I just came across this bizarre little website called “Beyond Cesar Millan…And Beyond.”
I don’t know who writes it, but the author obviously has issues with the English language and normal writing style. The voice is disjointed, if not a bit paranoid. (More on that in a second).
I’ve tried to get the gist of the author’s views, but most of the posts involve cherry-picking old scientific studies, which are all designed to exculpate Cesar Millan’s piss-poor understanding of ethology and dime store recommendations on how to make a dog behave.
Basically, this is what creationists would do in defence Kent Hovind. Like, Hovind, Cesar has no credentials, and also like Hovind, he’s prone to making crap up. I do believe Cesar pays his taxes, so that’s where the analogy ends!
Cesar lovers accuse critics of only believing what they read.
I have to wonder if these people ever read. If you watch a lot TV and believe everything you see, you’re going to have a very distorted view of reality.
The best part of this batshit little blog is the page entitled “Conpirasy?”
OMG. The Illuminati are after Cesar!!!!!! They are so bad, they can’t even spell conspiracy correctly!
They don’t want you do know!
The main thrust of this page is that all the dog experts don’t want you using Cesar’s methods because that will take away from their business.
Basically, it is exactly the same conspiracy one would hear from a crackpot herbalist, who will tell you that vaccines are killing you and that modern medicine is making you sicker:
The responsibles of this Indoctrination are these schools and associations that have made of dog training an Industry.
They pump out from their schools Inexperienced and Incompetent trainers just as much “certificates” they can print.
What matters to those who are in charge of the business is the control of the market, don’t be naive, the pet Industry is a market of Billions of dollars: Schools, Associations, registers and memberships, Seminaries, Books, Authors, Vets, Drugs, Food, Tools, Toys, Insurance, Websites, Advertising on those sites etc.
Any other approach goes against their Interets.
A little variation on percentage means millions of dollars in loses for them
I have been witness of comercial Blackmail by part of these Associations like when Frontline make partnership with Cesar Millan to promote their products
Altogether with those trainers with a Holier-than-Thout attitude are these gullible people that buy the Feling-good-about-myself product
They have become Fear Mongerers and their associations, truly Death Squads Associations.
OMG. DEES EES BULLSHEET.
The people who complain about Cesar have actual degrees in animal behavior.
They are real experts. They are professionals like dentists or physicians or psychiatrists.
If you think Cesar’s expertise, whatever that is, somehow trumps people who have had years and years of training in that field, then why don’t you spend all your money on alternative medicine?
Those alternative medicine people make very much the same claims. Surely their anecdotes and marketing techniques are much better evidence than what we could learn from clinical trials.
That’s pretty much what’s being said here.
Whoever wrote this paranoid drivel is probably getting all his fillings removed and is worried about fluoride in the drinking water.
It is not an appeal to authority argument to say that credentialed specialists know more than TV personalities.
In general, if we want effective treatment or want to understand what’s really going on in the world, we listen to what specialists like this say.
We don’t watch TV in order to find out what’s the most effective treatment for cancer.
I remember hearing a rumor by a fairly ignorant person that dentists were very bad about scratching holes in the teeth of their patients, thereby creating cavities to fill.
That’s nonsense, of course.
But I hear echoes of it on this website.
But the sad thing is that it’s not just foolish people like this person who write this sort of crap.
Several so-called rationalist bloggers are just as prone to supporting the Cesar Millan marketing cult as anyone.
Luckily, Cesar’s show is in its last season. He will have his magazine. He’ll have his followers.
The Cear Millan star has risen and is now starting to fall.
We actually might be able to move beyond the snake oil now, and real professionals will get the respect they certainly deserve.
He is retiring from this show with an empire. He is a Brand. He is filming in England. Watch out he doesn’t buy a network of his own! Muah hahah!!!
You area very smart guy and I appreciate your pointing out the difference between snake oil and science/education. However I hope you will keep an open mind about alternatives. Some of the best teachers have no formal education (unfortunately they’re no longer allowed to teach); some of the best therapies are alternative including prayer (not of the creationist kind), meditation, infrared light, hands on healing, etc. Of course none of the true teachers/healers are out there promoting themselves like the charlatans and crazies are.
Do you have an evidence from clinical trials that any of those things work?
I can’t trust anecdote.
unfortunatly his dog torturer show may be finishing but he is doing a new show where he “helps” poor unfortunate rescue dogs and then people can win said reformed dog. there is a rescue over here that has used him to help a dog in there rescue a thai ridgeback if i recall.
The new show is the last season. That’s how it’s being marketed here.
From what I understand.
oh i hope you are right, unfortunatly there are still plently of people over here who think he is wonderful. I just cant understand why we are usually pretty quick to spot an iidiot, but some just cant see what he is really about.
what I don’t understand is why the garbage “trainers’ get shows. It must be that the “quick and dirty” solution is more marketable, because Milan isn’t the first and probably won’t be the last “TV trainer”. people want a 10 minute “solution”.
The only animal behavior show I like is My Cat from Hell, and I don’t know a damn thing about cats.
Maybe that’s why or maybe he really is a true cat expert.
It’s just the drama factor Peggy. That’s what most TV is built around today.
Dr. Sophia Yin has a very good post about science vs. craft today. http://drsophiayin.com/blog/entry/how-technology-from-30-years-ago-is-helping-military-dogs-perform-better-no
Oh that’s a good one.
It’s a great antidote to that post Terrierman put up about how scientific trainers were rejecting 2,000 year old craft.
The truth is the craft is probably even older than that.
The science is not.
Very interesting, thanks for the link. Dog breeders should read that.
Wonderful piece. I do feel bad for the pigeon strapped to the mechanical device though. See article for the pic.
I like the mention about how aversives are used, but rarely and not w/o real understanding of operant conditioning. A lot of the positives-only trainers are adamantly opposed to aversives under ANY circumstances. Honestly for a lot of pets, it’s not necessary and you probably cannot expect the average family to really understand when and IF they should ever be used, and why, so perhaps this is just as well. I’ve seen too many folks, even singles, misuse or misunderstand what a behaviorist was teaching them, or getting lazy about following directions, when on their own. Try getting a family with kids to all stay consistent at all times and you really have a problem! So again, perhaps it’s just as well.
Unless you are dealing with a highly territorial creature that is walking all over a family and where positive reinforcement just truly is not enough.
And in the case of military dogs, total reliability is a must. So there is can be necessary.
I think the slam and fram school of dog training has created a wonderful strawman to tear down by calling everyone a “pure positive” trainer.
The truth is the vast majoriy people who use less confrontational and less force in training will say that certain adversives are acceptable in certain case.
I’m not opposed to electronic collars in certain situations, inappropriate predatory behavior is a big one. E-collars are better than all this alpha-roll malarkey that gets passed around.
It’s just I don’t buy into all this confrontational, Jack London crap.
You’re smarter than your dog.
You don’t have to be a wolf to make your dog behave.
I doubt your dogs sees you as a wolf anyway. Although I could be wrong. Some dogs seem to treat humans like other dogs and others seem to treat them quite differently. But we are NOT wolves and while we can study them all we want, I’m not sure we can ever grasp and get across all the subtleties of their language.
Not only that, but all the use of wolf behavior, accurate or misunderstood, has been based on grey wolf populations. If dogs came from middle eastern wolves anything like the ones today per the URL you recently sent me, well, those wolves live solitary lives, or hook up with a mate, or may transiently work with a few other wolves when prey is scarce, and they may drop those packmates yet again. That would explain a lot of why feral dog groups are being said to not be so cohesive and dependent up on one another. It seems the idea of “pack mentality” really has to be completely reconsidered.
If the vast majority who use less confrontational technique truly accept a few aversives as you say, that’s fine by me. It would seem then that folks like Cesar are provoking a glut of rebellion of the opposite extreme, screaming “100% positive under all circumstances you bastard!” as a form of defense.
I have yet to feel a modern E collar for myself, or vibrational collar. I hear E collar and stim collar both used as terms. Are they different devices or one and the same? I also hear different reactions from folks testing them on themselves, from “I can’t feel anything on the #1 setting” to “OMG AY! That’s TERRIBLE!” I can’t believe the nerve endings on everyone’s fingertips or necks, vary that much in sensitivity, so something else must be going on.
At any rate, if used right, better a stim collar than a dead dog that runs miles away to the nearest highway.
A dead dog is a sign that humans have not bred for dogs which will cope with our environment.
If a dog acts like a hunting idiot, then it is obvious that it has not been selectively bred to be able to turn its prey drive on and off like a switch.
That is the problem with e-collars nowadays. It permits the breeding of dogs who are too wild for owners to control without assistance of technology. People had dogs with high prey drive which listen for eons before the advent of e-collar.
The e-collar ‘permits’ breeding of dogs who are too wild .. . ? That’s a bit rich. It may be that people into field retrieving competition are able to work with higher prey drive dogs now that they have a more powerful tool for control at distance. But it is also the case that it’s a hell of a lot easier to teach a dog to do things at 500 m distance when you have a device to communicate with the dog even if the dog has a good on-off switch.
True, some field competitors get their jollies from having a maniacal dog. That’s a comment on field competition . . .which can be as warped as show ring competition. Many people train with the vibration mode rather than the stim mode. That’s the equivalent of clapping your hands to get a dog’s attention. Also true, some people abuse the tool. True of almost any tool.
Based on years of reading a dog training forum, I find e-collars are especially popular with breeds, such as huskies, who tend to be escape artists, and tend to go walkabout when they get over the fence . . . or are let off lead for exercise. If you want to train dogs the conventional way, that’s your call. I’m all for a technology that allows an ordinary owner to use a gadget instead of going through the difficult and expensive process of teaching perfect recall under distraction to a headstrong, wander-prone dog.
Take one of of those old-timey phones with you the next time you attend a party. The one where cranking it produces DC power. Just a few “tests” and you will quickly see that similar electric current affects individual people differently. Presuming this works the same for animals, too, of course.
I dunno.. I kind of like the creative use of capitals.
Skinner didn’t do clinical trials, he set up experiments and observed results. Meditation changes the brain according to U of Oregon scientists. If I put my hands on a badly sprained ankle or an injured knee and 10 minutes later the pain, swelling or limping is gone permanently, that is proof enough for me. If xrays show I have broken my elbow and the doctor says it will take 12 weeks to heal and I return to him two weeks later with full mobility after infrared light treatment, that is proof enough for me.. I don’t think of personal experience as anecdotal. Of course there is a lot of quackery out there and even some bad science. But keeping an open mind is essential for any scientific breakthrough.
Just because it works for you, it does not mean it translates into the general population. You could be an anomaly, or it could be the placebo effect.
That is why experiments and trials are important: to see if it will benefit the public.
So until it has been shown it works for a number of people with sizeable sample size, such recommendations of alternative-medication is merely anecdotal.
I know what the experimental method is. I went to college and grad school for biology. I understand the need for proof, but science is flawed in it’s own way. You can publish tons of studies providing proof of two sides of an argument. The scientific arguments can go on for decades. Loads of money has been spent/wasted in studies testing things like whether monkeys feel pain from cigarette burns, and so on.
Dog food has been “scientifically formulated” to provide a balanced diet, based on overcooked, rendered, cheap ass grains and maybe some meat scraps, and god knows what else, with a ton of synthetic vitamins and minerals thrown in to make up for all the nutrition killed off or missing for other reasons. And people argue FOR this stuff as being just as good as real, whole, fresh meats and veggies. Lord knows if I had a kid and someone made “Child chow” in a bag, consisting of brown hard crumbly pieces, I’d be reluctant to feed it, science or not.
The AAFCO has piss poor standards for what is acceptable anyway.
Science looks to understand something by taking it apart and putting it back together again. That can lead to an amazing new understanding of how the micro components work, of the brain and body. But it routinely dismisses aspects of common sense which don’t ALWAYS = belief in the snake oil salesman. If I had to wait for science to prove every single aspect of my life and what direction it should go in, on what I ate, how much I should sleep, what weather report to believe, what facial signals and voice tone to use to tell if my boss is lying to me, well, I doubt I’d ever get out in the world.
I’m atheist and science is a great backer for folks like me as well, but the believers using “We KNOW god exists” or “science hasn’t disproven it” makes me shake my head sadly, not because I think of all the studies that prove evolution ( don’t believer say GOD could have caused all that anyway?), or because of great people like the late Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, but because I equally KNOW there is no god like I know there are no unicorns.
If science not disproving something doesn’t make it so, then in many cases it stands to reason that you don’t need to wait for science to prove something for “it” to be so either. Reality is reality. Waiting around for science to confirm isn’t always necessary.
Personal experience is the definition of ‘anecdotal.’
And I mis-spelled “its.” Drat!
It is wrong to equate ‘craft’ based trainer with CM and ‘science based trainer’ with positive reinforcement.
Skinnerian methods have some of the traits of science, and there are some fine trainers who accomplish great things using them.
Many ‘positive reinforcement’ advocates have forgotten science altogether and use it as dogma.
If you did scientific trials to determine whether positive reinforcement or a good fence (make it aversive, say ‘electric fence’) is a better way to keep a dog from straying off your property and chasing livestock and game, I’m willing to bet which approach would be supported by experimental evidence.
If there were more approaches using scientific approaches in dog training, I doubt the Skinnerians would win uniform acknowledgment as the scientific method any more than they have in human psychology.
I tend to think of dog training . . . just like educating children . . . as having a toolbox. A good trainer selects the tools to suit the dog and the training objectives. It helps immensely if the trainer establishes good rapport with the dog.
CM is highly skilled in establishing rapport with a dog but uses a very limited toolbox.
I’ve seen clicker trainers make an ass of themselves, just as wanna-be dog whisperers. Some bits of science can be incorporated, but dog training still has a large component of art.
Cesar Millan is a charlatan and dickhead.
I have to blunt here.
He’s not done one good thing about dogs except sew seeds of stupidity about dogs everywhere.
There are no “pure positive” trainers. These creatures are strawmen that are being used by abusive trainers to make excuses for abusive methods.
There are scientific, LIMA (Least invasive, Minimal adversive) trainers. They train as you describe.
So called balanced dog trainers are usually fools, charlatans, or people who get off showing off their masculinity by physically dominating dogs.
That’s the problem with this entire discussion. There are no “pure positive” trainers. If they are advertising as such, they are either inexperienced or are falsely advertising. Every one of the LIMA’s, if you press them hard enough, will tell you at what point they will use an adversive. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t a trainer.
No one has destroyed the basic framework of Skinner’s theory of learning. The only parts that have been refined are the parts that talk about animals and people being blank slates. Skinner’s stuff has been used to train everything from nurse sharks to chickens to elephants.
This is a quote, from an article by Gary Wilkes, a very skilful trainer (who with Karen Pryor was instrumental in making known the use of operant conditioning in dog training):
“Positive Reinforcement cannot create inhibitions — especially when trying to control normal, instinctive violence. As much as all-positive trainers would like to convince you that treats can solve all problems, it simply isn’t true. Positive reinforcement does not stop normally occurring behaviors from happening, and you have to know the rules to do it safely and humanely. this skill [the proper use of aversives] is not generally taught, and is vilified from every rooftop in the modern dog training world. . .”
I might add, that “aversives” (or “punishment” in behavioral terms) by definition can range from the mildest of voice corrections, to whatever strength of physical correction may be required to achieve the effect desired. Depends on the situation and on the individual dog.
No one is saying that.
This is a strawman that has been created by people who want to defend slamming and framming dog training methods.
No one is a “pure positive reinforcement” trainer. No one is. Anyone who claims to be isn’t being honest, or perhaps doesn’t understand the term. They do use the two forms of punishment, negative and positive.
All of these people use the full quadrant in certain situations.
And there are cases when only adversives can be use to correct a behavior.
The question is whether we allow snake-oil salesmen to use this strawman of “positive trainer” to defend what are less effective methods and are often more about what’s been a man’s legs than anything else.
I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out what these people are doing when they attack Skinner and science-based dog training.
I now have figured it out. They’ve created a strawman called the pure positive trainer.
The thing is NO ONE trains this way in every situation.
“There are no “pure positive” trainers. These creatures are strawmen that are being used by abusive trainers to make excuses for abusive methods.”
YES! Thank you! I made the mistake of making this argument on one of Terrierman’s posts, and am getting abused for it. (Acutally, I think I’m not going back to look at further comments.) Being involved in dog sports, I know a lot of people who train dogs, and NOBODY is “purely positive.” Those of us who clicker train (and most incorporate at least some clicker training) are also willing to use punishment of one type or another appropriately (clickers are great to teach a dog to DO something, not so great to teach a dog NOT to do something). Most of us consider an e-collar a last resort, and not a training tool to add to our regular repertoire–and I have seen more than one dog made aggressive by their use.
Retrieverman said: No one is a “pure positive reinforcement” trainer. No one is. Anyone who claims to be isn’t being honest, or perhaps doesn’t understand the term.
– well, yeah. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t those out there who make those claims. I think just as there are those who use “clicker” or “positive” as a strawman, there are those who use “correction” as a strawman, implying that anyone who advocates using correction is really advocating “stringing the dog up” or “french frying” the dog using an e collar.
There are those who certainly imply that they use “pure positive” although once you read carefully, they aren’t.
This is cheating. If you call as “experts” only those people who say what you want to hear and censor anybody else, then it is easy to prove whatever you want.
Wrong. That’s not how it works at all.
I put up all sorts of REAL experts and not bullshitters like Cesar. He’s wrong. He makes up stuff. He’s been debunked by virtually everyone who has studied dogs and published in peer-reviewed journals. People who produce hypothesis that can be proven wrong and contribute to our body of knowledge.
Do you see me putting up UFO experts, homeopaths, or creationists on this blog?
What does Cesar do?
He has a TV show. I haven’t watched it in a long time. But all I hear is bullshit about energy (which is metaphysics, as far as I can tell, and therefore, BULLSHIT) and lots of ad hoc explanations, like dogs “being dominant toward” sandwiches or reflections on the ground.
Don’t be a little shit and say that I censor those who disagree with me.
I censor those who don’t listen to reason, who promote things that aren’t scientific, when the question can be answered using the scientific method.
I debunk crackpots. That’s what I do.
You don’t like, tough.
You just showed to me that you’re ignorant about the scientific method, what science actually says about dog behavior, and/or you watch too much TV.
What experts is he censoring? Just curious.
I find this a little rich. Go to one of the Cesar lovers’ blogs and try to criticize Cesar.
Your comments will not get approved.
I was just hoping to shed some light on his rationale. Figure out if he was a Ceasar fanboy or just uninformed.
Generally, they just do drive-bys on this blog.
If you want to see the fights, you’re going to have to use the search function. The best one is between me and PBurns.