Reddit mentions of The Well-Adjusted Dog: Dr. Dodman's Seven Steps to Lifelong Health and Happiness for Your Best Friend

> All because you don't know how to handle big dogs.

I became interested in dog training because I adopted a 100+ pound very traumatized, very aggressive dog. He has not hurt a single person ever, and he never will. (You are correct & sexist!) I'm a short girl. I had to learn fast, and I had to do it right. I've been working with a trainer who is one of the best (she consults at zoos), and a vet behaviorist who is the former head of AVSAB. Their plan works like nothing I was doing before I met them.

Edit: I can give you tons of information on training aggressive dogs. The induce-fear method is the absolute worst. Most dogs are aggressive because they are fearful. You can overpower the aggression immediately, but this increases the fear and has been shown to increase the incidents of bites - see the first link below. (This is the sort of training my dog came from.) With what is called in layman's terms "dominance aggression" is also intensified by fear training. Truly "dominant" dogs are irrepressible, and when they are aggressive it means that they (1) have "dominant" tendencies and (2) are insecure about their ability to maintain them. Confident dogs aren't aggressive (though they can be untrained brats.) Dr. Dodman has one of the best resources on these sorts of dogs. It's an urgent implementation of the "nothing in life is free plan".

Edit Edit:

LOL, you are the other redditor!!

***


Here is what I just wrote to another redditor:

> He [Cesar Milan] is very wise in the ways in dog handling.

Not really.

> I very much disagree with a few of his ways

Me too.See also.

> but overall, he is very much better than most "dog trainers" and "behavior" experts.

Doubtful.

Cesar has an excellent editor, but he is at his worst on the most fragile dogs. Though he talks about it endlessly, he has no understanding of dog psychology, calling just about every problem "dominance" -PDF-, and talking about some amorphous "energy" while not paying any attention to the signs that dogs are actually giving.

For beginners I recommend Ian Dunbar, his online text is here, he also has online videos under the title "Sirius".

There is a whole world of excellent information, academic and applied. The science is hard to ignore. It's pretty united against Cesar.