Hello, friend. Unfortunately, as you said, you’re not a dog expert and everything you wrote is completely and utterly wrong. For context, I’ve been training dogs for a decade, and I literally wrote the paper on why this dude’s practices and theory are not only abusive but completely unsupported by all modern canine behavior and cognition research. I don’t normally get into these things about him because it’s stressful, but this one I just can’t let go.
We’re going to cover some stuff here.
Resource guarding occurs when an animal feels unsafe with another animal or a person near it’s food/bone. This is often because they have learned that they get hurt or that they will be deprived of it if it is taken away, and have generalized to every situation. This is not the dog being an asshole or being aggressive.
Resource guarding is fixed by teaching the dog to trust you to interact with it’s possession. The dog learns that it is safe to give up the item, because it will either be returned or it will get something better in exchange. This requires trust and a slow approach, not violence and threats.
Animals who are scared or in pain will shut down. An animal that has been hit to teach it to stop a behavior does not change the behavior willingly - it is trying to avoid further punishment and will not respond until it is pushed to the point where it feels so unsafe it must bite - a dog’s last resort.
Okay, let’s start with what you wrote and just go over the stuff that isn’t right, before we get into an accurate breakdown.
“The dog snarls at Caesar so he jabs at the dog’s throat, mimicking warning nips that dogs use”
1. Dogs do not consider humans to be dogs. There is no point in trying to mimic how dogs interact with dogs because they know we are not dogs.
2. A neck jab with a hand is very, very different than light pressure from a mouth with teeth so it’s a stupid analogy and pretty much just bullshit.
3. By reaching towards the dog, he’s entering her space and by guarding her food she is telling him directly that she does not feel safe with him entering her space. This is not appropriate nor is it how you get a resource guarding dog to trust you.
“He didn’t hit the dog like the gif suggests”
4. I don’t know what video you’re watching, but apparently it’s not the one you linked. That is forceful contact with his hand on the dog’s neck, AKA a hit.
“When Caesar stands for too long between her and the food bowl, and he’s NOT IN AN AGGRESSIVE POSITION, she lunges and BITES HIM AND DOESN’T LET GO.”
5. His posture is aggressive. He continues to move into her space - which she has already demonstrated is stressful for her - and uses his posture and size to loom over her from a crouch. His posture is stereotypically aggressive - balanced forward, leaning over, arms and hands wide in a threatening posture, and he’s staring at her.
6. It is completely reasonable for the dog to bite him at this point. She already tried to warn him (very politely, in dog language) that she was uncomfortable, with many avoidance behaviors before she started eaten. He encroached on her space and she responded with a snap - not a bite, because she didn’t make contact, which is very purposeful. Dogs have very good mouth control and do not make contact unless they intend to. In response, he hit her (more threats) and then encroached on her space. This is a stressed, unhappy animal who is being threatened by a guy who has escalated to physical contact and refuses to leave her space. Any dog would bite at this point and you cannot fault an animal that is pushed to the end of it’s rope to defend itself for feeling unsafe and physically threatened.
“He has a deep puncture wound bleeding and still doesn’t back down.”
7. There are only two reasons a good animal trainer gets bit. A) they didn’t have the skill to do what they tried to do B) they weren’t paying enough attention. Trainers who get bit frequently are not good trainers, no matter how much they brag. You do not need to push an animal to the point of defending itself to modify it’s behavior, and if you consistently do so, you should not be working with animals.
8. If a dog bites, it’s because it literally believes it has no other options to remove the threat or stressor. If a dog is so stressed that it bites, you leave it the fuck alone so it can calm down. That’s the fight or flight response. An animal that is in a state of arousal from defending itself literally can’t think straight - try reasoning with a toddler having a meltdown, it’s about the same thing. Instead he keeps pushing her and making it worse.
“I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with Caesar’s methods, I go back and forth on them myself, but don’t ignore the entire truth of the situation. Slander only weakens your argument. If you want to argue against Caesar’s methods, then offer suggestions on how to deal with a dog that won’t let you near her food without threatening to attack.”
9. Go read The Damage of Dog Whispering for the entire truth. It does not contain slander, but instead, reasoned arguments for why he is awful.
10. A dog that is resource guarding by growling/snarling is not threatening to attack. It is saying ‘I am uncomfortable and feel unsafe and do not want this to escalate to a bite, but I will do so in order to protect myself if you push this’.
Jeez, okay. Painful breakdown done. Next: what are we actually looking at? I’m sacrificing my own sanity to re-watch this enough times to break it down, ugh. Here’s a link to someone who does a decent slow-motion breakdown, and although I can’t find the person’s credentials it’s pretty accurate even though it misses some stuff. .I’m going to use that video for the breakdown because it’s slowed down, so the timecode will not match a full-speed video of the incident.
0:10 He stares at the dog as he puts food down. He is already in her space, too close physically, and leaning into her with all of his posture. Forward body posture and weight is a very aggressive signal - it says “I am ready to leap into your space at any moment”.
0:12 She blinks multiple times and looks away. These are appeasement signals from an unsure dog - she’s uncomfortable and trying to diffuse the tensions he’s creating (by setting up a situation in which he knows she’ll have issues).
0:14 She purposefully moves her head so her nose is pointed away from his. Head orientation is very important to dogs for diffusing tension - you’ll notice a group of dogs in any photo will all have their faces pointed in slightly different directions. Turning her head away is another attempt at diffusing what’s going on.
0:16 There is a cut in the video here. She likely did not immediately start to eat, but the video jumps to where her head is already in the bowl and we have no idea how she got there. CM’s videos do this a lot - utilize editing to mislead and misrepresent.
0:22 He moves towards her and she immediately speeds up eating. This is a key sign of unease - the animal feels it must wolf it’s food in order to eat as much as it can before it’s taken away.
0:27 As the video says, you can see his hand subtly moving towards the side of Holly’s head as he moves forward. It’s not a huge movement, but it’s enough to be a threat to a dog that’s already on edge. This is because it’s moving into her peripheral vision and getting closer to her blind spot - she can’t watch him and his hand at the same time, which is stressful when he’s continuing to encroach on her space with a threatening posture.
0:35 It’s hard to tell what happens here because CM’s body is in the way, but it looks like she snarls at him and shows teeth as his hand moves. This is what he’s using to decide she needs to be hit. Snarling and showing teeth are higher on the scale of defensive warnings than a growl - they’re an escalation when it’s clear that other, more polite body language like growls and appeasement signals haven’t worked. She is telling him very clearly that if he continues to push her, she’ll defend herself - and he chooses to hit her instead of backing off.
0:45 CM hits Holly in the neck with the side of his hand - it looks like his fingers go under her neck and his thumb hits the side, which means he effectively hits her throat with the full force of his palm. He makes contact hard enough to knock the dog inches to the side - you cannot justify that not being ‘hitting the dog’.
0:47 Holly immediately reacts defensively. Her teeth are showing and she makes noise, but she is startled and defensive - not attacking him. Notice how her entire body posture is away from him, and her weight is backwards too. All this dog wants to do is get out from under the dude who ignored all her warnings about feeling unsafe and then hit her right after she expressed exactly how not cool the situation was. Her mouth opens and closes in a snap but it is not directed towards his hand - it’s in line with her body as she moves backwards away from him. Her face is tight, her ears are back and flat against her head - all classic signs of stress.
0:52 She backs multiple steps away from him. He steps into her. This is no longer about the food bowl - now, she’s scared of and reacting to CM himself. We’ve left the realm of resource guarding and now the dog is just threatened and cornered from all sides (remember, there are multiple camera men surrounding her, as we see from the separate angles of her face shown later in the video).
0:57 Holly turns away from him as he advances on her. You can see his left hand starting to reach out towards her as his body blocks the camera. Everything about this is a threat - his posture, his moving forward, his reaching out to her right after he just hit her.
1:02 She’s moved multiple steps away at this point, he’s moved forward and is getting into her space with both arms. She’s started to get backed up against the fence - it looked like she was trying to go around him and get clear of where she’d be stuck, except he cut her off. She turns to see his hands and bares her teeth in a snarl - now she’s really feeling threatened and making no secret of it.
1:05 He continues moving forward once her teeth are bared, but stands up in order to scare her away. Her body immediately changes - it’s suddenly backwards, away from CM again: his threatening stature and change in movement works.
1:08 Even thought the dog is backing away and cowering with bared teeth (terrified) CM continues to move towards her while standing. His arms are spread again in a threat posture that keeps her feeling like she’s cornered between the wall, the fence, and the cameraman.
1:11 He’s literally learning over a dog that is crouching away from him, ready to defend itself, and staring her in the face. Threat threat threat threat. She can’t move. She’s stuck and he’s being an asshole by keeping an animal that keeps trying to get away from him cornered. She’s giving off every signal a dog can give that she will defend herself - ears back, posture back, body stiff, both sets of teeth bared (snarls usually only involve moving the top lip).
1:27 The camera zooms in on her face. Hopefully this was a digital zoom, but if it was the cameraman getting closer, this adds to her stress by cornering her and sticking a camera in her face.
1:31 This looks like a lip lick - a well known sign of nerves and stress - where the tongue doesn’t leave the mouth because she’s displaying a defensive grimace at the same time. Lip licks are an appeasement signal, saying ‘please back off’ - she’s trying to calm everything down while still needing to be able to defend herself.
1:37 As the video notes, actual lick lips this time and blinking - Holly is moving away from the defensive grimace since CM hasn’t escalated the situation by sheathing her teeth and trying to diffuse everything.
2:34 She’s even looking away from his face/hands at this point, really trying to make it clear she’s trying to de-escalate things. That’s big - it means she’s starting to feel a little safer because you don’t look away from stuff that could hurt you.
2:42+ The video notes lots of appeasement signals and they’re all correct in the surrounding seconds: looking for positive eye contact without staring, soft face, blinking, look-aways (pointed breaks of eye contact with a head turn), etc. She then lays down. That’s not submission - that’s just giving up because he’s not going to fucking move.
The video then notes in an interlude that he’s confronted her before, which is why an escalation like this occurs. Holly has already learned that he’s not safe around food, that he’s going to purposefully set up uncomfortable situations and then push her boundaries and not listen to her body language. That’s why things escalated so fast - because she’s had to deal with this before, and knows it ends with him not being safe for her when food is around. He’s doing exactly what makes resource guarding worse by setting up situations in which food creates unsafe situations and she has to gobble it before he tries to fuck with her.
3:20 He mentions relaxation, which the video calls out as being stress correctly right afterwards. You can see her face is still taught, her eyes tight and blinking, and her ears stiff. This is a stressed dog who is trying to be as non-confrontational as possible.
3:40 She looks away and when she turns back, his hand is in her space and close to her face. It’s coincidentally the hand he hit her with earlier.
3:41 He puts his hand on her face as he stands up over her and she snaps at him. This is just plain stupid of him - he should know those are stress signals, and that he shouldn’t get back into the space of an animal he just threatened. Especially because he tries to pet her on the face, which is a super intimate thing most animals only allow with people they really trust. (RE: what I said earlier, he’s not paying attention to her body language or he doesn’t recognize what it means).
3:43 He removes his hand and stands up looming over the dog, moving closer to her as she lifts her lips to show she feels unsafe. At this point, she’s still in a down: a very vulnerable position. She can’t move away from him easily because she’s laying on her legs, which makes it much harder for her to protect herself by any other method than using her teeth, and she knows this.
3:44 She launches up from the down (which is the only direction she can easily move without being massively vulnerable to him) and latches onto the hand he just removed from her face. This is totally reasonable because he’s made it clear he’s not going to listen to her or back off even when she backs off and does everything she can to diffuse the situation he’s forcing her into. (This is a dog who was trying really fucking hard to not bite him, but he pushed her too far).
It’s hard to say why she didn’t let go, but my guess is that she was just pushed too far at this point - or that she figured the hand was what was dangerous since he kept touching/hitting her with it, and that biting it was the only way to remove that threat.
3:47 He then kicks her multiple times in the chest trying to get her to let go. Granted, it’s important to get your hand back in this situation, but there are a lot of other options that don’t involve kicking the dog. I know it’s a hard call but I still don’t approve because it never should have gotten to this fucking point.
3:49 CM pries her off of his hand and immediately stands up over Holly. She immediately goes into a defensive crouch and shows a defensive grimace again. Notice she’s still cornered between him and the camera man - she can’t escape the threat they’re posing easily, without giving one of them her back.
3:52 CM still won’t fucking let up. He stands up fully and walks into her space again as she continues to display that she’ll defend herself again if she needs to.
3:58 He gets right up in her space, and being cornered, she goes back to lip licking and appeasement signals but you can see how stressed she is by how stiff her lips are and how flat back her ears are. Her eyes are tight and all the muscles in her body are stiff.
“I didn’t see that coming.”
This is the point where every professional animal person who made it through the video yells, throws something at the computer, and probably gets a beer because you idiot. I’m not exaggerating when I say that watching this video makes every dog professional I know - trainers, researchers, hobbyists - viscerally and physically ill. Everything CM did in this video is egregious and unprofessional and incredibly dangerous and stupid.
See, here’s the thing. A professional who really wanted to treat resource guarding (rather than bully the dog) wouldn’t even set a scenario up where the dog had to guard food. That literally sets the dog up for failure. And as soon as any signs of guarding started, the person would back the fuck off and reassess the situation. When you’re working on resource guarding protocols, if the dog starts guarding, you’re pushing too hard and too fast and need to take smaller baby steps with your protocol. It’s not a one-time fix, either. Resource guarding protocols take months and months of slow work to implement. There’s no magic eraser for the fear in a dog’s mind of people threatening it while it eats or taking it’s food - you have to earn that trust, tiny step by tiny step. And even then it only applies to one person at first, and you have to teach the dog to generalize that trust to lots of people, which may never be successful. Using CM’s method on a dog might traumatize it into never being able to unlearn guarding because it’s not just getting pushed out of it’s comfort zone, it’s getting randomly attacked no matter what it does to try to end the situation.
Here’s an interesting fact about Holly: We only know what CM has said about her. Nobody really knows what happened to her after she left the Dog Psychology center except for some rumors about how she was ‘given up for the safety of the kid’. That’s because everyone on his show is forced to sign strict non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from ever speaking publicly about their experience working with him or the behavior of their dogs after filming ends.
I’m not going to get into how you should develop protocols for working with a resource-guarding dog here because I don’t want to risk someone trying to use it without knowing what they’re doing. Resource guarding, while not aggression, is still serious and can be dangerous if someone who doesn’t know enough to stay safe tries to handle in on their own. If you have a dog that is a resource-guarder, you must contact a trainer for help working with your dog. Do not attempt to do behavior modification yourself. (I suggest you look for a trainer who is a member of the IAABC, but whomever you pick must use only positive reinforcement and must have experience with reactive dogs and dogs that guard. If you feel anything is off or they ask you to use punishment or do antyhing you find uncomfortable, walk away). However, if you want to know the theory behind it, look up counter-conditioning protocols for fearful and reactive dogs - it’s built from the same principles.
My last feelings on this?
There is an entire website - beyondcesarmillan.com - dedicated to compiling testimonials from animal professionals in varied fields against CM’s methods and theories. Everyone from veterinary behaviorists to animal trainers to wolf and dog researchers around the world told Nat Geo they should never have aired his show in the first place because it was so wrong and so dangerous.
No TV Show on air about dog training should need a disclaimer that says ‘don’t try this at home, it’s too dangerous’.
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