around again. I am promised that eventually he will realise 'oh hang on, when I behave like that I don't get what I want' and we should be able to start getting slowly closer to other dogs, until eventually we can pass them without him reacting. We have been training this for around two months and at the moment we can only get a matter of cms closer than we used to be able to. The problem is the other dogs have usually dissapeared off into the horizen by the time he has calmed down.

We are going to retrain this when my sisters new pup is able to go out, as she won't continue walking off into the distance.

The puppy was much quicker and easier to train. It took a matter of days.

Punishment based training of any kind is not as effective or as easy as reward based or clicker training.

agree.

but reward based training can't always work IMO.

eg. my dog's a big thief. he will steal food (or a wooden ladle to chew on) from the kitchen counter given half a chance. clicker training and treat training doesn't really work. what does work is expressing deep displeasure (verbally) and frowning at him. he then goes off to his bed or some other corner and slinks back later. this seems to be the best deterrent (apart from of course NOT leaving anything within reach).

of course treats played an invaluable part of our recall training. also for instance a treat a a reward for being good while being groomed always works.

Has this been cancelled yet?

No reward based training is not a one size fits all solution. However there are other ways of training that do not require you to lay hands on your dog, cause him fear or cause him pain.

It is unneccessary and dangerous. Of course other ways take longer. But they are also proven to be more effective in longrun. They just don't make great TV. I am fairly sure me and TDD would make great TV (not) millions of viewers would tune in to see us walking backwards and forwards wth very little results for months at a time .

For every problem you 'train' using fear or pain you create another 10 imo.

dooin - agree.

hate it when people yell at their cowering pet. problem is far from solving something it compounds the problem.

i presume the fear/ pain reference is not in response to the non-reward training i was mentioning in my last post (as that causes neither)

No it was response to the few posters who believe CM is a miracle worker and does great work with dogs.

Yes the dogs do what he wants them to do, but only to stop what is happening to them. He becomes a figure of fear not a leader.

Prong collars and alpha rolls etc have no place im modern day training.

I also don't believe that he cares about dogs as much as he makes out. If he did he would have listened to and considered new research and adjusted his training methods accordingly. But that would not make such entertaining TV. CM cares more about his bank balance than he does the dogs he trains.

Right what I am enjoying about this thread is the discussion that it has thrown up about training.

For those interested read the following links about how dogs learn and why treats are not the bribe that people think they are.

Solid scientific evidence based facts that work for all dogs in all situations.

operant conditioning read all the pages for positive +- and negative+-.

this one explains how the clicker helps to use operant conditioning and positive +

read enjoy and all those CM fans think how his methods differ from this approach.

I am also enjoying the discussion about training methods. I have never considered clicker training, but I think I will investigate it now. Thanks.

I spent quite a while this morning trying to get puppy to calm down before we left the house, then spent another while trying to get her to walk properly to get out for a walk and another while to get her to stop whining and barking. In the end I was almost at the point of turning round and going back home she stopped, walked nicely and behaved herself. I walked round in circles, up and down the street, tried treats, crossed the road, meanwhile trying to ignore her excitement and the neighbours looking out their windows. Yes I saw them!

Frustration was setting in, but I remained as calm as possible and I think that is what worked. I doubt CM would have done what I did, but then again, I doubt he would have trained any of my dogs like I have.

There really should be a "like" button on here, ala Facebook. There should also be a ROFL button and I would have just ROFFLED and LIKED your post about you walking backwards and forwards with no discernible result, Dooin.

I do have to say it sounds like you are doing a sterling job with The Devil Dog. He's lucky to have found you.

Has anyone else noticed that the "sticky pin" keeping this at the top of active convos has been removed?

Dooin - that is sort of similar to what i do. if mine pulls i stop walking and make him sit. those few seconds of inactivity and not being able to sniff are sheer torture for a certain someone!!

yes i noticed that yesterday. what does that mean?

I think they do that when they have enough questions or in this case when they realise they won't get any questions. I wonder if they are just going to make some up or cancel it?

yeah but i don't think CM's training is exactly negative, when he touches the dogs it's not a punishment, it's like tapping someone on the shoulder... (I think)

Boo - Dunno! Guesses are:

It will reduce the number of people who click on this thread, reducing the number of people who are made aware of Cesar's techniques and make the production popular.
They have enough questions to ask him now. They've decided not to go ahead with the production.

MNHQ haven't come back and said anything - just silently removed the sticky.

Patterdale - when he "touches" the dogs he refers to it as a "bite" and says that's what dogs do to each other.

Patterdaleperson I would stop thinking if I were you!

Have you read the links I posted? all the answers will be there and the reason why CM methods are not appropriate even the touches

Patterdale have watched any of the links? He does not just 'tap' the dogs. He chokes them, pins them to the floor, uses electric collars. Bullies and goads them into reacting so he can 'subdue' them.

It is cruel, dangerous and terrifying to the dogs. It is also not at all neccessary or helpful.

hahaha at "i think"

patterdale, stick around the dog house, it sounds like you need to if you intend to do much more of this thinking business.

iread something saying that he ONCE did that in the beggining, and of course it's a horrible thing to do and i's never ever do it to my dog, but everyone makes mistakes and I don't think it's fair to say that MN should camcel the whole webchat... (sigh of releif) And actually I haven't looked at the links,will have a look now...

Also i actually have a question to Cesar... my dog knows he's not allowed on the sofa when we're in the room, but as soon as you walk out he jumps straight on it, what shall i do?

he once did what?

and btw paper never refuses ink, people can write allsorts. doesn't mean it's true.

Patterdale go back through the thread and read the links, you might learn quite a lot. The whole theory on which CM bases his training and 'rehabilitation' of dogs is outdated and disproven.

Even without the chocking, prodding, poking, pulling, pinning, alpha rolling and giving electric shocks, (and it hasn't just happens once, it is frequent)the other methods he uses such as flooding are cruel and dangerous.

There's a bit about flooding in the following link:

www.4pawsu.com/dogpsychology.htm

If you click on this link, (second part of above article) there are several examples of CM's cruelty and a couple of photos showing dogs being cruelly treated:

www.4pawsu.com/cesarfans.htm

Just to be clear we are talking about the same person Patterdale, we are discussing Cesar Millan. Of The Dog Whisperer fame? The show that is currently being shown on The National Geographic chanel.

I only ask because on the show I have seen/read about he uses these outdated, cruel methods a lot. Not just once.