The Book of Ramblings

I'm reading this book called The Dog Rules (Damn Near Everything by William J. Thomas. It's a very silly book and I'm enjoying it a lot. But last night I read a chapter and I laughed out loud at it. I know of you will stop reading because it seems sad, but trust me. Read through to the end. It's really quite funny.

( Dogcatcher's Blues )

Cesar's Way: the Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan

I need to start with a bit of a disclaimer about this one. I read this book as a sort of "know thine enemies" thing. I have seen enough of Cesar's show and read enough about his techniques to know I don't agree with him and I find his ideas about dogs sometimes old and out of date, sometimes simply wrong, and sometimes dangerously wrong. But I opted to read the book to give myself a more complete picture of his techniques and so that I'm more informed when it comes to refuting those techniques I disagree with. I did, however, approach it with an open mind and made sure to take notes on the things I agreed with, as well as those things I didn't agree with.

So all that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.

( This is long...very long...read at your own peril! )

Too long? Didn't read? Here's the summary.

The good: Recommendations of exercise, give your dogs boundaries and rules, realize your dog lives in the moment, consider your lifestyle and get a dog that matches it, anti-dog fighting and anti-breed specific legislation.

The bad: Based on dubunked dominance theories that were based on a flawed study on captive wolves, recommends walks that do not include enough sniffing and mental exercise for the dog, believes exercise is much more important than affection or discipline (whereas most believe they're all important), believes you have to give exercise, discipline, and affection only in that order.

The ugly: Recommends some horrible techniques like alpha rolls (shoving an aggressive dog down and onto its side), flooding (flooding a fearful dog with the object of their fear), and using treadmills with the dog tied to them and unobserved (could hurt or even kill your dog), does not understand canine body language and often misinterprets clear signals the dog is giving off.

The weird: Too much New Age mumbo jumbo for me, talks mostly about your energy. I kept thinking he was going to bring up crystals and auras next.

The contradictions: Cesar contradicted himself so many times it was hard to take what he said seriously.


Total pages in this book: 320
Total pages read so far: 3953