Brad Pattison is a well-known dog trainer in Canada. He has his own dog training television show, called At The End of My Leash which airs in Canada and Europe.
Brad Pattison’s show just started airing in the United States, under the name In The Doghouse, on Saturdays, at the Animal Planet.
Brad Pattison also runs a CET (Certified Educator Trainers) dog training program. Presumably, after attending one of these programs, you will get to put the CET stamp after your name. However, before enrolling in one of these classes, and fulfilling your lifelong dreams of becoming a CET, please watch this short video of Brad Pattison in action in one of his classes.
[Sadly, this last video has also gotten yanked from rutube.]
It is often difficult to find videos of Brad Pattison in true action because these videos keep getting yanked from their online sites. However, the fact that Pattison and gang feels the need to yank short ‘training’ class videos, says a lot about Pattison’s “training techniques”.
In the dog training arena, there is a fair amount of debate between the people who mostly support reward training and the people who mostly support aversive training.
Victoria Stilwell is a popular television dog trainer that uses reward training (It’s Me Or The Dog, which airs on Animal Planet) and Cesar Millan is a popular television dog trainer that has a greater emphasis on aversive training (The Dog Whisperer, which airs on the National Geographic Channel) .
So where does Brad Pattison fit in?
Bad Pattison seems to be a standard traditional dog trainer. He uses aversive dog training techniques and relies very heavily, almost exclusively, on leash jerks or leash corrections.
However, to differentiate himself from Cesar Millan, Brad Pattison further ups the aversive ante and not only applies physical aversive methods on the dogs, but also verbal aversive methods on the dog owners. This is in contrast to Victoria Stilwell who applies some aversive methods on the dog owners, and Cesar Millan who applies some aversive methods on the dogs.
Even the people who support aversive methods generally agree, that what was shown in the Brad Pattison video clip is not good ‘dog training‘. Anyone who trains dogs, owns dogs, or even just watches Cesar Millan occasionally, knows that the energy you use to interact with a dog is extremely important, and can greatly affect the dog’s behavior.
Performing leash jerks using angry or frustrated energy only teaches the dog one thing, and that is to blindly fear you. There will be little respect or trust involved. When angry, annoyed, or frustrated, your erratic behavior will only confuse the dog, and set back his learning process. It will also increase his stress levels, lower his quality of life, and weaken your human-canine bond.
In fact, such energy is also counter-productive for teaching humans.
Which teachers do you respect most? The ones who communicate with calm authority, or the ones who shout and act in an erratic fashion? The ones that positively encourage you or the ones that quickly lose their temper and publicly denigrate you?
Here is an eye-witness opinion of Brad Pattison’s dog training techniques –
I saw him first hand this past Sat., he was in Woodbridge and all I can say is this – “I don’t understand why anyone would follow his methods”. Someone once told me, “don’t judge a book by its cover”. So I had to see things for myself, and what a wake up call it was.
What he does to train dogs is not nice at all. In fact, he makes the dogs fear him. One even got away from him as it was tied to his leg. Now, that’s got to give you some insight or idea of what your dog is trying to say to you. Another dog got away from one of his CET trainers. Go figure, they don’t want to be abused or yanked all over the place.
Sorry, but this is not training at all. I have trained dogs for 5 years now and not one has tried to get away from me. They stay close to me and watch everything I do. I use positive methods without food just praise. …
~~[ Shadow – full comment can be found in the comments section below ]
I also caught the first episode of Brad Pattison’s In The Doghouse program and I must say that it was less than impressive.
On the positive side, there was no crazy, angry, frustrated leash jerking. Brad Pattison also briefly talked about the force of the leash correction and being careful not to over-correct the dog, which are both good points.
However, these brief interludes of semi-saneness were insufficient to combat the general negativity and lack of focus that characterized the rest of the show.
If there was to be a silver lining to this dark cloud, it is perhaps that more people will realize that aversive methods are not generally effective for teaching humans OR dogs.
As for Brad Pattison and his CET trainers, I will keep my dogs far, far away from them all. I will also keep myself safe and stay away from this particular cloud of nastiness.
** Special thanks for Calmassertiv for giving me the link to Brad Pattison’s video clip, and for alerting me to the airing for Brad Pattison’s show.
I stumbled article today.
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-0725-cotton-pictures,0,2409055.photogallery
Sorry the link is so long — you might need to enter it by hand because somehow hubpages breaks it up into two lines. It is a series of 16 pages with pictures and text that describe a little white dog owned by a family of morons who have let it become so aggressive that everyone is getting bitten. These idiots hire all kinds of ‘experts’ who suggest all kinds of nonsense, ranging from aroma therapy to euthanasia, but what really drives their retardation home is how they brought in Cesar Millan to help them, he comes and shows them what to do, poses for pictures with a transformed peaceful dog, then a day later they ignore everything he taught them and they go back to reinforcing their dog’s bad behavior. They even go back to Millan a second time, he tells them to use a muzzle until they teach themselves how to rehabilitate their dog, but they decide instead to get the dog’s canine teeth filed down. They actually find a doggie dentist who, like so many professionals, is happy to take their money to perform an unwarranted procedure which, in the end, of course makes no difference to the dog’s behavior whatsoever. These people psychologically abuse their dog, then find a medical professional to physically abuse their dog, and all the while all the poor dog needs is an owner to do like Millan says and let the dog know such behavior is unwanted by its pack leader.
My solution to this problem is to put a shock collar on the humans, and when the dog asserts its dominance the humans should be given a mild shock to get them to do their job and correct their dog. I volunteer to operate the remote.
Hahaha – actually I have a couple more Cesar Millan articles that I am working on. Will get them out soon – and then I will look forward to reading your glowing praises 😀
Don’t forget to watch the new Dog Whisperer episodes starting this Friday @ 6/9pm. I look forward to reading your glowing praises 🙂
Hello Alex and Calmassertiv,
I apologize for the late reply. I have just been slimed lately with all sorts of things, my laptop is acting up, and there has been some drama going on at HubPages – the site that I do a lot of my writing at. As a result I am in the process of moving my articles to my home website 🙂
Because of all this, I missed Pattison’s second episode. I have set my DVR up to tape it though so hopefully it will catch it on a rerun and will certainly catch all the new episodes.
I am working through the old episodes of DogTown on my DVR and I must say that I really enjoy the show. They really take the time to gain their dogs’ trust and I also really like how they give all their dogs a second chance. Even the older ones with illnesses.
Okay, I watched the 4th episode. ANOTHER crying owner. With the ever-empathetic Pattison giving her hugs saying it’s okay. Yuk. But back to the dogs…
This episode had a big white dog that clearly needed exercise, and so was bouncing excitedly over people coming into the house, pulling on the leash, etc. No mention of need for exercise by Pattison. The home-inspection-gimmick showed fur everywhere, but no mention of the need to groom the dog. A close-up of Pattison’s own poodle in his house showed a dog with hair covering its eyes, so grooming clearly isn’t on the top of Pattison’s agenda.
The exercise with putting the leash around the waist and running up and down with the dog getting jerked wildly when the owner abruptly does an about-face and runs the other way just makes me feel sad for the poor dog. Same massive jerking on the leash by the owner at the end when Pattison is about to throw a stick off a cliff, when the dog appeared to be behaving perfectly well without the jerking. One of the many subtleties of the lessons of Cesar Millan is the use of ‘just enough’ energy when Correcting a dog’s undesired behavior, as opposed to what seems to be Pattison’s preference for Massive and Inappropriate force when the dog’s behavior is already just fine. He makes a big deal of telling the owner to walk Into the dog, because in his view walking Around somehow let’s a dog Win. It seems his desired state for the dog is one of pins and needles, having to be alert that its owner will suddenly, without warning and without regard for the dog take some action that will cause it bodily harm if it doesn’t instantly, even clairvoyantly, react in time. There’s a difference between the dog having respect for its handler and the handler having No respect for the dog, and Pattison is on the wrong side of the line here. To be fair, it does seem to work, in the sense that the dogs quickly learn to heel, but I have to wonder whether a feeling human being can continue to batter their dog in such a way. One hopes that they lighten up and learn to assert themselves with much more appropriately scaled energy. It’s ironic that in this episode the owner felt herself a victim of abuse from her ex-boyfriend, and one can only wonder if her dog is being made to feel those same thoughts about her.
Lastly, while Pattison touts his life-coach talents as much as his dog-handling skill, I really have no interest in these family-and-friend scenarios, watching the owner get her nails painted, etc. Making the lady feel empowered in her life is something Millan has shown in many episodes, but he does it by showing the owners how to control their Dog, demonstrating that the human is in charge of the dog and not the other way around, and how calm assertive energy can make a difference in other areas of your life, but without subjecting the audience to watching closeups of the owner getting a pedicure.
I agree with calmassertiv on all of his/her points. Brad still just kicks me off a little. His personality is just too annoying for me. I literally didn’t see him interact with the dogs at all, which begs the question, “does he really like dogs or is he just trying to get famous?” The above mentioned video says he doesn’t (or at least not enough to control his emotions for). He also humanized the dogs a bit by saying that the Boston Terrier was acting scared and hurt to get the owner’s attention. While this might be a learned behavior, I don’t think Brad was there long enough or has enough experience to tell; he was simply guessing at what might have been the cause.
What do you think of his first episode, ShibaShake?
Okay, I just played the first of the two Pattison dog episodes from yesterday. I took notes, so lots of comments. Both good and bad, interestingly. In chronological order, not order of importance:
I still hate the Dog-Whisperer-ripoff warning text up front, and the Me-Or-The-Dog-ripoff use of the PC with the simulated inserted video in his living room, but these gripes are really about sleazy producers than about dog training per se. Watching him run with a bunch of dogs in the lead-in is designed to make you compare him to Cesar Millan, which is just lame on his and his producer’s part.
The show actually started out ok, pointing out that the past is the past and don’t coddle the dog because the old dog died. Donating all the bedding and toys in the name of the dead dog was a nice touch, but the gimmick of searching the house with the owners outside is just a waste of everyone’s time. Getting the wife to start crying seems to be a recurrent theme in these shows. When Pattison puts the dog on a leash and applies steady tension and recommends that they wait out the dog under tension I have to disagree, but by the end of the show the dogs are all walking nicely so this one is empirically going to have to wait a while. When he hangs the dog on two feet this can’t be good, however, and one can only wish to see him try that with a dog his own size. The trip to the vet for a second opinion on the heart murmur was good, and overall it seemed to work out, but on a personality level I still don’t like the guy. These cases were pretty trivial but by the end the owners did improve their behavior considerably, so I’ll give Pattison credit for this at least and wait to review the next episode.
I just got done watching “In the Dog House” and I have to say I was less than impressed. Where was the dog training in there? There was little to nothing about how they got thier dogs to behave. I’m not even sure if HE told the owners how to do it. He was also nit-picking at tiny little things that he claimed to be “wins” for the dogs. (The owners moving around the dogs instead of moving straight into them and making them move)
I have to say I like Victoria just a little over this guy. He’s like a male Victoria trying to use EXTREME alpha-dog techniques. He even held a Boston Terrier up by her neck with a leash just to get her to sit down (he claims that pushing down on their butt can damage thier spine [?!]). Anyone who likes this guy must be either crazy or ignorant.
Alex, Shibashake – In case you hadn’t marked it on your calendar, the second set of imported Pattison episodes comes on in another hour. I’m going to tape them just so I can be sure to get the details of my anticipated critique correct. On a more pleasant note (at least for me) is it appears National Geographic finally has produced some new Dog Whisperer episodes and will begin airing them Fridays @ 6/9 pm. I look forward to trading observations on all of the above.
Haha. I was just thinking of what I’d do if he did that to my dog. Some physical abuse might be in order… or at least verbal. I’d probably hold him down and put that choke chain on him, and procede to teach the class using him as the dog; choking and slapping and hanging as I please.
He’d probably throw me off and call the cops, though. Ah, my mental fantacies are wonderful sometimes.