Of course you can disagree Muddy 
and just because you do so I wonât make any silly assumptions .
Thank you.
I donât think there is anything in my posts that is unnecessary Muddy, I donât abhor anyone putting forward a valid argument .
http://www.over50sforum.com/showthread.php?t=29355
There is a dog trainer who has a way with dogs. He has a show on TV called The Dog Whisperer. He helps those who have dogs that are hard to control. In many cases in just 5 minutes he is able to change a dogâs negative actions to positive ones.
Pit bulls are very aggressive dogs. He emphasizes that its not the dog thats agressive but the handler. He makes a good point, but with Pit Bulls you never know what might set them off
I think the sad, and often unacknowledged fact is that the vast majority of those putting themselves out there as dog trainers (or even more trendily âdog behaviouristsâ) are ineffective and sometimes dangerous charlatans who donât actually have a clue about dogs or dog behaviour.
Whether they are âold schoolâ followers of Woodhouse/Milan etc, or âup to dateâ followers of the current âpositive reinforcementâ models, they are often equally useless.
Dogs are like people - there is no âone-size-fits-allâ training regime which will work for all dogs. As for the âmodernâ methods, far from being modern, they are usually based on BF Skinnerâs long outdated âOperant Conditioningâ theories which are so mechanistic as to be laughable.
As an example, we once picked up a husky from an elderly lady who said she could not control it. It pulled on the lead so hard that she had fallen several times. Her back garden had a perfect circular mud path trodden into the lawn where the poor dog was walking round and round in circles day after day after day. Over a period of three years, she had paid out well over ÂŁ3500 to a variety of âregisteredâ and âauthorisedâ and âqualifiedâ trainers - none of who had any success with training this dog not to pull on the lead. My wife took 15 minutes to train him. When we rehomed him a couple of weeks later (after his assessment period) his new owners were amazed at how well he walked on lead. All it took was someone who knew the breed inside out and knew which buttons to press to get the right results. The dog has now been in his new home for five years and still only pulls when the owners want him to (ie running in harness).
Well said Mick
You have highlighted a major problem
the elderly lady and the husky
Under exercised and bored out of its tree!
Now there are elderly ladies and elderly ladies .
probably the elderly lady would have had the same lack of success with the husky when she was 20!
Some people should not have dogs or at least should pick dogs more suited to their life style.
and some would be hard pressed to keep a gold fish in order much less a dog!
well done your wife !
I agree mick one size never fits all.
I think that is so Mike but if I suggest anything to anyone it wonât be a trainer who fills a dog with fear. That is very difficult to train out later.
I had a women who bought a Cocker to me which was destined to be put down because she was afraid it would bite her children. I asked for a history and apparently she had been following a book which told her to remove the dogâs food when it was eating. They did so and when it growled hit it with a newspaper and ended up with a dog which guarded its food possessively so much so no one could go in the room when it was eating. It also became aggressive when it saw a newspaper . She left the dog with me and I re trained it over a number of weeks and it went to a new home.
People see so called trainers like Millan on the TV/in books and try to emulate them doing untold harm in some cases.
I always teach dogs NOT to be protective of their food .
This is best done when they are small puppies .
When its easy to touch them and yes sometimes take the food and then replace it.
So many children are bitten walking innocently by a dogs food.
this is not something i have learned form Ceasr Milan !
It was the way i have always brought up dogs and having three children none of which have ever been bitten by any of our dogs .
Dogs which came mostly form rescue homes where some had bitten people.
The pit bull i had for two weeks recently i touched and stroked when it was eating i was careful and saw first how it would react
Only a few times and soon it was eating and wagging its tail when i touched it.
This is NOT something i would advise everyone to do .
BTW it has settled nicely in its new home
a dear little dog.
It may be seen on practical all dog programmes including the Dog Whisperer the advice if in dount not to do it at home without the presence of a dog professional ( which basically means someone who knows how to handle dogs )
Iâve seen this treatment recommended too, Meg. Not at all surprised at the results. I wouldnât like my dinner constantly pinched either! This stupid âdominanceâ thing is so wrong, but it is still how some people train unfortunately.
I also believe you are right that some people do try to copy someone else. They havenât sufficient interest to try and understand why they have a problem in the first place, nor to explore appropriate methods of sorting it out.
I am pleased to hear the little rescue dog has settled Muddy
I have my own way for teaching a dog not to recourse guard which takes time and patience. It doesnât involve taking away a dogâs dinner away or any form of pain or physical punishment .
Me neither Mups and I would bite you if you tried 
We teach by hand feeding -messy times but all our dogs know they can hand us food and it will always be given back to them. Was also lucky we do that or we wouldnât have realised so quickly the problems Elsie has with her sight and brain. Vet says brain damage like hers usually means a dog fails to thrive and is euthanised before 6 months but we have persevered and apart from never letting her off lead she is still thriving.
But Milan forces dogs to do very unnatural things. If he had any empathy he would know long legged dogs like boxers should not walk on slippery floors itâs too dangerous hips and legs break far too easily.
If your way works Meg then go for it
There are many ways to skin a cat ( not a good analogy in an animal forum !)
I never hit a dog when training .
Taking the food alway for a few seconds its easy and effective .
I would only do this with a puppy .
For some things ie big dogs that jump up .
this can be frightening for people who donât know the dog and also not everyone appreciates being covered with mud and dog hairs .
I knock a plastic drinks bottle with a few stones inside it on the floor . Many dogs dont like this and soon associate it with NO / Down.
the main thing is giving clear signals to the dog at first,
When they know these can be refined as to be invisible.
Best to do whatever works and helps the dog understand in a kind way. I do think some dogs are punished when the only problem was, they didnât understand what was required, and that can only be the humanâs fault.
I like to establish a good, loving bond with mine, and stress-free veterinary handling when necessary is important to me, too.
To be fair though Muddy, sorry, but I must confess I donât like C.M either from what little I have seen of him so far.
I just recently saw him goading a little Daxy by constantly poking him in the ribs, to encourage him to bite, and then punishing him for doing so.
He also got himself into alot of trouble demonstrating his methods on telly last year. Thousands of complaints were logged, and even the interviewer looked rather âdispleasedâ shall we say.
I think rather alot of people in the UK donât value him in the same way alot of Americans seem to.
Like alot of things, at the end of the day, its just down to personal preference and beliefs, and not worth getting into big arguments over. It wonât change a thing.
The way he comes across to me is he trains the owners (first and foremost) along with the dogs. At no time have I seen him torture a dog and I have watched dozens of his programmes. I believe he does have the knowledge and experience to deal with problem behaviour in some dogs which in most cases the owners have encouraged bad behaviour.
well said 
Sadly in my life overseas i have seem many really tortured dogs and horses.
Dogs used as bait dogs for dog fights , dogs throwned in wells and covered up so they may starve to death . Dogs left chained in the full sun with limited access to water not for an hour nor a day but for years Dogs that live and die on a chain .
Pit bulls dragging heavy weights behind them to muscle them up for fighting .
dogs that are living skeletons.
Always wherever i have lived i have joined the local humane society and done what i could .
So when people talk about Ceasr Milan âtorturing dogsâ its all so much nonsense .
When you have seen an animal that has been really tortured - you would know what true horror is .
The man takes on dogs that useless owners have allowed to become a problem.
Not a method I would ever use Muddy, ok it may work but you risk introducing fear by association in some dogs and why would you when there are better methods which donât.