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.
Hmmmmmmmmm…… what about this video? watch it quickly, it will be removed when brad finds out…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BxIZfeu2lI
I remember that episode! The funny thing was before the commercial break there was a voice-over snippet, with that exact clip and the voice over said something like – “or has some of them gone too far …”
Then after the commercial break, the owner said the muzzle slap thing, and Pattison didn’t say anything at all … :-/
And yet he always seems to find the time to tell people not to hand-feed their dogs and to throw away all their toys.
It is good that he is off-the-air. Personally, I don’t understand why he is popular anywhere at all. Even his own people are embarrassed over his treatment of dogs, which is why the video of him over-correcting a dog always gets yanked.
Seems like In The Dog House was suddenly taken off Animal Planet. Well I wonder why?.. Probably the thousands of emails that the station received on this ‘dog trainer’? Hmmmm….
Honestly, it didnt even seem that Mr. Pattison liked dogs. Except his own(we hope for their sake). Certainly not the hapless creatures he was supposed to ‘train.’
The last straw for me was when the owner of the two small pugs said he ‘smacked the dogs’ (when he got annoyed by their behavior). Mr. Pattison made made a displeased expression and repeated ‘you smack the dogs?’ Thats it. No comment, nothing, zip, about hitting a dog. He changed the subject.
Found that unbelievable. As a ‘dog trainer,’ not a word about hitting a dog? How complicated could it be for Mr. Pattison to give an OPINION on this?! My guess is that he didnt much give a crap. Cares only about elevating his ego and up his tv ratings. What a nut. Good doggy, bad man..
Hello GreenFireFly Girl,
Thank you for posting an alternative point of view. You make your points very well.
As you say, I think all of these trainers have certain things in common that help all dogs. Some lessons that all of them teach –
1. We need to fulfill our dog’s needs – including their need for exercise.
2. Dogs need discipline and structure.
3. We must take on the leadership role because our dogs are living in our human world.
However, my personal opinion is that one can teach all these lessons without all the ego, with calm energy, and without the need for physical aversive techniques.
Also, what Pattison says about food and toys is just wrong. There was one episode where he states that hand-feeding dogs cause food aggression – which is totally ridiculous.
As you point out, no trainer or dog owner is perfect. Therefore it is best to keep an open mind, learn as much as we can, and only adopt the techniques that do the least harm and make the most sense for our dogs.
Where did my comment go?
http://shibashake.com/dog/in-the-doghouse-with-brad-pattison/comment-page-1#comment-1324
I disagree with the no alfa thing if u don’t take control than the dog will it is instinct that’s my 2 cents sorry for any grammer errors blackbery
Well, you wanted to hear from a Brad Pattison fan, so here goes: Yes, I too get frustrated by the lack of seeing the training of the DOGS on his shows, and all the people stuff, but I’ve seen Brad in action and can tell you that he can quickly (within minutes) train a dog to think about it’s actions, and what you want from it.
It’s not about hanging the dog, and jerking it around on the leash, it’s about reading the dog, and timing your correction perfectly. The umbilical training teaches the dog to follow you through an obstacle course, named “urban agility” and to watch you for signals of what to do next, not just go off and do what it wants. There is no alpha rolling, Brad is very much against that, but does use pinning when a dog needs it.
Like the poster above said, it’s about using just enough force, Brad says about 2% more force than the dog is using, that’s not Massive and Inappropriate force as stated above either.
Does Brad have an ego? yes. Does he rile up dog owners? yes. Is Cesar’s show better for dog training info? yes. But Brad has helped and inspired many dog owners to have better relationships with their dogs, and that is not an abusive thing, that’s a good thing!
There are Brad haters, there are Cesar haters, and there are Victoria Stilwell haters, but the thing they all have in common is that they love dogs so much they want to make their lives with humans better by training the humans to be good leaders.
I am completely dumb-founded why Animal Planet gave this idiot air time. He is worse than Cesar Millan.
The training methods used by these guys has been condemned by the American Vet. Society of Animal Behavior.
http://beyondcesarmillan.weebly.com/avsab-leaflet.html
Above is the link to their position statements. Take note of their positions on Dominance and Punishment.
From their statement on Choosing a trainer:
4. Respectful. A good trainer should be personable and respectful of both you
and your dog. Avoid trainers who recommend using physical force (e.g. alpha
rolling, pushing a dog into position, hitting, choke chain or pinch collar
correction) or methods/devices that have the potential for harm, as an
acceptable way to train. Additionally, avoid trainers who make you feel bad
about the speed of progress that your dog is making. (See AVSAB Punishment
Position Statement on the AVSAB web site)
Animal Planet needs to cancel Pattison’s show. NatGeo needs to wise up and get rid of Millan too. The two are dog training horrors.
http://www.colovma.org/associations/2956/files/merial-millan%20press%20release%206-24-09.pdf Promotion
Jeez – why is the LATimes writing about this canine disarming thing like it is some sort of amusing miracle cure. Hahaha – look at that dog biting the shoe and not being able to bite properly – *sigh*. And they wonder why people don’t buy newspapers anymore …
Just an update on Cotton, the little white fluffball whose teeth a misguided dentist ground down because their idiot owners couldn’t follow Cesar’s instructions. The owner herself wrote an article for the LA times, which I link to here:
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-krieger25-2009jul25,0,2987125.story?page=2
Just to summarize: The dog still bites, still rushes out the door, still gets no guidance from its owners, but can’t do as much damage anymore. The owners still haven’t trained the dog, which of course was its only problem all along. I really hate stupid.
I will have more to say once I watch the episodes on my TiVo.
To discuss politics, visit –
http://hubpages.com/_srec/forum/13
I think you will find it enjoyable 🙂