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Originally Posted by Obelix  If you wants to know how and what your dog thinks a lot of information is available.Since many years dogs and their behaviour have been studied,up to you if you want to learn and use this (scientific) info instead of the hearsay and supposed things. |
Very true. The problem arises when people use misinterpreted information from 30 year old studies and ignore the more modern research which either disproves or radically changes that information. Which is precisely what Cesar Millan and others who adhere to "alpha theory" training are doing. You don't get to just pick the information which backs up your preconceived notions, and then claim you're using "science", when what in fact you're doing is ignoring anything which contradicts what you have already decided that you want to do. There's no argument that dogs can be trained a variety of different ways, but sometimes, as Jean Donaldson says, they learn IN SPITE of how we teach them, not because of how we teach them. If there are better, equally effective ways to train dogs than outdated alpha theory (which can have many unwanted side effects), which are based on extensive study of dog behaviour management and learning, why on earth would someone ignore them?