It is interesting how this is playing out. Unlike some of you, Cesar Milan has never caused me any harm, so I will not discount his techniques, like some of you can.
One thing that I feel that we should keep in mind. These wonderful creatures are excellent judges of human behavior. With our larger brain, we should be as tuned to their behavior as they are to ours. As we all know, they respond to our tone of voice and posture when we communicate to them. Their response depends on the inflection of our voices and the stance we take on when we talk to them, more so than what we say. We can say the same word in different ways, but it is with the certain tone that gets the action we require. It is the manner we say them, that get their attention, as well as our stance that matters.
We too, should learn their behavior in order to understand their intentions.
What we get to see from CM is dogs, having issues, visually posturing and behaving against their environment. These actions are the ones that he sees as requiring modification. What a dog does is not the issue, his posture/stance in that action is what he redirects.
To automatically think that just because a dog does certain things is always a dominating action is well,,,,,,, you know.
After all these years of enjoying the intelligence of these wonderful beings, and trying to understand them, it took our Lily to finally turn the light on (so to speak) on the questions that have pestered me all these years. I do not have all the answers, but I can see how certain issues played out for me before.
As some of my other postings indicate, I now know that the understanding of the pack concept, and the dogs standing in that pack, can be a deciding factor in how effective we can be in correcting some of the behaviors that are troubling to us.
Establishing the dominance status, is a tool to try to communicate in an area that they understand more than we, and since we need all the tools that we can muster,to understand them, why not.
I do not endorse CM, nor any other so called professionals, just as do not I tout my self as an authority. What works for me and lets me understand them more, making the relationship with them a peaceful, respectful time is what motivates me.
Just as we are all individuals, so are they. Not everything always works for all of them. One thing that I have a basic knowledge of is my easy map to understanding what motivates them, and at the same time causes no roadblocks into their understanding of me.
As far as credentials for someone to be considered an authority on these beautiful beings, Sheltie or not, give me the one who has the time and experience with them, over someone with a "title", any day. Experience beats "in theory", for me any day also. IMHO
which Noah does on occasion!
lol
Not dominating