My first Dog Whisperer commentary is on “Bella”, from season 8. (Episode 9 according to Hulu.) This episode was first shown in August of 2009. It is the newest complete episode on Hulu, so I am starting with that. In order to avoid charges of “taking things out of context” (another frequent Cesar Millan defense,) I will only provide commentary on complete episodes.

Here is a link to the episode. It appears that NGC has disabled embedding, even though they offer the code to do it.

This episode only covers one dog, which is a pretty good starting point. We see Cesar work in depth (relatively speaking) on one case.

Bella is a 4 1/2 year old American Bulldog. She belongs to Nate, a rehabilitated alcoholic who adopted Bella during a pretty chaotic time in his life. It appears that during Nate’s time partying she was teased and maybe even abused.

Bella displays very serious food guarding. Footage is shown of Nate trying to get to her bowl and she reacts very aggressively. She also displays very serious aggression toward other dogs when walking on leash.

After showing us (very dramatically) Bella’s issues, we see an interview between Nate and Cesar. Cesar immediately gloms onto the Bella’s terrible behavior on leash:

“I think that’s the first thing you have to learn. If you can’t walk a dog, you can’t tell her anything.”

Um. Why? For Cesar, walking the dog seems to be some sort of ritual for establishing dominance over the dog. We’ve coexisted with dogs for at least 10,000 years according to most anthropologists. When did we start walking them on leash? 100 years ago? Maybe 200? How did people handle them before that?

Nate also says that he feels guilty about the current situation with Bella. Cesar seems dismayed by Nate’s admission:

The more you live in that…guilt…or whatever other energy, the more weak you appear to her. So if you are soft energy, she have to take the dominant position.”

So here we are, about 8 minutes into 45 minutes of TV, and already in a struggle for dominance with Bella. This is my fundamental problem with Cesar. All of our dealings with our dogs are phrased in terms of a battle for control. It shapes everything he does, as we see in this episode.

Nate’s behavior toward Bella displays a lot of stress. He shouts a lot. He struggles for control over the leash. His body language has a lot of “big” movements that undoubtedly contribute to Bella’s behavior. In this way, his stress is visible to Bella and most likely makes things worse. But why “weak?” Why must it be positioned as an opening for Bella to “take over?” Is she hoping to get him to change his will? Relinquish the remote control? Finally let her drive the car?

Next, Cesar “evaluates” Bella by approaching her where she is tied up in the yard. His reading of her body language is pretty good, but it is a terrible situation and sets Bella to become stressed and fail. Being tied up is very stressful for most dogs, and having a strange person (not to mention a camera crew) approach her only makes things worse. Evaluating her in this circumstance is not going to provide Cesar with any useful information.

Bella reacts with barking and lunging so, of course, Cesar declares that he is going to “defeat” her psychologically. Here again, we are in a struggle. We’re not trying address her aggressive issues or help her deal with her problem. We are in a battle of wills!

After a short time Bella stops reacting to Cesar and lies down. This is great! Bella is able to adjust to Cesar very rapidly. Cesar’s technique, standing still and not reacting to her, is effective and helps her with settling down, although the idea that this is a “defeat” for Bella is anthropomorphic. Even though I would never put a dog in this particular position, if I somehow got there I would take her ability to relax so quickly as a good sign.

Cesar then says something that completely baffles me. Dogs with short noses like American Bulldogs don’t “really” use their noses. What?? He tries an experiment with some vanilla scented spray to get her to “use her nose.” This is an interesting idea – attempting to redirect her attention with a strong scent, but I find his assertion about brachycephalic breeds bewildering. While their short noses make their sense of smell weaker than other breeds, it still dominates their perception of the world and they use their noses just as much as any other dog.

After some more experimenting, Cesar decides the Bella is too stressed and calls it quits. Excellent. Cesar makes the right call. Bella does appear to be very stressed and pushing her any more would have accomplished nothing good.

I would have handled our first meeting very differently. Cesar explicitly mentions that he did not want Nate there so he could “send her into a different emotional state.” (Whatever…) I would have wanted him him there. He is part of the package, and how Bella reacts when he is not there really isn’t the point. I also wouldn’t have made my first approach with her tied to a tree. It would have been either in her house or outside, with Nate holding her leash (loosely) in either scenario.

Back on the show, Cesar jumps from saying that Bella is too stressed to immediately throwing her into an even more stressful situation. He has Nate do a couple of “walk-bys” with Bella on leash to see how she reacts to another dog. Why? If she’s too stressed, she’s too stressed. I would have called it a day.

However, when Cesar sees Bella straining at the end of her leash on a prong collar, he decides to remove it. Good call! While I dislike a choker, in this situation it is a far better call than a prong. The pinching of the prong, as Cesar says, is probably contributing to, if not triggering, Bella’s violent reaction to other dogs while on leash.

Cesar places an improvised choker high on her neck and walks Bella past the other dog with the leash very, very, tight. He corrects her if she looks at the other dog. He points out that she is now “calm.” To me she looks very stressed and almost afraid to move. “Calm” and “still” are not the same thing. Her tail is tucked, she is licking her lips, and she tries to steal a few nervous looks at other dog. I would have used a flat collar or a head halter and a lot more distance for this exercise. I would not have used corrections for looking around. I want a calm dog, not a stiff robot.

Cesar takes Bella to a “ranch” that is run by one of his students. He puts a muzzle on her and has her on a long lead. He lets her roam with a group of dogs. This is risky, but not necessarily a bad idea. Bella is much more relaxed than she is on leash, which is not a surprise – many dogs that display aggressive behavior on leash are perfectly fine off leash.

However, a dog scratching at the ground gets Bella’s attention and she lunges toward him. Cesar immediately grabs Bella, pushes her into a sit, and then pushes her to the ground and pins her. When she relaxes, he lets her up. Grabbing Bella and pulling her away from the other dog is a risky move. Not because Cesar might get bit – she’s wearing a muzzle, remember – but because it runs the risk of creating yet another negative association with being near other dogs. Approach another dog, get manhandled by a human. Likewise with pinning her to ground. Pinning her to ground may have “put her into another emotional state” as Cesar would say, but what did she learn from it? What was taught in that situation?

What Cesar tried to do, teach Bella that it’s OK to be near other dogs, is a viable strategy for helping her, but I would have done weeks, maybe months, of foundation work beforehand. I would have done some desensitization to both the muzzle (to reduce the stress of wearing it) and to other dogs, starting from a distance. I would have trained Bella to respond to her name and basic obedience commands, even in the face of distractions. I would have included Nate in the exercises because, as I said above, he’s part of the package and how she acts with him and his ability to what I would have been hired to address. I know I can handle dogs, it’s Nate that needs help.

Cesar then removes the muzzle and has Bella on leash in front of other dogs while they are in their pens. This takes setting Bella up to fail to an entirely new level, as she now has at least a half dozen opportunities to engage in fence fighting. She takes advantage of one of the opportunities. This exercise is completely pointless and places unnecessary stress on her.

After a while, Bella stops fence fighting. It’s not clear how much time has passed. Either she finally gave up, or something happened that we missed. Cesar drops the lead and lets her explore while the dogs behind the fences are barking. She starts to sniff the perimeter. Cesar says he likes that she is “using her nose”…but he doesn’t like it because it makes the other dogs nervous. Good point…but I guess stopping her isn’t an option? Cesar approaches Bella with a hand up while she is sniffing a dog and his pen. She walks up to him with her tail wagging. She looks at him and then looks away. Cesar smacks her on the side of her head.

Cesar explains that she looked at another dog and “gave him an energy that I didn’t agree with.” (Whatever…) Cesar then waited for her to be distracted (his words) before hitting her to “catch her by surprise” and then “followed through with the energy.” (How many whatevers are too many for one paragraph?)

If you are having problems following that, you are not alone. I’m not sure what Cesar is talking about when he refers to energy. Sometimes it seems like an abstraction. Sometimes it seems like more of the new age-y woo-woo bullshit that TV and the Internet is full of.

I can say that the smack was far too removed from anything Cesar accused Bella of doing wrong to be considered a valid correction.

Sometime after the smack, the dogs become quiet. Cesar then takes credit for the dogs getting tired of barking.

I don’t see the point of this exercise and can’t really tell you what I would do different. I just wouldn’t do it.

Next, Cesar does some work with Bella on her food guarding.

We briefly see Cesar exercising Bella on a treadmill to burn off some energy. Then, he gets her agitated by pointing a scrub brush on a stick at her. And then he kicks her.

Sorry, watching this stuff gets to me. Let me explain.

Cesar presents Bella with a bowl of food, and then uses a scrub brush on a 4 foot pole to get between her and the food. Cesar seems to be saying that by using the brush as both a shield and a taunt, baiting Bella into attacking it, and then refusing to back away he is demonstrating to her that aggression won’t work. The kick was to deliberately set her off and then prove to her that he won’t back down.

In other words this is a battle and if Cesar can win, Bella will stop guarding her food.

Before I go any further, let’s hear a word from our sponsor, real behavioral science. Food aggression is a manifestation of “resource guarding.” It is a “hard wired” behavior that dogs and wolves share. Many dogs never display it. Some display it in only very specific circumstances. For others, it is always apparent. It is not learned, and the fact that Nate mentions early in the show that Bella drew blood over a piece of dropped shrimp when she was a very small puppy reinforces that.

Punishment is not the way to go with this behavior. With food guarding, hand-feeding is sometimes an option. It’s also good to train a “give” command, starting out with low value items and working your way up to very valuable items. I would also train a release and use it to tell Bella when it is OK to approach the food bowl. It’s a tough problem to deal with and I don’t want to make an already too-long post longer.

Cesar gives up on the scrub brush and moves to a “vibration” e-collar. He goes through great lengths to demonstrate how mild it is. I see electrodes, but I am going to take his word for it that it only vibrates. When he places it on Bella and triggers it, she jumps off the bowl and looks cowed and miserable.

Even if the collar is not shocking her, it’s obvious that Bella finds the collar very aversive. Cesar has “fixed” the issue by finding a punishment that is severe enough to override the resource guarding. I don’t trust this as a “fix.” I believe that there is a very high risk for unintended consequences, and I am not sure that someday Bella won’t find something valuable enough to guard again. I also dislike punishing a dog this severely. As I said above, there are more humane alternatives.

The show gives us a update on progress. According to the narrator, Cesar has worked with Bella for a total of two hours. Two hours to “fix” leash aggression and food guarding is insane. The video shows Bella reacting violently to another dog on leash with the prong as compared to off leash. Apples and oranges.

Cesar brings Nate back. He arranges some walk bys with a large number of dogs. He has fit Bella with a Gentle Leader head harness, which I like a lot as a solution! Bella responds very well to the head collar. However, after a minute or two I see Cesar coaching Nate on jerking the leash to pull Bella away from another dog. This is dangerous with a Gentle Leader, and I have never seen an experienced trainer recommend leash corrections with a head collar. By jerking a dog’s neck very violently there is a real risk of injury. Again, with some foundation work Nate could instead call Bella’s name and reward her for responding.

Otherwise, I like the “walk by” drills for working on her leash aggression. The process does seem completely rushed, but it is most likely for the camera. Cesar’s coaching of Nate is very good. Cesar is great at praising people. If he was more willing to tell dogs what to do, he would be a lot easier to watch. I liked the positive finish with a side-by-side walk of the dogs.

We return to the food guarding and a utterly pointless seven minute standoff with the scrub brush. After the seven minutes Bella gives up and it is presented as some kind of victory. To my mind, Bella deserves the credit for figuring out how silly the whole thing was.

Cesar returns to the e-collar, and uses it in conjunction with the scrub brush. Bella again reacts very fearfully to the collar and moves away from the bowl. She looks very unhappy. Cesar then pets her with the brush to show her that it’s OK. (Whatever….) He then demonstrates that she will leave the bowl when the brush approaches.

As I said above, whether the collar is actually shocking her or not, Bella obviously finds the collar to be extremely aversive. It’s not clear that there will be no side effects to this form of punishment.

Six and a half weeks later we see that Nate has been working with Cesar’s student on Bella’s training. Bella seems to be doing fine, but there is a big difference. Bella is now responding to cues: “take it,” “off.” and a “go to place.” Cesar did not train these cues; at no point did he discuss the idea of training a dog to do something rather than punishing her until she stops doing something. It looks to me like Cesar’s student is a bit of a better trainer than he is.

This episode was a mixed bag for me. While Cesar frequently teeters on the edge of showing a great understanding of both dogs and their people, he almost always falls back to an adversarial model and a heavy reliance on punishment. He is adept at reading dogs, but fills his readings with anthropomorphic motives and jumps to very bold conclusions about what is going on. His explanations for what he is doing are almost always completely baffling.