The Loved Dog (and Cesar and LCK)

I noticed that a link to The Loved Dog is on the page regarding puppy mills on Oprah.com. It seems that Oprah has shifted from Cesar Millan to Tamar Geller.

That Geller disagrees with Cesar is evident on her views on treadmills, choke chains, and alpha rollovers all of whom Cesar makes use of.

I have no quarrel with Geller's methods. But the question I would have is how Tamar would handle the cases where Cesar uses these methods. Or whether she could handle those cases at all. (FWIW, see Lee Charles Kelley review of her book.)

Still the fact that Oprah (whom I regard highly) endorses Geller is something I do not take lightly.

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Surfing some more, I came across this anti-Cesar page from Seattle Dogworks. My summary would be that, even if Cesar's technigues might work for him. It might not work so well when performed by other people and in fact might be detrimental or even dangerous. In other words, do not attempt these techniques without consulting a professional. (Then again, that professional might tell you to kill your dog, so what do you have to lose? OTOH, he might not and have alternative techniques.)

I see they (Cristine Dahl) have a book out called Good Dog 101 with good reviews on Amazon.

Interestingly, I see that the whole staff of Seattle Dogworks are all women. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

*** [5/17/10]

I'm considering getting Tamar's book since I see a copy available at paperbackswap.

Looking at a review for the book , I see a recommendation for Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson who wrote Good Owners, Great Dogs which gets good reviews. Maybe I'll add it to my paperbackswap list. The reviewer also likes Dog Talk by John Ross. (So you know he's an old school guy -- Kilcommons worked under Barbara Wodehouse.)

From another review, Outwitting Dogs is recommended (only $5.18 from Amazon).

So maybe I'll look into this too.

There are 104 reviews of Tamar's book. 58 are five-star. 24 are four-star. I'd say that's pretty good. Maybe I'll get the book. After all, she WAS on Oprah.

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[5/17/10] Another book I see available on paperbackswap (linked on the Amazon Dog Listener page for example, though I'm not positive that where I saw it, maybe it was the paperbackswap Outwitting Dogs page) is How to Behave So Your Dog Behaves by Sophia Yin. It gets good reviews (currently 15 out of 20 five stars, 1 four star, 4 three star) on Amazon but one of the less positive ones is by none other than LCK. Here he actually says that Cesar's techniques are damaging to the dog. (After watching every single episode), that's something I definitely disagree with. But I can see if people misapply them, that could be true. Actually three stars from LCK is pretty good by him.

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[5/20/10] Tamar Geller on youtube