Are the Dog Whisperer's methods safe?

[David Baxter PhD]

Are the Dog Whisperer's methods safe?
by Rebecca Dube, Globe and Mail
July 12, 2010

Cesar Millan?s dominance-based approach to dog training has unleashed a pack of critics who say his methods are dangerous

The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan, has built a media empire on his ability to tame and train the most incorrigible of canines. Millions watch his show on National Geographic each week to see the charismatic star teach hapless owners to cure barking, jumping, aggression and fear in dogs.

But could his forceful methods be ineffective, even dangerous? Some think so. There is a growing backlash against Mr. Millan from dog-behaviour experts and dog owners who fear that he could bring punitive training back in vogue, despite long-established evidence that positive, reward-based training works.

?It was a surprise to a lot of dog trainers to suddenly see this very old-style training, and to find that it caught on so quickly,? said Stanley Coren, psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and author of several books about dogs, including How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind and The Intelligence of Dogs.

There?s no denying that Mr. Millan and his techniques make great television. Every episode of The Dog Whisperer features Mr. Millan swooping into the home of someone with a misbehaving dog, camera crews in tow. He certainly seems to have a magic touch ? a few firm ?tsch!? sounds and leash tugs from Mr. Millan and the former devil-dogs trot placidly to his side, gazing angelically at their stunned owners. The real entertainment value of the show is watching Mr. Millan teach those owners how to become, in his words, ?pack leader,? dominant over their own dogs.

?I rehabilitate dogs,? Mr. Millan says in the voice-over before every show. ?I train humans.?

It?s the wrong kind of training, critics say, and any rehabilitation may be short-lived once the cameras are gone.

?Practices such as physically confronting aggressive dogs and use of choke collars for fearful dogs are outrageous,? said Jean Donaldson, director of the SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers in San Francisco, in a widely disseminated critique of the show. ?A profession that has been making steady gains in its professionalism, technical sophistication and humane standards has been greatly set back. ? To co-opt a word like ?whispering? for arcane, violent and technically unsound practice is unconscionable.?

Dr. Coren said the methods used by Mr. Millan ? who has no formal training in dog psychology or animal behaviour ? are a throwback to those used to train German military dogs in the 1940s. ?The basic flaw in his technique is relying on the notion that dominance is established by force, and nowadays we know that?s not the case.?

?The leader of the pack is the one that controls the resources,? Dr. Coren said. Thus a well-timed treat to reward good doggy behaviour (for example, not freaking out when the doorbell rings) can be more effective than 10 of Mr. Millan?s physical ?corrections? aimed at curbing bad habits.

The dangerous part of Mr. Millan?s methods, critics say, is that they may get a dog to stop growling or lunging, but they won?t cure the underlying fear or aggression, thus creating a dog that?s more likely to strike without warning.

(For his part, Mr. Millan has pointed out that his training goes further than the corrections seen on TV that his critics denounce.)

Respected veterinarian and dog behaviourist Ian Dunbar, who heads Berkeley, Calif.-based Sirius Dog Training, has called this technique ?removing the ticker from the time bomb.? He and Ms. Donaldson feel so strongly about Mr. Millan?s approach that they have produced a DVD titled Fighting Dominance in a Dog Whispering World.

The National Geographic channel runs a ?don?t try this at home? warning before each episode of The Dog Whisperer. ?The telling thing is this disclaimer,? Dr. Coren says. ?What makes good television doesn?t necessarily make good science.?

Mr. Millan shrugs off the criticisms, saying his training methods are natural and humane.
?It's the difference between going to school and the dogs being your school,? Mr. Millan told a National Geographic interviewer. ?One is the intellectual knowledge, the other one is instinctual. I am instinctual.?

His pop-culture juggernaut rolls on: In addition to his TV show and DVDs, he has a magazine, bestselling books, a line of dog products and even human clothes for sale.
At a recent pet show in New York, people lined up for three hours to meet him. Jackie Comitino of Long Island, wearing a T-shirt that said ?Tsch! Be a pack leader,? waited with her two dachshunds, Dylan and Cody. She said Mr. Millan?s teachings had changed her life as well as her dogs?. ?Every dog owner should read his books,? she said. ?I follow his method to a T.?

 

[Banned]

The show is only half an hour long. What viewers don't see is what goes on between tapings, and editings. Sometimes he uses things on camera, such as a shock collar turned to high to try and 'train' a fearful dog, but the untrained eye would never see the shock mechanism in his hand.

It is sad. People frequently tell me I'm "like the dog whisperer". It's an insult. They mean it as a compliment, but ignorance is evident.

There are absolutely no laws governing the pet world...anyone can hang out their shingle and call themselves a pro.

Take a pretty hot lookin' Mexican guy oozing with charm, and put him on TV...and he has instant celebrity status with millions of followers who do not question because it's on TV.

Some other quotes:

"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.

. . . The last episode (compulsive disorder) is particularly unsettling because compulsive disorder is related to an imbalance in neurotransmitter levels or receptors, and is therefore unequivocally a medical condition. Would it be appropriate to treat obsessive compulsive disorder in people with punishment? Or have a layperson go around treating such patients?" -Andrew Luescher, DVM

"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.''
-Mark Derr, author of ''A Dog's History of America: How Our Best Friend Explored, Conquered and Settled a Continent.''

World-renowned dog trainers, behaviorists and veterinarians had all warned National Geographic that Millan’s methods had the potential for disaster. Below are quotes from noted experts:

“Cesar Millan's methods are based on flooding and punishment. The results, though immediate, will be only transitory. His methods are misguided, outmoded, in some cases dangerous, and often inhumane. You would not want to be a dog under his sphere of influence. The sad thing is that the public does not recognize the error of his ways.”
Dr. Nicholas Dodman - Professor and Head, Section of Animal Behavior
Director of Behavior Clinic, Tufts University - Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine

“Practices such as physically confronting aggressive dogs and using of choke collars for fearful dogs are outrageous by even the most diluted dog training standards. A profession that has been making steady gains in its professionalism, technical sophistication and humane standards has been greatly set back. I have long been deeply troubled by the popularity of Mr. Millan as so many will emulate him. To co-opt a word like ‘whispering’ for arcane, violent and technically unsound practice is unconscionable.”
Jean Donaldson, The San Francisco SPCA-Director of The Academy for Dog Trainers

"A number of qualified professionals have voiced concern for the welfare of pet dogs that experience the strong corrections administered by Mr. Millan. My concerns are based on his inappropriateness, inaccurate statements, and complete fabrications of explanations for dog behavior. His ideas, especially those about “dominance”, are completely disconnected from the sciences of ethology and animal learning, which are our best hope for understanding and training our dogs and meeting their behavioral needs. Many of the techniques he encourages the public to try are dangerous, and not good for dogs or our relationships with them ."
Dr. Suzanne Hetts, Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist
Co-owner of Animal Behavior Associates, Inc., Littleton, CO

"Cesar Millan employs outdated methods that are dangerous and inhumane. Using a choke chain and treadmill to treat fear of strangers and dogs is completely inappropriate."
Vyolet Michaels, CTC (Certified Dog Trainer and Behavior Counselor)
Owner of Urban Dawgs, LLC of Red Bank, NJ

"On his TV show, the main method Millan uses for aggression is aversives (leash jerks, kicks, snaps of the hand against the neck, and restraint, among others) applied non contingently. The aversives are non contingent because they are so frequent that they're not connected to any particular behavior on the part of the dog—the dog gets popped pretty much constantly. This results in a state called learned helplessness, which means the animal hunkers down and tries to do as little as possible. This is what Millan calls "calm submission." It's exactly the same thing you see in a rat in a Skinner box that is subjected to intermittent shocks it can do nothing to avoid. This can happen quite fast, by the way, shall we say in ten minutes? The dangers to the dog are obvious, ranging from chronic stress to exacerbating the aggression, i.e., some dogs fight back when attacked. This latter is the simplest reason that aversives are a bad idea in treating aggression. Even used technically correctly as positive punishment for specific behaviors like growling and snarling, aversives do nothing to change the underlying fear or hostility, so the best you can hope for, in the words of famed vet and behaviorist, Ian Dunbar, is "removing the ticker from the time bomb." Thus such methods substantially increase the risk to humans of getting bitten."
Janis Bradley, Instructor at The San Franciso SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers
Author of the book, "Dogs Bite"

Excerpt of letter from Lisa Laney, Dip. DTBC, CPDT, CBC to National Geographic before airing “The Dog Whisperer”:
“The intended program depicts aversive and abusive training methods - treatment for some serious anxiety and fear based issues - being administered by an individual with no formal education whatsoever in canine behavioral sciences. The "results" that are shown are more than likely not long lasting changes, but the result of learned helplessness, or fatigue, neither of which impact behavior to any significant long term degree - at least not in a good way. For those of us who are pioneering the effort to end the ignorance that drives the cruel treatment administered upon our canine companions, it is disappointing to see that this programming will reach the masses . The ignorance that this program perpetuates will give equally ignorant people the green light to subject their dogs to abuse. In turn these dogs will react even more defensively, will bite more people - and end up dead.”

"I have serious concerns because his methods are often intimidating rather than motivating. On TV, the dogs do comply but often they're being forced to - you can tell by their body language: tail down, mouth closed, ears back, eyes dilated... I argue that motivating leadership is far more effective than leading through intimidation."
Steve Dale