Is the Dog Whisperer magic?

Wow! I have a german wire-haired pointer and had a very hard time training her to walk because she is so energetic and doesn't mind the pulling and jerking. We never tried the treadmill technique. It's interesting that the environment was similar enough for the training on the treadmill to transfer. The next time i train a puppy, I will definitely be giving that a try!

That's fantastic that you trained your dog so well! As for the title of your article - I highly doubt that the dog whisperer is magic haha. I, actually, trained my cat to come when I call and she used to play fetch. I thought that was fun...

It's really a beautiful dog. I agree that having a well-behaved dog is very important for the family. Truly, it's always effective to use positive reinforcement to train our dogs. Awesome!

The treadmill looks like a great training method! I think it's cool how psychological principles and findings can be used in everyday life. I don't think that the Dog Whisperer is magic, but he seems to know something about classical conditioning! Also, the dog is very cute.

This is really interesting that one of the techniques he uses in the show actually worked on your dog. I don't have a dog, so I'm not able to test his little tricks, but I know a lot of people think it's fake. It's cool that you could prove those people wrong and actually use it on your own dog.

Nice.. When does your show start? ha.

My sister got a dog and he is also pretty crazy. He barks at anyone not within the immediate family and he will chase after people and animals if not on a leash. So somewhat of a similar problem there. I will definitely consider trying some of the same tactics as you. Nice work though!

It's amazing what classical conditioning can do. I think that's a really bright way of conditioning a dog to behave well while having a walk outside. I used to have a dog and I have experienced classical conditioning with her. The first thing I taught her to do was to sit. It was pretty successful and I was really surprised that it worked. I do notice that she always looked forward to treats after sitting every time, which I slowly tried to stop after a while. It is amazing.

I wonder though, if this actually works on all dogs. I have a friend who has a dog (named Wednesday :P) and it seems to me like no matter what she does, her dog is very hard to train. Wednesday's a very nice dog with children and people but if left to her own device, she'd run away after every car (and moving object) that she sees. Maybe I'll have to suggest to her to use that treadmill walking method. Maybe then she can take Wednesday out on a walk without worrying that Wednesday would run away after a car. :)

I think this is a great idea! I feel that through classical conditioning anyone or any animal can be trained. I wish when we got our puppy that I knew about some of Caesar's techniques because he is a wild one!

I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I have a German Shepard and my family and I trained him using the concepts of classical conditioning and watching Caesar Milan's tv and by reading his books. What I learned from him was that reinforcements work better than punishment. That is why we trained my dog "Rahni" to walk right next to or behind her owners by giving her a treat or petting her when she would do the right thing. We would praise her by saying "good girl" when she obeyed commands instead of saying "bad dog" when she wouldn't obey commands. Milan was very helpful training our dogs and I still watch his show sometimes just for fun.
Your dog is adorable, by the way

I was very intrigued by your post! I've only thought about what it would be like to walk my dog on the treadmill. I am a little iffy about it, but it looks like you were pretty successful with that! To train my dogs to walk I used the prong collar. It was probably the easiest, harmless, and quickest way of training all of my three dogs at the same time. I guess that was our way of conditioning the dog, not so much reinforcement, but sadly punishment in a way. Whenever they pulled the prongs would stick them a little around their neck.