A strange bit of advice I received?

A few days ago I was chatting to our IT manager here, I had no idea he owned a dog and he was asking how my dog was etc. I said fine, having a few recall probs but shes a good dog.

Anyway he said to me the best way to show dominance is to bit a dogs ear

I laughed and said you must be mad, Roxy would love it if I sat there nibbeling on her ears . Not only that recall is not a dominance issue. He assured me to bite a dogs ear and hurt them would fix everything and walked out.

He came back in two seconds later and said "erm, you own a Doberman Pincher ( ) dont you?" I said "Dobermann, yes.."

His reply? "yeah dont bite thats breed ears, it'll rip your face off!"

the entire conversation made me laugh, how bizarre.

So has anyone else heard of this, erm, biting a dogs ear malarky?

How on earth is a dog going to associate ear biting with what it's done wrong? After all in order to get that close to a dog it's gonna have to have come back!
Becky

Not the ears, but when we got Storm i was told by someone the best way to stop him biteing would be bite him back as it would show him i was boss. I just for this was cruel and not needed, but the image of biteing a dog just made me laugh.

In the film "Snow Dogs" (I think) one guy bites a huskies ear to show him that he is in charge...

I've heard of it, but I hardly think it would work.
Max would think I was playing, and probably nibble my ears back!

I recently had some one tell me he bit his puppys ear, I gave him a lecture, he said it was the best way to stop a puppy biting you...needless to say he has now given the puppy away probably cause he could'nt control it.

When I was younger a family round the corner from where I lived used to believe in this. They had a GSD which they did it to now and then...hard enough to make the dog yelp.

Pretty sure it didn't work & may have made things worse - the dog did used to bite from time to time out of excitement rather than aggression - (bit me once when we were sledging down a hill) but I'm pretty convinced that them biting her indicated to her that biting was ok.

It may have worked on other dogs, but I just don't see the need - goes back to difference in training techniquies - i.e. force rather than persuasion.

Ahh I see, he's obviously watched this then

Roxy would think i was playing too

I think Jaz would hate me if I bit her ear.

It seems cruel and unnecessary, and I'm not surprised that it doesn't work.

My two would just wonder what on earth you would be doing ?! Really annoys me when you hear stupid training 'ideas' like that

seen it done....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
It is an old style training 'method' totally ridiculous, totally outdated and totally stupid (IMO!!!!)
I read your post with dismay that people are still suggesting doing things like this....then when I read what he said about Dobermans...some people huh?