Victoria challenges Cesar as alpha dog

This was an interesting article about the "competing" shows of Cesar and Victoria and the alpha-dog "myth". For one thing, it was at time.com.

Actually more interesting are the comments which are naturally divided but seem more in favor of Cesar (numerically anyway). [At pawnation too.] (Reference to this article was posted in dogwhispererfans, so the comments there are naturally enough pro-Cesar.)

Though I'm a Cesar fan (which doesn't mean anti-Victoria), I can see where some of the positive-only trainers are coming from as they encounter dogs that have been damaged by punitive training methods. Tamar mentions it in her book. And Turid on her website (have to look it up). I don't necessarily see that as anti-Cesar though since I don't see him as a punishment trainer and is against punishment methods himself. (He does use adversives, but so does Victoria (or did anyway). And after watching them for a few years, it seems to me that both of them have evolved their methods and are becoming less and less adversive over time.)

Another name has come in the discussion Stan Rawlinson (the original Dog Listener who is apparently at odds with Jan Fennell's techniques). [Just what I need, more confusion.]

[see also balanced trainers, women vs. men dog training]

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Funny. As I continue to watch Victoria Stilwell, I notice more and more of Cesar's concepts being used in her show [like body blocking and maintaing calm energy]. And Cesar using a lot of positive methods on his show. Oddly, I seem to notice a lot of these "positive" trainers speaking negatively about people, something Cesar rarely, if ever, does. [R+ for dogs, P+ for P+]

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[7/14/10] Maybe not. Today I was looking at IMOTD's last episode called Victoria's Outdoor Secrets which was basically a highlights show. Featured near the beginning was actress Nicole Sullivan (the dogwalker on King of Queens). She mentioned she had been using a guy from the "alpha" camp and Victoria came down hard on "them". Funny, I had thought she had been on Dog Whisperer but I guess not (since I haven't been able to dig up that episode that I thought I had seen -- maybe it was another actress). Anyway, I'm happy that Nicole has her problem solved (I assume). Note: The IMOTD episode she was on was Hollywood Hounds.

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[5/14/11] Here's some more opinions. And still more (surprisingly uncensored considering it's on the Discovery Channel/Animal Planet forum). And so on.

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Victoria Stilwell proclaims why she isn't (and never has been) a 'purely positive' dog trainer