Cesar Milan Leash

Pet Help
My sister loves the Cesar Milan show and thinks he’s an amazing dog trainer. When she heard I was getting a puppy, she told me I should watch his show. I did, and almost immediately I disliked him. I do however like the Cesar Milan leash.

I never liked Cesar Milan…only the Cesar Milan Leash

Though I didn’t know what it was called at the time, he believes in pack theory and being “alpha” in order to train a dog. He seemed to me (who’s never had much experience with dogs at all) to misunderstand dogs, labeling fearful and terrified dogs as “aggressive” and “dominant”, among other things. If a dog was fearful, he would take the fearful situation/item and throw the dog into it, instead of slowly working with it in order to gain trust and positive memories. I once saw an episode of his where a dog barked at the toaster whenever it went off. Know what he did? Grabbed the toaster and chased the dog around the house with it. He frequently seems to set dogs up for failure; though this doesn’t surprise me – he’s a television star, and in order to get views he needs to make the “training” exciting and dramatic, not slow and boring as most good training is.

But I saw something yesterday which really upset me. He had a dog brought to him (it looked like a French Bulldog, but I’m not familiar with those breeds) named Simon who had killed his owner’s pet pig. Not bit or mauled, killed. So we know already that Simon has the potential to be very dangerous around pigs, and needs a lot of help in order to get over this aggression. What does the fantastic Dog Whisperer do?

He takes Simon out to a small fenced area with four or five pigs in it. He gets a long Cesar Millan Training Leash Lead and Collar for the dog. He says the Cesar Milan leash is “the same as a muzzle.” (?)  He then lets the dog be near the pigs. Simon shows a lot of stress, but doesn’t growl or lunge at any of them and was actually quite close to some of them, which is great in itself. After five minutes, Cesar thinks it’s a good idea to take Simon off Cesar Milan leash and let him run around. Despite this horrible lapse in judgement, Simon still doesn’t try to attack the pigs.

Until one of the assistants picks up a pig by one leg and it squeals. Yes, you can see it on camera – an assistant, who seems to be hiding his actions behind a flower pot, picks up a pig by one leg after Simon is let loose and makes it squeal.

The pig is attacked and the assistant lets it happen, even holding the pig by it’s leg in reach of the dog and making no move to lift it higher or detach the dog. So Cesar goes over and gets Simon, the pig is bleeding by the ear, and all the other pigs are obviously stressed. Cesar then immediately lets Simon go again and he predictably attacks the pig a second time. Cesar chases Simon around the pen, trying to do an alpha roll on him which results in a bite and Simon running off again. Simon by this point is cowering and trying to avoid a confrontation, he is obviously terrifed of Cesar (who is ironically running around saying “I got it, I got it”). Then Cesar finally catches Simon and does a “successful” alpha roll.

You can watch any number of videos on this by searching “Cesar Milan pig” on YouTube, I recommend it in fact, there are way better break-downs of the incident. This guy makes me sick and I don’t know why any network would still air his horrible show.

 However, Cesar isn’t entirely evil! He has around 30 dogs and many were Red Zone cases.  There is evidence of him lifting a dog up on its leash. I saw that episode didn’t like it but understood why it was done. I am sure most of us know about the hierarchy of dogs. I have seen it with wolves when Alpha goes out and hunts bring back the food. Any sibling or puppy who goes to eat first the puppy is certainly told off quite harshly. No one seems to say that’s bad or excessive! Not sticking up for Cesar Milan but maybe the same thing applies here even though it’s not a food issue! This is my 50 cents worth.