Diana and I regularly encounter questions about our work, our attitudes about dog training methods and specific dog trainers, about the latest books on dog related subjects, if we do group sessions and teach obedience classes, et cetera. While we'll ultimately post articles dealing with all of these points, this article will address the common connection people make between our methods and those of well known dog behaviourist Cesar Millan.
I'll start with an anecdote. Most people reading this will have heard of the television series MacGyver that ran for seven seasons from 1985 to 1992 and starred Richard Dean Anderson in the title role. In case you've forgotten or are too young to know, Angus MacGyver was an incredibly creative and resourceful fictional secret agent who preferred non-violent means of conflict resolution and, while he refused to use or carry a gun, was never without his trusty Swiss Army Knife.
Karl Elsener introduced what we now call the Swiss Army Knife in Switzerland (no shocker there) in 1897, after becoming nationalistically motivated to correct the outrageous fact that utility knives being issued to the Swiss Army at the time were actually made in Germany. I personally discovered how essential it is to keep a Swiss Army Knife close at hand in 1974, and have never been without one since then. One day, when the series was at the peak of its popularity, a bystander observed me pulling out my SAK to perform some routine task and felt compelled to say, "Hey! You've got a knife like MacGyver!"
I finished my chore, put the tool back in my pocket and replied, "No. MacGyver has a knife like mine."
Cesar Millan has done wonders in the way he has successfully brought some important concepts of the dog-human dynamic into the public consciousness and we find that when working with those same concepts in the presence of people who have read his books, watched his television program, or more likely both, it saves time and cuts through the crap to use terms they are already familiar with wherever we feel it's warranted and no better explanation is required. Similarly, when we feel that a client may benefit from reading a particular book, whether by Cesar Millan, Stanley Coren, Karen Pryor, to name a few, we never hesitate to point them to it along with any caveats we feel may need to be applied, and in followup discussions may use the vocabulary the client will have become habituated to through the reading material. Using terminology entrenched in the public mind by another professional does not equate with complete adoption of their philosophy to the exclusion of all else.
Diana and I are voracious readers and are constantly on the hunt for books and television programs on subjects related to dog training. It is often said that the only thing two dog trainers can agree on is that a third trainer is doing something wrong, but it's important to our professional development to expose ourselves to other views and how other people working in the field have addressed the same issues we work with daily. Of equal importance is a factor that most people outside looking in will miss. Because Diana and I work exclusively with fixing problems in dog-human relationships, our clients usually call us after they have tried everything else. This often means they have already done a lot of desperate information mining that included long nights of web surfing and reading all the latest miracle books, particularly any flavour of the month ones that bear the Oprah Winfrey seal of approval. For us in the first consultation, what methods have been tried are more important than what hasn't yet been attempted. Unless we've done the research that permits us to understand what the client has been exposed to, we go into the situation only partially prepared and that's not, as they say, how we roll.
Throughout history, great and world changing discoveries have often been made almost simultaneously by people working independently of each other, sometimes continents apart and with each researcher completely ignorant of the existence of any other. A discovery that leads to a sound system of methods can also be arrived at by following a number of paths all leading to where the road begins. A sound system of methods will always be a sound system of methods because they work, and they work because they are based on truth instead of speculation. Many training systems achieve goals for people at the expense of their dogs, and thereby objectives are reached but true success is not. Dogs, like people, are also individuals, and there is no one-size-fits-all scheme that will be effective in all situations. To blindly embrace any one system as the one true path and apply it to the exclusion of all others is to become a mere disciple at best, and a parrot at worst.
Oh, and about that corrective sound we make, the same one used by Cesar Millan? It's not the only one we use but we use it because it works. Projected with the right attitude it grabs a dog's attention, it's low key in public, and there's absolutely no way we'll make that sound for any other reason.
I'll start with an anecdote. Most people reading this will have heard of the television series MacGyver that ran for seven seasons from 1985 to 1992 and starred Richard Dean Anderson in the title role. In case you've forgotten or are too young to know, Angus MacGyver was an incredibly creative and resourceful fictional secret agent who preferred non-violent means of conflict resolution and, while he refused to use or carry a gun, was never without his trusty Swiss Army Knife.
Karl Elsener introduced what we now call the Swiss Army Knife in Switzerland (no shocker there) in 1897, after becoming nationalistically motivated to correct the outrageous fact that utility knives being issued to the Swiss Army at the time were actually made in Germany. I personally discovered how essential it is to keep a Swiss Army Knife close at hand in 1974, and have never been without one since then. One day, when the series was at the peak of its popularity, a bystander observed me pulling out my SAK to perform some routine task and felt compelled to say, "Hey! You've got a knife like MacGyver!"
I finished my chore, put the tool back in my pocket and replied, "No. MacGyver has a knife like mine."
The last episode of MacGyver aired on 25 April 1992; three days after my 35th birthday, 18 years after I started carrying a Swiss Army Knife, and 95 years after Karl Elsener launched its illustrious career, but it will forever be the “MacGyver knife” because of a piece of popular culture that existed for what amounts to a brief moment in its history.
Fossil evidence points to the dog-human relationship going back at least 14,000 years and through most of that history the dog's role has been one of practicality: herder, guardian, vermin exterminator, load hauler, fishing gear retriever, hunting companion. Much archaeological and anthropological evidence exists discounting the widely held belief that the deal has been mostly one sided in favour of humans, and that dogs were historically regarded by our ancestors as expendable beasts of burden with little intrinsic value. In simpler and harder times, no mouth can be fed unless its bearer brings skills to the party, and while the concept of a dog simply being a pet is a relative latecomer in history, this doesn't mean our ancestors didn't value and care for their dogs. Modern dogs are still the animals their ancestors were and carry the drive to do the jobs they were bred to do. Cesar Millan preaches the importance of fulfilling the animal that is the dog as a key to unlocking many behavioural issues that are plaguing the dogs he sees, and we embrace this concept as well. We think it's safe to say our ancestors would be more than a little gobsmacked to learn that one would think anything different, and the point here is that all of this is old and time tested knowledge that seriously predates the Dog Whisperer or Golden Mountain Dog Solutions. Because these truths have come through the years to us fragmented and damaged, with pieces missing or replaced with foolishness and supposition, revealing them now makes them fresh and new and will not surprisingly brand them with the name of their most visible and famous teacher. Hence the connection.Cesar Millan has done wonders in the way he has successfully brought some important concepts of the dog-human dynamic into the public consciousness and we find that when working with those same concepts in the presence of people who have read his books, watched his television program, or more likely both, it saves time and cuts through the crap to use terms they are already familiar with wherever we feel it's warranted and no better explanation is required. Similarly, when we feel that a client may benefit from reading a particular book, whether by Cesar Millan, Stanley Coren, Karen Pryor, to name a few, we never hesitate to point them to it along with any caveats we feel may need to be applied, and in followup discussions may use the vocabulary the client will have become habituated to through the reading material. Using terminology entrenched in the public mind by another professional does not equate with complete adoption of their philosophy to the exclusion of all else.
Diana and I are voracious readers and are constantly on the hunt for books and television programs on subjects related to dog training. It is often said that the only thing two dog trainers can agree on is that a third trainer is doing something wrong, but it's important to our professional development to expose ourselves to other views and how other people working in the field have addressed the same issues we work with daily. Of equal importance is a factor that most people outside looking in will miss. Because Diana and I work exclusively with fixing problems in dog-human relationships, our clients usually call us after they have tried everything else. This often means they have already done a lot of desperate information mining that included long nights of web surfing and reading all the latest miracle books, particularly any flavour of the month ones that bear the Oprah Winfrey seal of approval. For us in the first consultation, what methods have been tried are more important than what hasn't yet been attempted. Unless we've done the research that permits us to understand what the client has been exposed to, we go into the situation only partially prepared and that's not, as they say, how we roll.
Throughout history, great and world changing discoveries have often been made almost simultaneously by people working independently of each other, sometimes continents apart and with each researcher completely ignorant of the existence of any other. A discovery that leads to a sound system of methods can also be arrived at by following a number of paths all leading to where the road begins. A sound system of methods will always be a sound system of methods because they work, and they work because they are based on truth instead of speculation. Many training systems achieve goals for people at the expense of their dogs, and thereby objectives are reached but true success is not. Dogs, like people, are also individuals, and there is no one-size-fits-all scheme that will be effective in all situations. To blindly embrace any one system as the one true path and apply it to the exclusion of all others is to become a mere disciple at best, and a parrot at worst.
Oh, and about that corrective sound we make, the same one used by Cesar Millan? It's not the only one we use but we use it because it works. Projected with the right attitude it grabs a dog's attention, it's low key in public, and there's absolutely no way we'll make that sound for any other reason.
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