Cesar Millan explained – and Holly.

As a caveat, I don’t agree with everything that Cesar does.

But, mention the name Cesar Millan in any Positive Reinforcement forum on the internet and you will likely get ripped to shreds. Same goes for balanced training, many trainers don’t like him. We should all want Millans track record. The big difference with Millan, he’s not on facebook fighting about techniques and jumping into the war in dog training – he’s out there getting it done.

The problem for most trainers, they don’t understand what Millan does. One big thing about Millan, he’s pretty humble, there isn’t much ego in the man compared to other dog trainers. Millan freely admits that he makes mistakes, and that is something I can’t help but respect. Why would National Geographic air the episodes of Holly, Simon, Shadow etc knowing the backlash they would take?

When the “Dog Whisperer” hit the TV, it was an instant success. Millan tends to preach “rules, boundaries and limitations” – however, that’s all people seemed to have heard – and that’s not fair. If you watch many episodes in full, you will realize that the real message behind Millan is that “trust and respect is what builds confidence”. If you don’t trust, you’re in a toxic relationship with the animal – and that goes for human on human relationships as well. Most owners with aggressive or reactive dogs simply don’t trust their dog – Millans goal is show that the dog is capable of being a dog – and the owner has to change their mindset. If you can’t trust, then respect is impossible, and confidence can’t exist in that relationship.

Let’s look at Holly, the food aggressive Retriever as an example, Cesar took a bite from the dog. Trainers got on youtube beating down Millan, “I would have done this differently, and Millan forced the dog, hit the dog, made her scared, poor dog etc”. However, if you watch the entire episode, you’ll realize there is much you’re not being told.

Holly’s owners already had several trainers in to work with Holly, all of them failed – and trainers won’t tell you that. In the episode, Millan tried to recreate the aggression by bringing his camera crew in, and he brought his dogs in thinking maybe that would bring out the aggression. Nothing, no aggression at all. Then he brings the owner out, the owner is crippled up in fear in the background while Millan is squat down – and that’s when the food aggression comes out. The owner is causing the food aggression.

Now, bear in mind, Cesar is squat down in front of this food aggressive dog – he’s in a very vulnerable position. If Holly attacks, he won’t have time to move or defend himself. He’s showing her that he’s not afraid of her, I’m here, I’m in your space – and he needs her to back down. She needs to choose to go submissive on her own.

Then he hits her. Do I agree with the hit? It wasn’t me in front of the dog, he likely seen something that we didn’t. I know why he hit her on the neck – to break her out of the excitement, to snap her brain back to reality. You see, when a dog gets into an aggressive state – and humans as well – our thought process goes out the window. The brain disappears – you can’t work with a dog like that. Holly backs down, and keeps backing down – Millan follows through to calm cause that’s the end goal – to get the dog to be calm and engage the brain. A dog that bites in an aggressive state probably doesn’t remember doing it – and they aren’t going to rationalize it away.

The bite. Cesar fully admits that getting bit was his fault. He went over the top of her, he got cocky and Holly corrected it. I say corrected it because he disrespected her – and he admits it. He didn’t walk away, he kept moving forward after the bite simply to get her to go calm.

What many don’t realize is that Holly’s owners couldn’t handle her, they were too afraid of her – so they surrendered her to Millan and Holly currently resides with Millan.

Watch Millan explain what happened.

Now, watch the entire eposide with all this in mind.