The article is Teaching an Aggressive Dog How to Be Social Around Other Dogs. Notable names mentioned in the article are Ian Dunbar, Jean Donaldson, William Campbell, Trish King.
There is a general feeling that Cesar Millan is an old-school, punishment type trainer. I don't completely agree. Or even agree in general.
Punishment is a tricky word. In common usage punishment is thought of hurting or causing pain. In dog training/behavior using, punishment is an action which leads to a decreased frequency of (unwanted) behavior. They're not necessarily the same thing. There can be punishment without pain.
That latter is how I generally view Cesar's punishment. He patterns his correction like how a dog corrects another dog. They usually would nip somewhere at the dog's side (neck or flank) to get the other dog to stop. Causing pain is not the objective. The objective is to stop the behavior.
So I do agree one should not pair pain to unwanted behavior. But I do not believe that it follows that corrections should never be made.
At the beginning of the later shows, Cesar is shown lightly pushing a man's shoulder's. That was to illustrate that he is not hurting the dog but more getting his attention to him and away from whatever he was thinking of.
I'm sure I can write this better. And maybe I'll revise this. But I wanted to get some of my thoughts down as they streamed in.
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