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Old November 4th, 2007, 11:39 AM
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Lissa Lissa is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
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I read this book because I knew Monty Roberts supported her... I found it very disappointing to say the least.

It was about authoritative alpha wolf pack nonesense that has been disregarded for a long time. All of these alpha beliefs come from studies done on wolf packs in the 1940's... These were done with captive wolves and they were not from the same pack (they'd been trapped and lumped together from different packs). But on top of that, we take observations amongst wolves and think it apply's to dog-human relationships??? We aren't just jumping from one genus to another, we are now jumping species.

I remember her constantly saying that ignoring your dog when there is a seperation is how you assert leadership. So until your dog "submits" by lying down on its side, you are to ignore him (and this is for life, you never stop this).... Or that by eating a cracker before your dog eats he/she will know you are leader. And there is no tugging because the dog may realize he is stronger than you (and here she demonstrates her lack of well-roundedness because her suggestion is to play ball/retrieve - uuhhh not something that turns on every dog).
Her chapter on "dog-dog aggression" was very frustrating for me. She uses flooding and attempts to use a "positive association" after that which was ridiculous (she handled this case very poorly IMO).

I will say that she takes a non-aggressive approach to being dominant (which is better than some) but I don't find her ideas to be original, insightful or effective.
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