Steve Dale

Found this guy while googling Oprah and Cesar. Here's the article he wrote. Followed by this one.

He's a pet journalist who writes a newspaper column and has two radio shows.

I noticed this show interviewing Patricia McConnell about dominance.

It was obvious they were talking (negatively) about Cesar Millan and I found it amusing that they couldn't even bear to speak his name. Like he's Voldemort or something. Steve called him the flavor of the month and both seem to regard his methods as barbaric.

They seemed to equate dominance with being mean. And anybody who's ever watched Cesar knows he's the opposite of mean. I'm not saying what they're saying is wrong. But I'm saying they they are wrong in characterizing Cesar's methods as mean. I think they're just hung up on the word. Patricia has a chapter in The Other End of the Leash about dominance. (They don't use that term anymore.) And then talks about being a benevolent leader.

Well, I guess you might get that idea if you saw him jabbing a wild dog in the neck or forcing a dog to lie on his side after an attack. They probably saw that back in 2005 and were horrified and stopped watching. (Cesar says he keeps learning and is a work in progress. As we all should be.)

Not trying to be negative about Steve and Patricia. Well maybe Steve, but don't really know him. Still love Patricia's books. But still love Cesar too.

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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. 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.

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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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[8/11/10] Apparently (or not apparently) Steve did have an interview with Cesar on his show (2/18/07)

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[8/11/10] article from 11/8/08

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American Humane to include Cesar in symposium, Steve Dale gives some props (2/17/10)

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[8/11/10] More Steve Dale on Cesar (7/14/10)

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[8/11/10] the latest on Steve Dale on Steve Dale on Cesar Millan (7/16/10)

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[9/3/10] Patricia McConnell on Cesar in her blog (via Bark Magazine)