Ben: An Aggressive Dog Case Study | Karen Pryor Clickertraining: 'via Blog this'
The article above is a great read, and the book Click to Calm: Healing the Aggressive Dog written by the same author Emma Parsons was quite ground breaking at the time (not so much the theory contained, but the fact that there was a book on it), and continues to be a great resource.
I have to admit, when I first started getting interested again in the dog world, I got sucked in by the populist pseudo-scientific and rather antiquated world of Cesar Millan. Only a couple of months reading about dog training and psychology quickly led me to realise that there are much better, more humane ways to rehabilitate aggressive and/or fearful dogs. Sometimes it may take longer, and may not be as 'televisual' but it keeps the stress levels of the dogs in question as low as possible - and I think that should be our aim when training and rehabilitating. You don't need to alpha roll a dog to make it 'better' - for any dog that is struggling mentally that will be an incredibly stressful experience.
The thing is, I think Cesar has some good instincts, he can read canine body language fairly well, he has great timing - and so would be a good clicker trainer.... if he could just reach out to the rest of the dog training community and realise what is going on. Dominance theory is almost completely debunked, and indeed his attitude did change over the course of his shows somewhat, but it would be a huge change for him to move away from it. However, an awful lot of trainers out there are 'crossover' trainers, so there is no reason that he can't change too.
I am sorry to say, I was a J&P trainer.
