It all makes sense !! I think before CM came along, a lot of people were being good Pack leaders in any case without realising it. It really is common-sense IMO. Sounds to me like you are doing the right thing with Maggie - she's allowed to go on the bed, on the sofa, but will get off when she is told. That's fine, it's your dog, your house, you set the rules and boundaries, and your dog must follow them, and she does. This is great, this is being Pack leader !!

Exactly Minihaha ! I think a lot of people get all confused by the term Alpha - they assume this means a kind of jack-booted Dog Owner marching around barking orders right left and centre at their poor dogs, without any praise or affection. You will only ever see CM pinning dogs or IMO handling them assertively when they are what he describes as Red Zoners. Frequently these animals are on Death Row and Cesar is their last resort. It's make or break, no time to pussy foot around. But thankfully most of our dogs are not red zoners, and we would never need to pin our dogs, I certainly have never done so to Tai, or Hal. But should I need to, I would.

Many of us are being Alphas or Pack Leaders without even realising it ! Possibly many have voted "no" on the poll, when they really should have voted yes ? A word after all is just a noise caused by an exhalation of air manipulated by lips and tongue ! Those of us who don't like the word alpha, can describe themselves as Leader, She Who Must Be Obeyed, or whatever trips their trigger. I like alpha, although thought I should stop using it as it seemed to cause problems with people and I didn't want this brilliant thread to turn nasty. I do consider myself to be Alpha Female, with OH Alpha Male and we are both Pack leaders.

As to the humans having larger brains, are you sure ? !! Sometimes I think Tai is MUCH cleverer than me, and Hal was DEFO for a fact !!

Hi Gnasher I don't want to get into the whole CM debate again but I think you are incorrect in your assumption about CM, some of us have posted videos on here of him in action which prove otherwise and the dogs included were certainly not on death row.
I think CM needs some lessons in how to read and interpret canine body language. Its all in older thread if you care to search for them...
here is one..
http://www.dogsey.com/showthread.php...ht=cesar+milan

I consider the following stament to be correct,it sums up the things I said earlier in the thread.....
I also posted about the work of Alexandra Semyonova who has spent 14 years studying dogs and does not believe in the myth of packs/alpha/dominance. I will not post the quotes again but you can read about her work here ..

http://www.nonlineardogs.com/Myths10-11.html

I think she explains things very well, I prefer to leave the whole concept of Alpha where it probably started with the Natzis...

Gnasher, you are going to totally hate me

Dogs love to work with their humans, I believe that sit, down, recal,walk nicely on lead, paw, stand on back legs, walk backwards, jump through hoops, do agility as ALL tricks to a dog, they are all jobs they love doing WITH us, it is not demeaning to the dog. If I had to use force to break its will then it would be.
Have a look at heelwork to music clips on you tube and you will see lots of v happy dogs totally connected with their owner and loving working with them.

I think the more you teach a dog anything the more it learns to love learning and the smarter and happier it becomes, dogs working with humans IS dogs being dogs (at the same time I also let my dogs play with other dogs, run about and have zoomies and everything else (including sniffing which CM is against)

Positive training CAN take a while sometimes – but so can any other training – plenty of CM fans have told us that his clips on the TV are actually shown after many weeks of work with the dog – look at the camera angles as well – it is NOT immediate

But the good think about positive training is once you have decided to train something then the behaviour you don’t want should pretty much never be seen again
In your example with the chickens, first you make sure the dog never again gets the chance to kill a chicken, be it lead walks or going somewhere else for a wee while
Then you train the behaviour you would like somewhere else – say a leave it or a come to my side
You do this somewhere with no distractions till the dog understands and then you slowly build up the distractions until you are introducing the chickens again.

I totally KNOW adversive training would not work on any of my dogs

Ben is what is considered a ‘soft’ dog, he loves to work, loves to please me but if he is in any way made to feel that he has done the wrong thing then he totally shuts down and does nothing

Mia OTOH if she is in a happy state of mind gets all bouncy and happy if you tell her off, she just loves the attention
But she is also reactive and fear aggressive towards other dogs
Idealy I would never have her in a situation where she felt under threat, but I cant control where people come from
One day a woman I was with accidently kicked her (in the perfect timing for a correction to her situation – if you were going to use a correction) Mia whipped round and just managed to stop herself biting the human (well done her) then her barking and lunging at the other dog was much worse than it has ever been in the past – and although we have got her calm with lots of dogs in the area that one dog she cannot stand

I am having to take my time to change how her mind works, not just telling her off for being scared

IMHO you are using lots of positive methods
CM does not really condone rewarding dogs at all, his methods involve keeping pushing the dog till it does the thing you don’t want it to and then punishing it for behaving like a dog

I totally agree keeping calm is the best way to deal with a dog, I totally agree that we have to teach a dog the rules to get along with us in this world
I completely disagree with exercising a dog till it is too exhausted to display any behaviours (because it will just get fitter and fitter until you have a dog that needs run 8 hours a day) I also disagree with just exercise with no sniffing or mental stimulation – IMO 5 min training is much better than 2 hours on a treadmill
I don’t believe anyone on here actually uses CM methods as I see them


Oh WYS - I ment I voted other

Mia is far worse than any of the 'red zones' I have seen on his programme
If I didnt think it irrisponsable to set her up to react I would film her for you to see

TBH lots of people say he is the last chance and they have tried everything - but by that usualy they mean they have tried yelling at the dog, he is not the last thing they have tried really he is the 1st thing they have tried

As for the name
I am a dog owner and trainer
If I had to label my self then possibly guide or parent
not that I think or treat my dogs as anything but dogs but they depend on me for everything any I teach them how to be dog living in the human world, the closest to that is a parent

Mind you, in the wolf pack the alpha is the parent - not the most dom shouty one, not the one with the best energy, just the parent
so I guess I am the alpha but as the term tends to be used for different things that I dont agree with I will not use the word for myself

There are always two sides to every coin, Mini I will follow up your links though, thanks for those.

And I won't respond regarding CM, as it is going off thread and it will spark off WW3. I have said I don't follow him slavishly, nor do I like everything that he does. But we'll just leave it at that to save everything going pear-shaped !

We're off on a bike ride with my poor abused dog !!

He's lying quietly and calmly at my side right now, having come and nadged me (nadging is when he puts his head under my mouse hand to try and stop me using the computer !). I told him gently "no", sit down. He didn't, I clicked my fingers at him and repeated "sit", and he sat and lay down. He was told he was a good dog, and he is lying there as calm as a cucumber. When we first got him, he would have been leaping around like a demented thing ... and when you're as large as he is, that is intolerable !

Anyway, my trusty mountain bike awaits !! Speak to you guys laters. have a good afternoon being good Pack Leaders !!

This alpha/dominance thing appears to have been invented by dog trainers and has little or no relevance to wolf behaviour at all. It seems to have been used to justify harsh training techniques based on very old methods and has been derived by reading books about wolf behaviour from the old days. These books were often based on poor observation of captive wolves, often kept in very stressful environments. The alpha roll, for example is very rarely used by wolves.

I have never met a responsible person involved with wolves or wolfdogs who advocates using any dominance or so called 'alpha' technique. Never.

There is much discussion about CM here. A surprising number of wolfdog owners/ rescuers are quite positive about his basic methods. NONE support the dominance techniques he shows in his 'red zone' cases. All those I have contact with would also go so far as to suggest that to try these techniques on a genuine wolf-dog could lead to a serious incident.

As these techniques seem to have no relevance to wolves then why should we think they are useful in dog training?

Personally I have little interest in CM, but he seems to offer something that people find is good for them. I would never be remotely interested in kicking my dog or strangling it and it makes me think he has little idea or control of these 'problem animals'.

Oops, I think I said too much now.

P.S. I don't think heel work to music is silly either, at least not for the dog...

This thread is just going round in circles because no-one is using the Alpha Male methods based on wolf-pack theory. I think we`re in danger of getting into the Alice Through the Looking Glass notion `A word means what I want it to mean`. Gnasher seems bent on proving that she is the Alpha when every explanation of her actual methods refutes it.
Maybe Pidge who started it could please supply a concise definition?

Ok.. what would you do?

Came out of the garage today where we are sorting and cleaning/tidying, to see Kismet the minx had got into the bins and was eating peelings and left overs (Other two inside fast asleep). I sternly said KISMET NO... and DROP IT, but she gave me that sideways look while still troughing of 'make me'.... I went over, took her collar, to pull her back and said sternly again, KISMET. NO. at which point she growled, turned and went to bite me! I immediately pinned her and said NO, until she had calmed down and the 'manic gremlin look' went from her eyes. After which she got up, I was able to ask her to sit while I calmly put the rubbish back in a black sack and she was given a reward fro being good...

When Kismet gets these 'red mist' gremlin attacks.. there's just no speaking to her until she has calmed down. It's like she's possessed. No other command, no treat, nothing will break this possessive guarding monster... Except holding her down until it passes.

As a non Alpha trainer.. How would I deal with this?