...You know this sounds an awful lot like you're trying to crowd source a research paper or free website building, right? I mean, yeah, I am sure most of us can back up our opinions with links, sources, and quotes but typically when I do that level of in depth research either I benefit personally or I get paid.

Not even being snarky but you are demanding (not even asking) a lot.

 

Yeah, these kind of threads always seem to go the same way. A brand new poster asks, seemingly innocently, for opinions on a divisive figure (or several), then proceeds to argue with everyone who explains why they don't like that figure. Sometimes I'll take the bait, but I'm too tired today.

 

I'm too tired today.

Pretty much that, yes. Maybe if it was like... two people or organizations instead of 8.

But seriously, there is a reason people get paid or graded for this level of stuff - and that reason is "It's work."

 

If you really want forumites' opinions, though, OP, there have been MANY threads about all of these people and orgs on the forums! Do a forum search, or do what I do when I need to find an older thread and do a targeted Google search:

https://www.google.com/#q=cesar+millan+site:dogforums.com

 

Yeah, no, this is an internet forum. You can ask nicely for people to not bash trainers, but demanding it - with links from and "acceptable source" (and no definition of what that means...? Who decides if it's acceptable?) - isn't how the internet works.

Also - and I say this without any snark - why should we care about your opinion on any of those trainers? If people are providing their own opinion with links/research to back it up, presumably they've already done their research and formed their own opinion.

 

That's the other thing. The links/sources/quotes are in order to form a persuasive argument. Who are we arguing with? Who are we convincing? I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I've DONE my research to form my opinion. If I want to change yours or we're having a date, sure, I'll come up with those sources and the onus is on me to make sure what I'm referencing is valid.

If you want to change MY opinion - well, that puts the sourcing and quoting and linking on your head. Not mine.

 

For all the people who were explaining why they don't like what I said before, I understand what you meant. My views have changed, I changed my post, and I would greatly appreciate now if we can get back to the original topic of Ed Frawley, Michael Ellis, and Victoria Stilwell. I would love to hear your opinions!

 

I have done the research and am willing to share it with those who want to hear it.

Sure, I'd be open to hearing what research you've done.

 

While you're doing that forum search, look for "backseat moderating."

 

I think the issue is, you're asking us to do literally hours of research here and basically write you an essay. Even those of us who have sources bookmarked on several of these trainers/organizations (which I do) need to go through and compile what's the most relevant, sum up our own views on each one, etc. And you still haven't told us what an 'acceptable' source is, by your standards!

Many of us are perfectly happy to discuss training theories and techniques, as well as specific organizations. But this is a free forum we contribute to in our free time. We're here largely to help other dog owners with issues and get some help/support in return. If you want us to have a discourse about these things, try making sure there's either something in it for us or ask us smaller, more specific questions so we can answer them without devoting a huge chunk of time and energy to summarizing the entire gamut of modern dog training techniques and politics in one go (with sources).

 

Also... this is a weird list. You've got two long-time trainers that are big names in the IPO world, two TV personalities, one on-site dog trainer education program, one online program that doesn't even focus most of its curriculum on dogs, one organization that offers independent certification to dog training/behavior professionals, and one organization that exists mostly for networking and continuing education of dog training/behavior professionals.

Like. How are we even supposed to start with a list like that?

 

That is my point though. Some of these trainers (well, one in particular) there is very little that is positive to say about him, and ignoring all of the negative of any one of those trainers - even the ones who's philosophy I agree with - paints a one-sided picture. When you're doing research, it is jut as important to know about the bad as it is to know the good. (But what do I know, I only do it for a living).

"What do you consider "acceptable"?"

Acceptable sources is something that everyone should know... There is so much fake news, so "acceptable" sources are not things like facebook pages... Wherever they are found, the information should be able to be verified. If you don't want to do all that research or just share some of it with people who want to know what you think and why, you don't have to.

Well, to me an "acceptable" source is a peer reviewed scientific paper (which, as Daysleepers pointed out, isn't something that you're going to find about a specific trainer). Different people have different criteria for what makes something "acceptable". And while I do think that there are plenty of anecdotes that people perceive to be true, the plural of anecdote is not data. And by your own definition, your personal anecdote is not an acceptable source, as it is not verifiable by any of us here.

Anyway, I could argue semantics all day, but since I don't know much to be of use about any of the trainers in your revised list, I'll bow out now.

 

"Sure, I'd be open to hearing what research you've done." - Canyx

Thank you so much! It will probably take me a little while to type it, but I'll get it up here as soon as possible.

 

It'll be interesting to see if anyone can discuss Cesar Milan without being negative.

"He has very nice teeth."

 

And nice hair.

See, as long as we don't discuss his techniques, it can be done.

 

I'm just saying, you may have more success asking about 2-3 related things on any one thread. It'd be much easier for us to compare and discuss, and the threads could stay more focused. Trying to talk to lots of different people about lots of different subjects on one forum thread is going to get really confusing, really fast.

When you say 'proven true'... that's not especially helpful. From my background, that would mean "peer-reviewed scholarly articles", which... there aren't a whole lot of because A: many such papers are behind a paywall and B: there haven't been many studies done comparing specific training techniques, and fewer still (none?) comparing specific trainers. Which means many of our sources are going to be opinion pieces. And yes, they may be written by professionals in the fields of dog training and behavior, but many, many professionals in that field disagree with each other quite strongly (not to mention that it's a wholly unregulated field, so someone who's met his first dog last Tuesday can call herself a trainer and be a 'professional' just as easily as the person who's studied canine behavior and mentored under top names in the industry). And the study of animal behavior - and dog behavior and cognition specifically - is in something of a renaissance. There's still a ton out there we're exploring and learning more about, which means there's a whole heck of a lot that goes into training that hasn't been 'proven' in any scientific study.

 

RonE - Um... I like some and dislike some of Cesar Milan's methods, but lol yes "He has very nice teeth." haha lol

 

DaySleepers - you are right. I don't have much time right now, but I'll change a few things with my original post...

 

:wave: In case you missed it, please look back: I edited my original post, so I would love to hear your opinions on Michael Ellis, Ed Frawley, and if anyone knows much about Victoria Stilwell I would love to hear that. Thanks! (I'm doing a little bit more research to find my sources, I'll post my opinions in a little while!)

 

Okay, I know I took Cesar Milan off the list, and I know you guys know what you don't like about him... So let me just say this: In my opinion, some of his logic is very sound in this area: On his show Cesar 911, Cesar teaches people that their dog responds to how they are. If the owner at one end of the leash is tense, the dog is tense and that is a big cause of aggression. When Cesar takes the dogs from the people, he is calm and in control, and the dogs aren't the least big aggressive! So yes, some of his methods aren't very nice, (barrel-rolling the dog and such, which I actually haven't seen on Cesar 911...) but he's not all bad in my opinion... I actually used what he said about the dog reflecting how you are with my dog. He's a Jack Russel who "hates" other dogs... I was riding my bike with him beside me, and our neighbors dog came out. I calmly stopped, picked my dog up, and he didn't growl once (as opposed to usually trying to tear the other dog to shreds...) The other dog's owner got home and called him inside, but then I realized that what Cesar taught about that had truth in it. That's just my opinion...

 

gingerkid - You are right. I didn't edit any of my other posts, I will do that now. By the way I love your dogs

 

Bottom line (MY bottom line, anyway) is that the inquiry, together with your user name, makes your post sound like you're researching for a blog or similar.

Forum members are generally friendly and helpful but dislike having their time wasted with what appears to be an agenda, as opposed to people who join to participate and contribute.

I could be wrong, which is why you're still here.

 

I could research for a blog on my own, it would be much easier than trying to get information out of people here... As I'm not researching for a blog, I'm just learning for my personal knowledge, I would appreciate if people just want to participate and contribute. If people don't want to contribute, I'm not complaining, but I still would like to hear other people's opinions.

As for my username, DogInfo101 - I do not have a lot of experience training dogs hands-on, and I am not in the position where I can do so. I get all of my information online and in books, and dog info is pretty much my life. My only hobby is dogs, I love dogs more than anyone I know in real life, and I know more about dog training than anyone (expect one person) that I know in real life. That's just what I do. I have the knowledge, and I am constantly seeking to gain more knowledge and share mine. I figured that a dog forum would be a great way to do that.

I would appreciate if people don't just jump to conclusions about me. All I want is to learn more about dogs from people who know more than I do and share what I know with people who know less. I do my own research, and I like sharing it and hearing other people's research. So if there are some forum members who also like sharing information, I would appreciate information and opinions on Ed Frawley, Michael Ellis, and Victoria Stilwell...

 

Read some books by Patricia McConnell and Jean Donaldson, would be my advice. Then you'll be a little better equipped to judge the other people in your list. I'm sure other people here can suggest more good dog behaviour professionals to look into or specific books to read.

 

Thank you! I'll check that out!

 

I personally have a lot of respect for Michael Ellis. He's a "balanced" trainer who - by everything I've seen by and about him - truly deserves that title; if corrections are inappropriate for a situation or the dog in question, he will say so and will not use corrections. It is not how I, personally, choose to train my dogs. I would only use corrections in training if it's a life or death situations AND corrections are appropriate for the issue (IE poisonous snake avoidance training), with the help of an experienced trainer with excellent timing to help, because I don't have the skills or confidence to do that myself. But I can respect a man who can adjust his training to the dog in front of him to keep training fun and engaging, and he is very successful at what he does. Afraid I don't have any solid sources on that one - this is an opinion I've developed over years of hearing bits and pieces from various sources (often forum posts like these!).

Ed Frawley is... good at what he does, in the sense of training IPO dogs. My issue is that he has a very, VERY poor understanding of force-free training, as seen here in an article written by Frawley himself: http://leerburg.com/philosophy.htm. The relevant quote:

The first category on the left is the group of people who beg or bribe and lure their dogs to do something by offering a food or toy reward. Don't get me wrong, I use food and toys in training, but I also use distractions and corrections. The people in this first category use neither.

All of the large pet food warehouses (i.e. Pet Smart, Petco , or the Monks of New Skeet etc) sponsor this category of ineffective training because they feel it's politically correct.

The problem with this group is that the dogs often choose to not do what's asked because they don't think the reward is not high enough in value to them. These dogs end up being pushy, dominant and often antisocial aggressive animals. These are the dogs that are turned into animal shelters as being unmanageable when in fact they act the way they do as a result of ineffective dog training.

It totally misunderstands how rewards-based training works, and completely ignores the hundreds of thousands of people who have successfully trained service dogs, working dogs, sports dogs, companion animals, or (gasp!) have even rehabilitated aggressive or fearful animals without using any positive punishment. Apparently most of the dogs here are on the road to being sent to the pound for being horrid, unruly, 'dominant' (I'll get to what's wrong with this term in a minute) dogs, and if we just disciplined 'em a little harder they'd be perfect.

Victoria Stilwell... is a TV personality, and perfectly decent at what she does. She generally advocates positive, force-free methods that aren't going to cause harm or make behavior worse if they're imitated by people watching at home. She's dramatic with the people, but hey, you have to make TV interesting somehow (especially when you're not goading dogs into reacting like some shiny-toothed celebrities). I don't think she's the best trainer out there, and I don't agree with everything she's said, but she's not the worse either. Again, this is mostly opinion based on my own viewing of the show and my own understanding of R+ training and dog behavior.

I know you didn't keep him on the list, but... please, PLEASE read this article: http://www.whyanimalsdothething.com/posts/2016/6/2/the-damage-of-dog-whispering

I cannot bring myself to say much of anything good about Cesar Millan's training. He's done an enormous amount of damage to the public's views of dog training and behavior by dragging the outdated, utterly incorrect concept of dog-human dominance into the limelight (it was based on studies done in the 30s and 40s on a single population of unrelated wolves confined in a small enclosure; the scientific community now knows this is not how wolves naturally act, let alone dogs, let alone how dogs interact with humans). His techniques are more than "not nice" - they're abusive and are actually very good ways to create and worsen aggression in many dogs. For everything he gets right (and 'dogs react to their handler's emotional state' is pretty basic stuff), he gets a lot more wrong, and it lands a lot of dogs in trouble because of how visible and imitable he is. If you have more questions about dominance or Cesar specifically, I'll be happy to dig up more on him! But you can also check out the references on that article I listed; the author has cited a lot of easily-accessible sources that are interesting reads in and of themselves.

 

I personally have a lot of respect for Michael Ellis. He's a "balanced" trainer who - by everything I've seen by and about him - truly deserves that title; if corrections are inappropriate for a situation or the dog in question, he will say so and will not use corrections. It is not how I, personally, choose to train my dogs. I would only use corrections in training if it's a life or death situations AND corrections are appropriate for the issue (IE poisonous snake avoidance training), with the help of an experienced trainer with excellent timing to help, because I don't have the skills or confidence to do that myself. But I can respect a man who can adjust his training to the dog in front of him to keep training fun and engaging, and he is very successful at what he does. Afraid I don't have any solid sources on that one - this is an opinion I've developed over years of hearing bits and pieces from various sources (often forum posts like these!).

Ed Frawley is... good at what he does, in the sense of training IPO dogs. My issue is that he has a very, VERY poor understanding of force-free training, as seen here in an article written by Frawley himself: http://leerburg.com/philosophy.htm. The relevant quote:



It totally misunderstands how rewards-based training works, and completely ignores the hundreds of thousands of people who have successfully trained service dogs, working dogs, sports dogs, companion animals, or (gasp!) have even rehabilitated aggressive or fearful animals without using any positive punishment. Apparently most of the dogs here are on the road to being sent to the pound for being horrid, unruly, 'dominant' (I'll get to what's wrong with this term in a minute) dogs, and if we just disciplined 'em a little harder they'd be perfect.

Victoria Stilwell... is a TV personality, and perfectly decent at what she does. She generally advocates positive, force-free methods that aren't going to cause harm or make behavior worse if they're imitated by people watching at home. She's dramatic with the people, but hey, you have to make TV interesting somehow (especially when you're not goading dogs into reacting like some shiny-toothed celebrities). I don't think she's the best trainer out there, and I don't agree with everything she's said, but she's not the worse either. Again, this is mostly opinion based on my own viewing of the show and my own understanding of R+ training and dog behavior.

I know you didn't keep him on the list, but... please, PLEASE read this article: http://www.whyanimalsdothething.com/posts/2016/6/2/the-damage-of-dog-whispering

I cannot bring myself to say much of anything good about Cesar Millan's training. He's done an enormous amount of damage to the public's views of dog training and behavior by dragging the outdated, utterly incorrect concept of dog-human dominance into the limelight (it was based on studies done in the 30s and 40s on a single population of unrelated wolves confined in a small enclosure; the scientific community now knows this is not how wolves naturally act, let alone dogs, let alone how dogs interact with humans). His techniques are more than "not nice" - they're abusive and are actually very good ways to create and worsen aggression in many dogs. For everything he gets right (and 'dogs react to their handler's emotional state' is pretty basic stuff), he gets a lot more wrong, and it lands a lot of dogs in trouble because of how visible and imitable he is. If you have more questions about dominance or Cesar specifically, I'll be happy to dig up more on him! But you can also check out the references on that article I listed; the author has cited a lot of easily-accessible sources that are interesting reads in and of themselves.

About Michael Ellis, I completely agree with you. About Ed Frawley, I don't think he's saying that all positive trainers bribe their dogs. Some do, and that's not effective when distractions come into play, but I'm pretty sure he knows that many people who use food and other rewards know what they're doing... I'll post more about him later...

As for Victoria Stilwell, well... I watched a video that talked about her, and what it said appalled me... I have yet to make sure that what it said was true, but if it is... Well... I'll do the research before completing that sentence... I never really liked her methods or claims at being "all-positive" since instead of using things like prong collars she yells at the dogs which is still a form of positive punishment... I'll do more research on her, I'm fairly new to learning about her... (Also though, about the dog in the first season of her show that she suggested be put down... Do you know anything about that? I haven't seen anyone say anything in defense of that... and I know plenty of trainers who could have trained the dog instead of having it be put down... I would love to hear about that though...)

And I can't say I entirely agree with you about Cesar Millan... I haven't seen a whole lot of his show "The Dog Whisperer," but I love his show "Cesar 911". I did see one thing in it that I didn't like, but I never saw the dogs with him look uncomfortable or scared... He does go from the whole "leader of the pack" perspective. In my opinion, that method does work on some dogs, but other dogs it can cripple. A seasoned trainer knows when it's okay and when it's not and recognizes other methods that can be used... I don't think he knows how to recognize when it's not okay though, or what the limit should be, and that's not good...

I really appreciate your opinions! And I looked over that article a little bit about Cesar Millan, I will read it thoroughly later. I'll let you know what I think! (By the way though, who exactly is the author of it? They called them-self a "scientist" and a "dog trainer," so I was just wondering who it was so I could do a little research on them too...) Thanks!

 

Hmm, as a regular dog owner with not a ton of knowledge about higher training, just from watching videos and reading their stuff---

Ed Frawley seems like a cranky old jerk. No doubt he knows a lot about dogs, but seems to be unnecessarily harsh sometimes. He's not as bad as some people, but considering Leerburg sells a collar specifically meant to choke a dog to unconsciousness or near-unconsciousness, I kinda have a problem with that. He seems to get some kind of ego boost out of getting rough with a dog---making SURE you know he's not some sissy treat-pusher! But is also humble enough to have changed a lot of his old ways. So, not my favorite, although there are worse.

Michael Ellis seems to know what he's doing. He doesn't appear to get unnecessarily rough with dogs or get an ego boost out of it. If someone wanted to use a shock collar on their dog he'd probably be the best resource, not that I recommend using a shock collar. I don't really like his association with Leerburg---seriously, how is choking a dog unconscious not illegal?---but whatevs. Not as positive as I would like but you could do a lot worse.

Victoria Stilwell is mainly a TV personality, chosen because a lot of men think she's hawt. She does have dog trainer certification and trains dogs for a shelter, but has never titled a dog or done really serious training. So while I don't see anything really wrong with anything she says or does, the TV show is mainly meant for entertainment (and for some men, to look at Victoria ) and she's not what I would consider a professional. So. . .meh?

 

I appreciate your opinions. I also don't like that Ed Frawley does that. I'm pretty sure that's a last resort though... I know it's extremely harsh, I think it's better than putting an aggressive dog down if it really works, but I definitely wouldn't just say it's okay...

 

Oh trust me, if you want to see Cesar making dogs uncomfortable or scared there is plenty of video out there.

 

That, but also, if, say, a dog was cowering away from him, do you really think they'd leave that in the show? Ah, the magic of editing!

 

If you're truly interested in learning more about rewards-based / force-free training methods, I'd suggest finding resources from Sophia Yin, Ian Dunbar, Pat Miller, and Karen Pryor (in addition to Patricia McConnell and Jean Donaldson).

 

It might be more humane to put the dog down before choking him half to death, just saying. Even if choking the dog out made him too scared to show aggression, that's not true rehabbing. It's abuse. And it wouldn't make the dog feel less aggressive, just too scared to display that aggression. . .until someday when he can't suppress it anymore. It's creating a time bomb really.

 

Yeah. And the end result is either: A terrified dog who still hates/is uncomfortable with people.

How is that useful?

Also, let me be real here: "Put the dog down" is something a lot of 'balanced' type trainers at least say a lot - the ones who aren't really balanced. You know, the ones where there's no real reward involved, just a lot of punishment. "Weak nerve" "nerve-bags" dogs who are fearful or just can't take correction well are often advised PTS. So it's not like it's 'use harsh punishment or euth the dog' no matter what some of those articles say. It's often 'dog I don't know how to work with, put it down' and while I see it more on the punishment side of the aisle it DOES exist in both and it's fundamentally a combination of seeing suffering and being unable to know how to help. Regardless of who is saying it.