Dog Whisperer comes to the UK :( Let's emigrate!!!

 I found out yesterday that Cesar Millan, a "trainer" (not the word I'd use) popular with some, who features in a programme called  the Dog Whisperer on Nat Geo Wild has filmed a UK series, the first episode of which, aired on Nat Geo Wild last night.

Bad times! :(

I've watched several episodes from various US series (although rarely a peaceful viewing and usually involves me throwing the remote at the telly in exasperation!). 

For those of you that aren't familiar with his shows, I wouldn't bother watching them. In all honesty they are just quite distressing to watch. Some people get sucked in to it, listening to the utter rubbish that the guy spews out continually. Turn the volume off and watch the dogs; I personally find it quite upsetting to watch what the poor things have to go through and how he totally ignores every calming signal and sign of appeasement or fear (TBH I don't even think he could recognise them in all fairness).

What Cesar preaches is pack/dominance theory; which as we all know has been debunked time and time again. 

An exploration of the theory, makes it clear how the use of dominance based interpretations of behaviour and techniques are so damaging:

The theory in itself claims to be based on observations of wolf "packs" in the wild. However these studies took place at a time when there was little or no research on the behaviour of canine/wolf (canis lupus) or domestic canines (canis familiaris) for that matter. These observations have since been identified as being highly flawed (scientists have found that wolves basically live in relatively small familial groups- the young leaving once mature to create their own social group. Not too dissimilar to humans in some ways!)

So forgetting for a moment that the supposed evidence in favour of dominance/pack theory is flawed: the theory itself seems to essentially claim that dogs live in packs ( of presumably unrelated individuals). In this "pack" there will be one "leader" or "alpha" dog which will assume the dominant position within the social group. At times youngsters may attempt to rise up in the ranks and take this position.
Now those of you that have multi-dog households are likely to have seen evidence of some kind of social hierachy amongst your dogs. For instance one dog may be slightly more strongwilled. Nevertheless to my mind, whilst there is certainly evidence to support these ideas, I know of various friends and family members who have several dogs who have found that one of their dogs may be strongwilled/bossy indoors whilst outside another of the dogs is the more outgoing in this way (just an example). Similarly some dogs show no such tendancies. Surely in such a cases there is no "alpha". To me this suggests an alternative idea; dogs are individuals & therefore their relationships with other dogs need to be examined on a very individual level. This explains why one dog might in a bossy manner with one dog and then play nicely with another or act very "respectfully".

To my mind, you cannot simply label dogs as "submissive" or "dominant" as many dominance enthusiasts, such as Millan insist. It is not that simple. In this sense the dominance approach seems to be very simplistic and painfully reductionist. 

All dogs are individuals and should be treated as such. As should every individual dog to dog relationship and interaction. 

Personally the idea of dogs being opportunists to me however does seems like a plausable explanation for the way that dogs will behave differently with different dogs. They do what they can get away with. They're not asserting their authority or dominance but they are behaving in the way that is accepted and/or reinforced in that situation/environment. This will vary from individual to individual.

The following video goes some way to explaining why the term "alpha" is incorrect:

HERE

Interspecies dominance (between dogs and humans)- again this concept is debunked time and time again (for all of the reasons above and more!). Dominance enthusiasts will harp on about a dog that sees himself as the pack leader (as the alpha) and therefore sees his humans as inferior. For this assumption to be valid, dogs would surely have to have some kind of perception of self; how else would they be able to perceive rank. I question why dogs would even want or indeed have any need to assert their authority on their human companions. Nevertheless the following extract from Canine Dominance Revisited by David Appleby explains the relevance of self-perception in dogs further:

 "However, scientists believe that dogs do not have a sense of self so it could be more accurate to say that it behaves with no inhibition and it is uninhibited behaviour that we interpret as dominant behaviour. Owners often describe a belief that their dog is trying to increase its status over them. This would require that their dog has a capacity for forward planning and to know how its behaviour affects the feelings and thoughts of others, which we believe they are not capable of. So the notion that the dog behaves with lesser or greater inhibition according to who it is interacting with and the value of the resource in question may be a better way of describing what is going on." 

In my opinion behaviours that dominance enthusiasts such as Millan attribute to dominance and status seeking ; take territorial behaviour (reactivity) for example, may be better explained as the dog responding to environmental cues about it's safety (often the owner needs to step in let the dog know that they'll handle the situation and take the weight off their shoulders). Similarly over zealous behaviours are more likely to be due to the dog not having being taught what IS acceptable behaviour rather than what isn't (by reinforcing the right stuff :-D).


 To me dominance theory seems like a very humanized theory. By choosing to misinterpret dog behaviour and describing them in terms of dominance I believe we are anthropomorphizing their behaviour. This is an injustice to our dogs. They are so more complex than what dominance/pack theory and Cesar Millan would have us believe.


In addition to Millan's insistence on dominance/pack theory, the other main issue I have with the show is the methods used. In short Millan painfully misdiagnoses their behaviour. It seems like in every show, every dog is "dominant" (you do get the occasional one that he describes as submissive and fearful and he'll then go and flood the poor thing in any case!). Once he has used his hideous methods on them (jabbing, grabbing, kicking, shocking, prong collars, checking, hitting,strangling, alpha rolling, pinning and thoroughly intimidating) the dogs will either:

• Be in a hysterical state where they react to very low level triggers or misdirect aggression (this is of course, after the poor things have tried every calming signal and avoidance measure in the book! IGNORED by him of course). These dogs he labels as DOMINANT (you see the poor owners' faces fall at this point)
• Totally shut down and show every appeasement signal in the book (which he naturally ignores or is unable to identify); he then classes them as "calm submissive!" (Brilliant! NOT)

Below is an example of a dog that become hyper-sensitive to triggers. Cesar floods him by putting him in a situation of close proximity to a feared trigger: the collie- staring at him from 2:50 onwards. Shadow just about copes with this, until Cesar kicks him at 2:55 which leads to Shadow lunging and biting Cesar's arm. The footage that follows makes me feel disgusted. Cesar begins to strangle him on the lead (he is wearing an Illusion collar (Millan's wife's own creation- it's horrible)- had previously been wearing a prong collar :( ). Then he eventually alpha rolls him, holding him around the upper part of the neck. 
Shadow turns blue!
A second example here of a bull dog that appears to have a resource guarding issue (he tries to wrestle with the dog to get the hose off it and gets bitten! DUH!). The clip is in Spanish though (I couldn't find one in English).
Bulldog


The following clips also reveals how show producers and Millan himself  deliberately set the dogs up to fail and rehearse the undesired behaviour (they appear to find it funny too :()
DW provoking the dog


So if you've got to here, well done!!! I went on a bit of rant there, which I didn't intend to but I guess I wanted to highlight just how damaging the show and the methods that Cesar Millan uses are. 


I wish that the UK would follow Italy's example on this one:
http://apbc.org.uk/blog/CM_Italy


In any case I certainly won't be watching the new series. 

(Rant over honest! :-) )