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My thoughts on Cesar Milan are pretty mixed.
He's really modelled his 'plan' on the highly successful 'natual horsemanship' movement in the riding world. When I say highly successful I'm referring to the financial rewards reaped by the 'Natural Horsemanship' trainers and the 'Horse Whisperers' (a term primarily associated with Monty Roberts) In both spheres inexperienced owners with out of control animals flock to them because of the supposed 'magic bullet' So far it sounds like CM's methods are most similar to MR's methods.
There's little doubt in my mind that some of his advice is sound. Dogs are not people and cannot be treated as such. Much of training is also about changing your way of thinking and behaviour so that the dog will correspondingly change his/hers.
There are alot of people out there being dominated by their dogs who can benefit from his advice.
Although I believe in an prefer positive reinforcement methods I do believe negative reinforcement methods are also occasionally appropriate. Dog society does not purely function on positive reinforcement. Training typically does not either.
Many people who would gravitate to him are people who have mistakenly confused 'positive' methods with weak and ineffective methods.
HOWEVER....
Hs style is not for every dog and it is the responsibility of the owner/handler to study:
- not only CM's methods but other trainers as well.
- the type of animal each trainer style chooses to work with most often. The type of animal to which they gravitate is one for whom that trainer has had the most success. Trainers who work successfully with similar tempermants to the owner/handlers dog are one to be emulates
- to learn as much as possible about their type of dog including breed(s) temperment.
It is also the responsibility of the owner/handler to understand there ARE NO QUICK FIXES. That's the hard lesson
If CM's visibility and presence encourages over-whelmed owner/handlers to work smarter with their dogs, then great. He isn't the be all end all though ... and as I learned a long time ago there's nothing new under the sun in training just flashier gimmicks and shinier packaging.
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