This is such a massively confusing subject that I guess we all have to make our own minds up on.

This is how I see it.

Cesar Milan has been sucked in to the 'Hollywood' lifestyle and has made it in America thanks to big bucks and famous celebrities. He has a well polished TV series, which by nature will only ever show successes...how successful would the show be if the bad bits were aired?

I've also read his book 'Ceasr's Way' and remember thinking to myself "This is a book about how he's made it in America, and how he's managed to hob-nob with the rich and famous...it does absolutely nothing in helping me train my dog".

So for those reasons, I dismiss Cesar Milan completely.

I've also done the Jan Fennell thing, and again, in my opinion, this was a total flop and waste of my hard earned money. Again, dismiss it completely.

I just have a quick question. What methods are used in developing and training assistance dogs such as hearing/seeing dogs? Also, what methods are used in training Police dogs? Surely these methods are the most successful...tried and tested producing very obedient and loyal dogs?

As I've said before I dont agree with all CMs methods, I work on my own, which includes common sense, but What I would do is not 'force' the dog to face anything, but relay to the dog that there is nothing to be fearful of, by ignoring the problem, like it isnt there, many dogs understand this and relax once they realise. Sometimes CM floods, sometimes I think he does the above which seems like floodin, but like I said I dont agree with everything he does

I have made my living training horses for 20 yrs and I have to disagree, having used CM methods on my dogs and my horses I have discovered that a very dangerous horse that was heading for euthanasia is now a happy healthy dressage horse for a little old lady Using CMs way of thinking

How did you use CM methods on a horse?What methods for which problems?
( im not completly without knowledage,I Used to work with/compete/teach & had a Complete nutcase of a untouched four yr old ,i have to say any of CM methods on her & she would have killed me or herself!though i have not been in horses for quite a few years now)

yes a horse and he had a variety of problems the worst being dominance of human to the point of injuring a person so badly they had to have surgery,to tell the whole story would take to long, but basicaly we used Cms method of putting the horse in each situation and keeping him there untill we got the correct response, it took a while as he was also 4yrs and basically untouched,and yes he tried to kill us several times,but it was his last chance and our facility is good,he turned around as we were very consistent and didnt give in,he learned not to be scared of people and to trust us and to be what we asked him to be,
without question.This saved his life.
and taught us alot

Well done on saving the horse,
which of CM methods did you use? Just give me one example if its too much to explain.

his method of taking the animal into the situation that causes a reaction,in this case it was tacking the horse up and leading to the arena,he would jump on top of you kick and scream pull loose and go off broncing and when you would try to catch him he would attack (all this before even riding him)now he would allow us to tack in the arena and get on,but to tack in the barn and move to the arena was a no,so that was the issue we started with,put him in the situation got the reponse,let him know it was unacceptable and kept him there untill he gave the right reponse he was used to being beaten for bad behavior,so he had a excuse to freak,we kept it calm like CM not beating just calm correction on the halter and when we got the right reaction move on,It was wild and wooly for a while but he relaxed and moved on to his next issue which was bucking people off and flipping over backward.

I am currently uncecided on the CM subject. I have watched a few and it often seems as though he's pulling words and methods out of thin air on the spot and they do seem to have limited effect in some cases (and probably many not shown). However, he encourages (often stupid) people to excercise their animals and to begin training them, which can't be a bad thing. I don't think his teachings would leave his "clients' " dogs in a worse situation than they are already. It's certainly not ideal, but i feel it's better than nothing.

Positive reinforcement and often clicker training

It can vary from force to force and is reliant on firm handling because aggression is involved for protection work, [ my father was a military handler of both sniffer and protection dogs and he personally used positive only methods, way ahead of when it became more widely used and understood ]. His working dogs retired to our family home and were absolutely trustworthy as family pets regardless of being protection trained.
For sniffer work in particular its based on positive reinforcement and play, play, play

Incidentally, prong collars and electric shock collars are banned for use by the UK military, [ which they self-imposed ].
I think, purely speculatively, with the advent of using Dolphins for military purpose, [ which I am opposed to ethically ], the fact remains that Dolphin training brought in widescale use reward based training for other species which has spread throughout many modern military and police dog training methodologies as well as bringing about something of a revolution for general dog training, if not clicker specifically certainly the greater impact of positive and reward based training

There are still trainers in the Dark Ages way of thinking unfortunately, but thankfully they are getting less and less as people become far more dog-aware and less ready to mistreat their dogs on the say so of some self-proclaimed medieval style `expert trainer`

Yes indeed, as I already said in one of my previous postings, horses and dogs are a completely different species ... the former is herbivorous, a flight animal and has a completely different type of intelligence from dogs or indeed humans. Horses have simply amazing memories ... they will remember 10 years later when riding past a particular spot, that 10 years earlier a pheasant had come clacking out of the hedge and terrified him. Horses are many times stronger and more powerful than us mere humans and can kill us with one blow of a hoof. They allow us to "tame" them, put saddles on them and ride on their backs -a most extraordinary thing for them to do when you think about it - because they don't realise that compared to them we are puny - physically. And there's the rub ... we "break in" horses (a horrible expression) because they view us as maybe a predator, but certainly someone who is smarter and stronger than them, certainly to start with. And how do skilfull horsemasters manage to convince half a ton of unbroken horse to accept a saddle and bridle? By being firm and assertive, but gentle at the same time. Monty Roberts, the Horse Whisperer, "joins up" with horses and has them eating out of his hand, allowing a rider on their back, within a fraction of the time normally taken to break a horse. He talks to horses in exactly the same way as CM talks to dogs - hence the reason for CM's title of Dog Whisperer. Dogs behave for Cesar, not through fear, not because they think "ooh heck, he's going to clobber me", but because they want to, because - for the red zoners - they realise they have met their match, and for the less serious cases, perhaps because they want to, because at last here is someone who is understanding that their human pack are as wet as a dishcloth and they are fed up having to be pack leader the whole time.

Someone here commented on their mal not accepting CM pinning them down - I agree, he wouldn't, but it is highly unlikely that CM would have had to pin the mal down in the first place. Being closer to the wolf than most breeds, unless the highest of red zoner, the mal would have the intelligence to realise he had met his match. My dog, a husky mal cross and an alpha male to boot, would have had a very dim view of CM pinning him down. I had to do it to him once or twice, and so did my husband when he had stepped over the boundary. But CM doing it? If he had had to, my boy would have accepted it, but probably grumbled at him, not snarled, but grumbled, and my guess is, would have done what was asked of him.

I would have loved to have had Cesar work on Hal's recall. I think he would have advised that we castrated him, which we would never have done.