By DENNIS THOMPSETT

Posted 5 hours ago

Does the dog whisperer really kick dogs into submission? Is he nothing but a celebrated dog abuser?

He is, says Janis Bradley, an instructor at SPCA’s Academy for Dog Trainers in San Francisco. Cesar Millan’s constant leash jerks, kicks and snaps of the hand are so frequent they are not connected to any particular behaviour. This results in a state called ‘learned helplessness.” where the dog is afraid to do anything — and it creates high stress for the dog, which may cause him serious mental problems.

He is not, says Malcolm Gladwell on Gladwell.com.Gladwell spent time with Millan and reports that the dog whisperer is really gentle and spends a lot of time with the dogs but most of his gentler side is edited out of the show because of time considerations.

He is so, says Mark Derr in an article in the New York Times entitled “Pack of Lies.” Millan’s methods are not only outdated, but wrong. His theory that the human must be the pack leader flies in the face of everything we know about dogs. And his methods, like the “dominance roll”, are not only ineffective, but could be dangerous. And traumatizes the dogs, probably for life.

Am not, says Millan himself in a video on the net. He claims he never kicks dogs, but instead only touches them forcefully and positions them to get them into the desired state of “calm submission.”

An entire chorus of vets, dog trainers, dog behaviourists and, um, crabby people, are howling out against the dog whisperer, claiming that his methods not only hurt dogs, but hurt humans too. Because many who try to follow Millan’s methods with their own dogs get bitten and often very seriously.

So how do we reconcile the two sides of this passionate debate? Well, we come to me, the ultimate arbiter. I arrive at the cosmic truth objectively then reduce it down to a digestible nugget.

So is the dog whisperer an abuser?

The logical answer: I certainly hope so.

After all, if you look at the situation unsentimentally, dogs are nothing but parasites. Much like lamprey eels or tapeworms. They depend totally on their hosts.

And in this they are not disappointed.

There are 78.2 million pet dogs in the U.S. 50% of their owners buy them Christmas presents. 33% admit to leaving phone messages for them. 70% call themselves ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy.”

Dog owners have helped created a $50-billion a year pet supply industry. (Which has nearly doubled over the last 10 years)

So today, you can buy designer food, designer clothes, designer toys and designer beds for your dog. You can send the animal to dog training, dog camp, dog hotels, dog spas and dog therapy. You can get professional help to groom the dog, to teach her doggie tricks and even to pick her name, so she won’t have self esteem problems.

You can buy doggie car seats, doggie airline carriers and doggie surfboards. And even after death, that dog can cost you a fortune as you contract for dog funerals, dog coffins, dog cremation, dog burial, dog tombstones and eternal dog mementos made with a hank of hair and a piece of bone.

Dog owners see nothing even remotely strange in any of this.

Which leads me to believe that dog owners are insane.

I think dogs are the ultimate nasty parasites and their defence mechanism is to infect humans with a sort of viral Canine-itus disease which destroys the mind and predisposes the human victim to protect the parasite over the host.

Hence the countless stories of old people starving to death as they spend their last dollars to feed their dogs.

Canine-itus is truly insidious. Frankly I hope Cesar Millan

does kick dogs. I think all dogs should be kicked, hard and often until they get off 12,000 years of continuous human welfare and go back to the wild, where they belong.

And God backs me on this. After all, if God had not wanted dogs to be kicked, She would never have built them that low to the ground, would she?

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