It's a "nip" in the dog world...
One of the major problems with this sort of thing is that humans aren't dogs. We're very (very) poor at pretending to be dogs. And our dogs aren't fooled - they know we're not dogs too
And that, in my mind, makes anyone (Milan included, if not especially) claiming to be behaving like a dog just a bit on the wacko side.
More importantly though, I think that trying to train a dog by pretending to be a dog (which is what thinking you're doing what another dog would do amounts to
) is both silly and dangerous. Silly, for the obvious reasons. But also dangerous because dog behaviour is a heck of a lot more sophisticated than biting each other when they don't like some behaviour (few individuals are that aggressive, fortunately).
It's a bit like the sorts of fools who advocate disciplining puppies by grabbing them by the necks and giving them a shake "just like their mothers would". What they forget to mention (and usually don't know) is that bitches rarely, if ever, discipline their puppies that way - and when they do, it is an escalation of a lot of warnings (the stare, the longer/harder stare, the lip curl, the low growl, the louder growl - and only after all of that might any physical discipline take place). But we humans are so good at being dogs that we bypass all of that and launch straight into the physical stuff :rolleyes: Little wonder that it rarely works.
Ironically (in some way), on the the few - and possibly the only - GOOD thing about Cesar Milan's shows is that he gets people to understand that dogs aren't little humans in furry coats. However, it does no good just turning that around and instead trying to emulate dogs ourselves
A more effective way to train a dog to behave in a human world is to be the human in the relationship...
What is the proper escalation of warnings that goes along with your "hand bite"? If it's nothing, then don't do it - you're certainly not emulating behaviour a dog will recognise from the "dog world" if you do.
I would also caution anyone against "doing what they saw on TV". EVEN if the trainer is using good positive reinforcement methods (which isn't the case here). What you see is only a fraction of what actually takes place, so to imagine it is enough knowledge to put a technique into practice is naiive at best and liable to do more harm than good.
As a final caution:
Actually, no, not on this site. As a new member, you've only just read and agreed to respect the rules for participating on Boxerworld - which do not allow the promotion of negative, punishment based training techniques. I suggest you re-read before posting again, particularly this bit:
Topics and behaviours inappropriate on this site include:
- Discussion of deliberate use of devices or practices that cause or have the potential to cause physical trauma to a dog. Boxerworld does recognise that people do have genuine questions regarding training tools (choke chains, prong collars, mousetraps etc) and methods, but we support and promote wholeheartedly positive training and behaviour management, that is, teaching the dog what to do by using positive methods, not teaching a dog what not to do by causing it discomfort and pain. Any threads which appear to promote "negative" training and methods will be closed.
Few of the methods used and advocated by Milan fall within anyones definition of positive training, and as such will not be promoted or supported on this site.
