It is a Canadian show with the 'dog trainer' Brad Pattison and it focuses on training 'bad' puppies. For those of you who have never heard of Brad Pattison then let me shed some light on him for you. He is a cruel, unqualified and totally uneducated trainer who appears to have no knowledge into simple basic things about dogs which every dog owner should know or any idea how to communicate with people properly. Have a look at this,
And that is just the beginning! He has no real qualifications so he has gone out and made up his own, you can now take a BPCTE course and guess what the BP stands for? Brad Pattison!
Now for his wonderfully terrible show.
He seems to have no knowledge into dogs at all! He has got owners putting half check collars( or a hussle up collar as he calls them) on their poor puppies, even those breeds which have weak necks and breeds prone to breathing problems. He has the owners yank the leash of their dog to get them to 'obey' and he told a little girl to ' pull hard' on the leash attached to a 8 month old chihuahua puppy! I was OUTRAGED!!!
This same puppy was dragged over a log at least twice the size of him about 10 times because he was trying to be 'in control' by not wanting to go over the log. Brad forced him into going over this log by actually pulling him over it by the collar. The dog couldn't physically do it for god sake, it wasn't trying to misbehave.
He also had the owners completely ignore their dogs, as in not to talk to them at all or give them any sort of affection either. That is no way too train a puppy!
In another episode I saw he had a 10 month old bull mastiff puppy on a leash with the leash tied around the waist of a 2 year old child! How is that in any way safe? And guess what if the child go pulled over, who's fault would it have been? The dogs according to him! That's just pure irresponsible and unsafe on his part and the parents.
He gave out to some owners for picking up and talking to their 5 month old pug puppy. The talking was actually praise on the grandmothers part because she was telling the puppy that he was a good boy for coming away from the door and the young boy was the one who picked up the puppy to bring it up the stairs, which I think is reasonable enough. Brad then proceeded to tell the grandmother that it was her fault all of it had happened ( the fact that the puppy was just being a normal puppy ) Apparently its bad to talk to your puppy and play with it. I then proceeded to watch him tell the owners to bring the puppy EVERYWHERE the go when at home, which means using the leash all the time and I saw him scream 'go' at the grandmother because she was reluctant to drag him across the floor.
He gets people to walk their puppies with the leash around their waist, to jerk them around and basically ignore them. And I don't think that that is any way to walk a dog, let alone a puppy. And I have seen him run up and down steep hills with 6 month old puppies, about 10 times and then get each of the owners to do it too. Does he not have any idea how much damage that could do to growing bones, particularly in large breed puppies? Clearly not! He had an 8 month old husky puppy cycle for 30 minutes without stopping with its family. The family clearly had done no research into the breed they wanted because if they had surely they would have come across guidelines for exercise?!?!
He doesn't teach puppies basic commands, like sit or lie down. His way of teaching sit is to pull up on the leash until the puppy gives in to strangulation and sits down. How can you justify that sort of treatment to a poor puppy? He doesn't use food for training because he claims that its 'bribing' the dog and that the dog isn't sitting for you but for the food.
If used properly food is not a bribe but a very valuable training aid which is used very successfully by thousands of QUALIFIED trainers and behaviourists and some which compete at the highest ranks in competitions. A dog is not going to sit for you unless there is some sort of value for the sit behaviour and you cannot achieve that without using rewards, but it does not mean that you have to use them forever. I mean are you going to work for free for somebody who doesn't reward you? Chances are no, well I wouldn't unless it was something I loved and most dogs don't find obedience overly fun. And when faced with the choice between running free or staying with the person who doesn't reward you with anything valuable which do you think is going to win over the dog?
Brad Pattison's training tool of choice and the only one at that seems to be the leash and his 'hussle up' collar. He always has the dogs on a leash, in the house, in the park, on walks you name it and its on the dog. What sort of life is that? Maybe he intends on telling the owners to give their dogs some freedom eventually but without the use of rewards how are they going to make their dogs want to stay with them?
I could go on and on and on about how awful Brad Pattison is but I do have other things to do. Have a look at some of the links that follow if you would like some more evidence about this 'trainer'. And if you actually use his methods then i would urge you to please stop, for your dogs sake.
Links:
http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/brad-pattison-on-learned-helplessness/
http://ckbales.blogspot.ie/2012/06/abuse-labeled-as-training.html
http://trainertails.blogspot.ie/2009/07/in-dog-house-new-show-with-outdated.html
And if you have a google you will find plenty more about him!
