I have been very critical of Cesar Millan here, on Dog Star Daily, on twitter, and in comments on other blogs. To be clear, I don’t like his methods and I find his explanations for what he is doing frequently baffling and sometimes infuriating.
One of the frequent rebuttals to anyone criticizing Cesar is that we must not watch the show. I have decided to take this particular criticsm head on and not only watch the show, but provide commentaries.
Having just finished the first commentary, I’ll say up front this is not easy. Sometimes the show provides the viewer with an idea of elapsed time, other times I am not sure if we are looking at “real time” or not. Cesar frequently does not explain exactly what he is trying to accomplish, which makes giving him a fair evaluation difficult. And yes, I want to be fair. Just making fun of him (as easy as it can be at times) won’t help anyone.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (and again) The Dog Whisperer is not a how-to show. It’s a reality show. Each case is framed as a drama, and the cinematography, music, and direction is cleared aimed for maximum tension. Good, safe, and effective dog training just ain’t like that in real life. (Sorry.) Early on, the producers and Cesar seemed to be pretty clear on that. But lately; not so much. When I go to the show’s home page I see links to his books, magazine and other products that sort of muddy the issue.
I am going to assume that what I see on the screen is what happened. Sometimes I think this will work in Cesar’s favor. Other times it may not, because sometimes what I see and hear just doesn’t make any damn sense. But, that will be the rule: what Cesar and his producers put on the screen is what happened.
Whether you are a Cesar fan or not, I think you will get something out of these commentaries. Either way, I hope you read and comment. The first one will be online later today.
4 Comments
I’m looking forward to the first one. Not sure if you’ll cover this, but an interesting thing to analyze would be not just his interacting with his dogs, but also his interaction with the owners.
I really like that you said:
” Good, safe, and effective dog training just ain’t like that in real life.”
I put a saddle on one of our young horses for the first time yesterday. Honestly, someone watching would have probably been bored. The saddle went on, the cinch got tightened, the horse stood in the middle of the round pen untied and relaxed the entire time. No running around, no bucking, no drama or distress. I got most of it on video, which I plan to put on youtube at some point, but it is not very exciting!
But, the horse had had all the proper and prior preparation. Work with desensitization with hands and brushes, saddle pads and bareback pads, and even ropes and girths being tightened around his belly. By the time we got to the saddle, he couldn’t have cared less.
Good training is stress free and (usually) drama free. Not very exciting for TV.
Mary H.
http://stalecheerios.com/blog
GREAT idea. I recently took some still photos from the Shadow episode; to help out a behaviourist who wanted to complain to Ofcom about the show. It took me quite a long time to go through the episode and I was ignoring much of what CM said and just focusing on his actions and the dog’s responses. I realise this is probably one of the worst CM episodes, but what I saw did actually shock me. There is so much that is glossed over in the filming, but when you watch the dog’s reactions frame by frame; it’s actually quite frightening that he can convince owners he is improving their dog’s emotional state.
I look forward to reading your commentaries.
Thanks. I will delve a bit more into the dogs’ body postures and other aspects of the show in future commentaries. I’ll also include some stills if I can. Hopefully hulu.com will stay current with the show.
related to what Kirsty said, sometimes with horse training videos it is very interesting to turn off the sound and just watch the interactions between horse and trainer.
Then, you don’t get the trainer’s explanation, but really get to watch the body language and what is taking place. Often, our interpretation is changed based on what the trainer says is happening.
This would be interesting to do with Millan as well.
Mary
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