Bob, you're right in that he isn't wildly abusive, hanging dogs till they pass out, loud, violent or kicking, hitting, throwing them down in a angry, out of control, outbursts of emotional explosion.Thank goodness for that. But it doesn't have to be that severe to be mistreatment or improper treatment of an animal. It appears that he has "cured" these dogs and maybe in some cases, he has. However, like Dr2little said, that is to the average pet owner's eyes.
When behavior is stopped and it most certainly can be stopped with positive punishment, that only means that the behavior has stopped. What about all the rest of it? Behavior is only a sign of something internal. It's only what comes as a bi-product of something else going on. He does NOT deal with what is going on. He squelches or supresses signs (behavior) of the much larger than life cause of behavior. He stops it suddenly by using alpha rolls, flooding (subjecting a terrified animal to the fear trigger) up close, suddenly and over-whelmingly. The dog has no choice but to disassociate or give up...shut down. This is NOT dealing with the fear as science shows us that with dogs, desensatizing gradually gets to the core of the problem better and with far less stress and wear and tear on the dog. And besides a whole host of side effects of averse punishment, regression is one big side effect. They don't tell you on the show how many dogs have reverted to their previous behavior. The owners can't follow up with ambiguous instructions which use words like, energy, attitude, leadership, calm submissive, calm assertive, and all the rest of them. Nothing he says is specific at all. He is very charismatic and charming and he must make a certain number of people happy or his business wouldn't continue. But that is not good enough for dogs. Dogs are at the mercy of their owners. And believe me, there are more naive dog owners than not and they don't know any better at what they're seeing.
That example above is only about fear. He uses colar yanks to punish a dog for not walking just right when the dog HAS NOT BEEN TAUGHT how to walk right. I've seen him yank and yank pretty darn hard when a dog WAS walking fine, but he turned his head an inch to one side. This is unacceptable to me, especially when there ARE other ways to keep a dog's attention.
He rarely rewards a dog, very rarely. The closest thing to reward he has is the absense of an aversive. That's it.
I've seen him drag by force dogs who are terrified of slippery floors, into water among other things. He relies on force and shutting down a dog. He has truly taken dog training back decades when science has made so much progress. My only hope is that people educate themselves by people who ARE educated and not by some charming TV guy who has zero education in animal behavior.
He misreads a lot of body language and a lot of motives behind what dogs do. It's either dominate or be dominated. That's it. There is a universe more to it than that.
When I see some of the dogs he's worked with or he plunges into the midst of his so called 50 dog pack (that is not a pack, btw) they often look miserable. He says, "see? He is accepting." Or some b.s. When people who have been submerged with dogs all their lives, worked with and obsevered obsessively, like me.....I tell you there are very subtle facal expressions and body language which a lot of people don't notice....tiny nuances sometimes. And what I see is NOT what he claims is on these dogs faces. A wagging tail, for instance does not necessarily mean a dog is happy. In fact, it can mean very different things. A whole body wag is another thing. How many dogs he works with do you see a full body swing? The corners of the eyes and mouth, the set of the ears and all kinds of little things tell me a whole different story. (In most of the dogs) OK? Occassionally I have seen some things he's done which were fine. But why would someone follow someone's ways when only some things are OK when there are oodles of trainers out there who do not do these things, who DO rehabilitate dogs with problems every bit as atrocious as those dogs. Some of those problem dogs, I think are really quite mild. It's like......big freakin deal.
So, perhaps when you've watched more and read what real canine experts think, you'll see the other side of the coin better.
But I do know what you mean as far as he not being as bad as Koehler. But what does that really say? LOL.
