Cesar thinks so:
Um. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s full of crap here.
Cesar has Chanticleer’s fallacy– big time. Chanticleer was a rooster who appears in Medieval English folklore. (He makes an appearance in the Canterbury Tales, if my memory serves.)
In one of the stories about him, Chanticleer is dead certain that his crowing makes the sun rise. He does not realize that the two events are merely correlated, and he assumes that correlation is equal to causation.
This is exactly what Cesar is doing here. He is assuming that because dogs carry their tails aloft while walking that he can just raise the tail of a dog and it won’t be nervous or insecure.
He’s literally telling us that the tail wags dog here.
It’s hooey.
And yet still a he’s a great dog expert.
I’m not a dog expert at all. I don’t claim to be.
But this is such nonsense.
I think he literally made this up on the spot.
Which is nice.
But please don’t assume that it’s anything like reality.
Otherwise, you’re talking advice from the Chanticleer of dog trainers, excuse me– “dog rehabilitators.”
Here’s a hint: the brain controls what the dog feels. The tail is merely an outward expression of emotions that originate in the brain.
And yes, I’m aware that actions, like licking, can cause the dog to release endorphins and that will make them feel better.
But I’ve never seen a single study that suggests that putting a dog’s tail in a position automatically make them feel that way.
I can’t buy this, as kooky as it sounds.
Nonsense… craps are improving and this will make humans grow better… I’m going to throw up my supper.
Acting on the tail’s position won’t improve the brain having stress… work the stress out and the tail will rise eventually. Improvising when you have tried everything else can be a way to find solutions but this is ridiculous. Any proofs that it worked on the long term ??? I guess not.
I believe it will work.
It will work to allow future fashionistas to consider wearing their dog slung over their shoulder like a handbag.
This is absolutely amazing.
I want one.
hey, it’s Larmarckian dog training!
I know it seems weird, but it DOES work. If you train the dog to keep its head and tail up and ears forward, the attitude will improve. There’s a Karen Pryor clicker article out there that says the same thing – train the behavior and the attitude follows.
If you go to a show, people who are standing around talking with each other are usually fiddling with their dogs’ tails (if it’s a breed that’s supposed to have tail up). They stroke the underside of the tail to remind the dog to keep his or her tail up and happy. The various pointer-breed people train tails during hunt training; they’re always walking over while the dog is on point and stroking the tail straight up to remind the dog to get it up there. It’s a style issue but it’s also a confidence issue.
Whatever else you may think of Cesar, he treated that dog beautifully. He never corrects or punishes fear, and he really yelled at the owner for not giving the dog enough exercise and not giving it the things it enjoys doing.
I’m not saying that he’s being bad on that dog… My point is that he doesn’t go to the point where it needs to be worked and it’s all in the dog’s head. What if he had tried to bring a happy activity from the dog’s home in which he wags his tail into that “stressfull” environment. This would have made the dog understand that there too it’s cool and nice… oh, I forgot, this takes time and would make the show boring.
Cesar may do some good things… unfortunately, it comes in the middle of a ton of things on which I disagree.
The Karen Pryor article is called Shaping for the Show Ring:
http://www.westielovers.com/westieworld/kp1.html
There are four parts, links at the bottom.
I cannot watch the video. Someone else will have to see if what Cesar is doing is actually comparable to what Karen Pryor does with the dogs in article, especially in regards to long term results.
>>> If you train the dog to keep its head and tail
up and ears forward, the attitude will improve.
There’s a Karen Pryor clicker article out there that
says the same thing – train the behavior and the
attitude follows. << – joanna
hey, joanna! :–)
tying a string to a cats-tail + hauling it straight up
will NOT make the cat feel social + polite –
an oncoming cat who cannot see the string, but only the gross body-signal of that elevated tail, may *think* that the cat with the tied-up tail is displaying a very polite greeting, but if the oncoming cat ACTS on that assumption, + walks over to bump heads affectionately, odds are excellent that the poor confused cat will have a lacerated right-cheek – over-70% of domestic-cats are left-handed.
having the ** dog ** lift their OWN tail –
or lift their ears, or click for an open-mouth and tongue over their incisors (indicating relaxation + social-ease)
to shape that freely offered behavior + extend it further + further in time, has no relationship to tying a string to a tail –
the DOG controls their own social-signals, in the Pryor example; whereas the HUMAN is the one pulling the strings on the cat-tail, or the leash on the dog-tail.
animals have their own emotions – they are not puppets, and pulling strings, like pulling tails, is counter-productive.
*shaping* behavior to alter emotions is not such a blatant controlling behavior as literally tying a leash on a tail –
heres another possibility –
———————————————
alarmed cockatiels raise their crests very high in fright, and shriek loudly; if i were to CUT * OFF those long slender feathers short, so that the bird could not lift a 2-inch tall crest of yellow feathers, ?? Would the bird be calm + relaxed when a crow or hawk is in the yard??
[cheat sheet – Answer: NO.]
changing the emotional tenor of the animal can be used to change their displayed body-language – but *making* the animal change their body-language by physically controlling their posture or manipulating body-parts will not change the root-emotion.
with enormous effort, i might force a frightened horse to lie down; but the horses heart will race a mile a minute, respiration will be rapid, salivary-cortisol will be elevated, their eyes will be white-ringed, they will sweat + may shake with nervous tension…
no knowledgeable horsenik will be fooled into thinking this horse is calm + relaxed, LOL.
*cesar* also in that SAME episode, confronted this frightened, poorly-socialized Vizsla in the dogs bed, setting the dog up for failure by putting a highly-valued toy (a soft toy in the shape of a hamburger) in front of the dog, then repeatedly intimidates + physically forces the dog to give the toy up…
AND he gets (predictably + preventably) bitten.
so i differ – i DO think he did that dog wrong.
and yes, i have worked with dogs who had far-worse RG than that dog – and nobody, least of all me, got bitten, nor was the dog stressed-out and striking-out. ;-)
there are better + more humane ways, IMO.
cheers,
— terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
what Cesar is doing has NOTHING to do with shaping. What he does is physical manipulation, which is temporary.
Shaping is a teaching process that trains the dog to perform certain actions (ultimately on a specific command) through its own muscle/brain power.
A dogshow handler holding up a dog’s tail so that it “looks” happy to a judge is not (in itself) making that dog “feel” happy. The handler might have done other things (like treating) to associate holding up the tail with a happy event. Or the dog might actually feel miserable. The judge doesn’t care.
Dogshows are about appearance, not about training.
Utter nonsense! I just dont get it.I would request him to do the same with other dogs, esp breeds like GSD , labrador ,mastiffs etc. What about Dob.pinscher,Boxer!
I think if u try to manipulate this way, the dog will never understand ! At most it may provide an impetus to defecate !!!
[I]EmilyS said: Dogshows are about appearance, not about training.[/I]
You should not speak about what you do not know.
If you think that breed showing doesn’t involve training, try handling an untrained dog in the breed ring. My prediction is that you will be excused rather quickly.
I’m not into conformance showing myself, but I know from training for other events for that show handling doesn’t ‘just happen’.
It may not require the same high level of training that an obedience trial or a field trial or an agility trial reguires, but so what? Socializing your pet also entails a pretty low level of training from the point of view of those other activities, but I would never knock someone who is satisfied with just that.
Poly why do you assume *I* know nothing about breed showing? You yourself are not “into” it.. does that mean you’ve never shown in the ring?
Guess what: I HAVE (in addition to putting multiple obedience, rally and agility titles on my dogs). So I very well know what I’m talking about. And it’s YOU who do not.
A show dog may be trained up the wazoo.. but that is NOT what the show ring is about. The judge cares only that he can put his hands on the dog and watch it go around the ring. Many a CH dog can barely do that.
If the show ring was about something OTHER than appearance (as assessed by one particular judge on one particular day), a dog would be required to have some kind of performance title before it got a CH.
So take your attitude somewhere else.. maybe to a show ring where you can watch crippled GSDs and fat lumbering fearful ASTs (just 2 examples) get put up.
I think this is nonsense, too, but will at least acknowledge that there might be something to it….. What I think the something is, is that through constant, gentle handling, a dog’s confidence is restored–it realizes that although you are messing around with a vulnerable appendage, you aren’t hurting it or being aggressive(and some dogs are glad to get ANY kind of attention, and so they think,hey, if fondling my tail rocks yer boat, have at it!), and the realization of THAT is what brings the confidence back–you could fondle ANY appendage and get the same reaction(I’m just sayin’…..) The tieing up of the tail is what I’ve seen old timers do to get dogs, goats, horses, donkeys, cows, and all manner of critters to learn to walk on lead!(To keep from having to haul and choke them by their necks–it works quite well!) They move because that thing pulling(gently!) on their tail stimulates that reaction–perhaps the moving also takes their minds off what they were worried about in the first place–a distraction. This doesn’t really have anything to do with getting in a certain posture to automatically change your mood–although I might try that myself sometimes and see if it works on me……….
He did make it up on the spot. He admits he’s never done it before. I think I did see this episode, and I believe that it did appear to work in that the dog eventually relaxed and became more confident. Of course, with repeated and prolonged exposure, he may have done so anyway.
At any rate, while I agree it’s desirable that owners be educated on how their dogs realistically work, this particular maneuver got the owner on board and willing to keep working. In some cases, if there’s no real harm, the end justifies the means.
Back in my riding days, an anxious stock horse, with a normally level headset, would pull its head up pretty high. I was told that that actually increases the stress hormones and perpetuates that emotional state. If you could get his head down, he’d relax. And that tended to be true, whether scientifically proven or not.
So I don’t know that we can say we know for sure that if confidence increases the height of the tail carriage that the opposite *can’t* be true as well.
I don’t know that it’s something I’d ever think of, or do, now that I know someone else has thought of it, but hardly enough to get excited about. About the worst that comes out of it is a dog in a silly looking get-up, but the lapdogs of the world have been dealing with those for a long time.
>> Back in my riding days, an anxious stock horse, with a normally level headset, would pull its head up pretty high.
I was told that… increases the stress hormones and perpetuates that emotional state. If you could get his head down, he’d relax. And that tended to be true, whether scientifically proven or not. << – eleanor
hey, eleanor! :–)
clicker-training is often used to shape head-down on cue
in horses, for precisely those circs when the horse gets anxious – but nobody hauls the horses head down, which in a really panicked animal, can result in frantic kicks at a standing handler, or bolting if it is the rider on the horses back who attempts to drag their head down –
instead, the horse is cued to lower head, and complies;
i am sure that U know that exerting some control over ones life greatly lessens stress, and the more control we can exert over our own circumstances, the less stress we experience –
by exerting some SELF-control even while under stress, the horse can reduce their own accelerating fright.
the horse performs a familiar, highly-rewarded behavior that has become a secondary reinforcer in its own right; that is also a calming action.
when i am working with a terrified dog, i reward anything that is less fearful; i am not attempting to control the animals behavior or aiming for any one behavior, i will take ANYthing the dog offers that is not terror, or indicates less stress –
* sniffing
* ears rising
* body opening
* pupils smaller
* mouth opens
* stand up
* walk
and so on – a dog who is willing to move around the room,
vs sit huddled frozen in the corner, is heavily rewarded.
GIVING * THE * DOG * SPACE is often the thing that they value most; so moving away is often even more wonderful for the dog than cubed filet-mignon would be, especially during the initial encounters.
if i were to try lifting the dogs ears, they would hunker down and try to hide, or freeze, or possibly snap at me;
if i bodily picked them up to stand them on their legs,
the dog might freeze rigid and stand like a mannequin,
or go limp and collapse when i left go.
it would be hugely counter-productive.
all my best,
— terry
I realize that people are not dogs, and vice versa. But for the sake of discussion, if we can assume that a dog’s lifting his tail is analogous to a person’s smiling, then perhaps there is something to this idea.
Here’s a quote from Associated Content (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1141658/smiling_makes_you_happy_the_importance.html?cat=5):
According to Psychologist Robert Zajonc: “There is now compelling evidence that smiling causes people to feel happy. Requiring people to smile, no matter how they really feel at first, results in increased positive feelings; frowning conversely decreases positive feelings.” ( Zajonc, R. B., S. T. Murphy, & M. Inglehart, “Feeling and Facial Efference: Implications of the Vascular Theory of Emotion” Psychological Review 96 (1989): 395-416.)
Also in Psychology, it is known that you may do what ever you want physically, if there is a psychological issue, it will only be a bandage on the problem. If a problem is between the ears, it has to be worked from there. The association of a posture and the general behavior asks for some emotional structure, which I doubt a dog has entirely. When I have someone coming in my office (I work in human psychology) with shoulders rounded forward, back bent, head low, proposing to that person to smile so it will all come together fine afterward would be like saying “hey, no worry, be happy”. In the dog world, if there is a stress of something, work on the stress. Also, in the dog’s world, there are confident and less confident dogs. You can work on the ocnfidence but you will not resolve the entire thing by simply manipulating a tail…
Oh, a shy Magyar Vizsla!
These dogs are naturally Not very dominating going around tails-up.
And btw, don’t believe their training will make any change.