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.
Anyone who says Brad Pattison is nice check this video out it’s shocking
http://youtu.be/pALxsLg0-n0
Dog did nothing to deserve this. 🙁
I’m not into aversive training or Cesar Milan.
I do respect what Cesar is trying to do though, but I don’t follow the training as it isn’t needed for me and I feel shiba inu does best with positive training. Bella my mom’s boxer does best on positive training.
Our last three dogs were horrible on leash no matter what we tried we tried everything, but positive methods. 🙁
Bella is first boxer to walk well on leash she still has her moments, but she is improving each month.
i feel BP trainer is far to angry for any type of training.
If Brad is so bad why have you not reported him to animal cruelty or domestic abuse. I know why Brad gets pissed, so many of you should not even own a dog. You all forget dogs are animals and can hurt or even kill humans.
I saw him work first hand without intimidating or even hurting a dog, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and to me he ROCKS!
Frankly I do not understand why so many people take discussion on the pros and cons of various dog training techniques as a personal insult to themselves.
For me, it is very simple. I want to find and use the best techniques that are most suited for my dogs so that they can have the best quality of life. It really isn’t about me at all, but about my dogs. Everybody has an opinion about dog training, but I care most about hard facts and scientific studies. For example, here is one from the University of Pennsylvania –
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/if-youre-aggressive-your-dog-will-be-too-says-veterinary-study-university-pennsylvania
In terms of animal cruelty and abuse, hitting dogs, choking dogs, kicking dogs, etc. are often not considered abuse by the law. Only more extreme cases that cause immediate serious physical harm are prosecuted. And even then, it is difficult to prove and the resulting fines and penalties are miniscule compared to the crime.
Our laws are created mostly to protect people and not dogs. Dogs can’t vote, so they have very few rights, and none at all in some places.
Yes, dogs can hurt and even kill humans. But then, humans can also hurt and kill humans. Humans also often hurt and kill dogs. I don’t see what relation any of that has to the matter at hand.
If the point is that only pain aversive techniques can stop aggression in dogs, then that is false. Many scientific studies show that pain based aversive techniques actually have a much higher risk of encouraging aggression in dogs.
We may choose to believe random people that we meet, random people on the internet, and random people on t.v.; or we may rely on the many years of rigorous study and results in animal behavior science and behavioral psychology. I choose the latter.
I met him, took his course and almost became a trainer, thank god I didn’t finish because it was very sad and disappointing
Thanks wht wolf. Very good to hear from someone who has taken his course.
I’m going to have to assume from your obviously biast comment you are either a family member or close friend. I too have seen Brads techniques first hand and quite frankly the man shouldnt be allowed to own dogs let alone work with them.
Thanks for sharing your story with us BeKind!
Always great to hear from professional trainers like you. The more we spread this message, the better it will be for both dogs and dog owners.
When I got my Shiba Inu, I thought that aversive techniques was the only possible way to train a stubborn dog.
It was a good thing that a trainer recommended that I read “Bones Would Rain from the Sky”. She also told me she had trained many stubborn and difficult dogs with reward techniques, and that such dogs actually respond much better to reward training.
And she is right! 🙂
This article on Brad Pattison has made me feel better today – thank you.
Now let me explain before everyone thinks I like this jerk. About a week ago I saw him in front of my neighbour’s house ‘training’ a dog for an upcoming show. I watched him lift the poor puppy (maybe four months old?) off the ground by the collar so that it was hanging. I watched him pull the dog off of its feet through leash jerking. And finally, I saw him yell at the owners twice to punch their pet in the face- hard! That poor puppy was cowering in fear from this abuse. I damn near went out and ‘trained’ this jerk!
All week I have been feeling alone – like I am the only one who sees this as abuse and a crime. I am so glad to see that other people feel the same way.
BTW, I have trained dogs for fifteen years using reward training and I have never had a dog fail to learn obedience that way. I say that any ‘training’ that would be a crime if done to another human is cruelty to an animal.
Thanks for sharing the great links Alex – will definitely include them in the article.
http://rutube.ru/tracks/1541461.html?v=f5da001315ee259e8c28ca49dff6394e
There is a new video comparing the CET title vs Certifications from other places.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7MpWbSbomI
I guess they don’t want people knowing the truth which is sad. If your a good trainer I’m sure you would want everyone to see the methods you use. Not only for T.V. but in person or in this case videos been taken from semiars. Myself love showing what I can do with my dogs through positive methods, and how they want to be near me and not fear me. A dog which is in trouble will run from you as mine stand their ground and let me put them on a timeout. Which would you pick a dog who is going to run off on you or a dog who is going to want to be by your side?
Ok, it must have been gone when I looked because I only watched the positive Kelowna News clips.
These guys are really efficient at censorship of content. Perhaps they should consider changing professions 🙂
He probably would be reported for animal abuse if the laws were modernized to levels that they should be living in a first world country. Dogs are animals however we choose to keep them as pets and must act as caregivers.
Be it animal or humans, neither deserve to be punched in the face due to behavior.
You can check out Brad’s Book in which he clearly details the “correct” way to hit a dog in the face. NO ONE who works with dogs would ever condone this behavior. The damage that could be done to the dogs snout or eyes alone would be life altering for the dog, hit “properly” or improperly.
Just because something has a remote chance of hurting you does not give you the right to hit it.