Dogs and sleep

[The F-H.C.A.G.]

...snip...
Also have to suggest that there's a growing body of evidence that the techniques of back-rolling and extended eye contact don't result in your having dominance over a dog and can, in fact, lead to other behavior problems that can be really annoying and potentially dangerous....snip... Back-rolling should apparently be used only by a well trained animal behavorist and then in very specific sets of circumstances. There are cases of it's use by others have been disastrous and resulted in serious injury. I'll find some citations for this later on and give you a link.

Ol' Cesar Milan is coming under fire as well...many established behaviorists are expressing the opinion that his techniques can lead to dangerous problems, as well. It may look like it works on TV but real life can be very different. Face it...it's pop-psychology for dogs.

Stare downs may make sense to humans but field research has shown that dogs don't do it as part of normal pack life. When they do do it, bad stuff ensues. If anything, dominant dogs signal their dominance by what looks to us like aloofness and a minimum amount of "verbal" signaling.

If you've been having success doing this consider that the day may come when you do it to the wrong dog...there are psycho dogs with aggression issues. It happens. Even the professional behaviorists have stories about situations where one little thing went wrong and bad craziness happened. Proceed with caution.

Best

AA

I am so glad you wrote all this, AA, it saved me a lot of time. Just want to say ditto, and Cesar Milan's techniques are going to get someone killed someday soon-I hope their relatives sue him for all he's worth.

Be well,