Talk:Dog training

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 9 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ajeffries.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Worldwide view?
I don't want to immediately flag anything, but this article seems very culturally biased towards a European/white perspective. Did Native Americans train dogs? If so, to what extent? I'll be honest, the whole article seems like a mess. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.183.144.120 (talk) 01:50, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The lead starts "Dog training is the application of behavior analysis." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doug Weller (talk • contribs) 14:35, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Bad sourcing/doesn't fulfill Wiki rules
This article uses Millan (Cesar) as a source, but Millan is in fact not a dog trainer nor a dog behaviorist at all. He is an actor. I find it very disconcerting that content using him as a source is allowed here but content using actual experts is removed. Please consider removing anything related to Cesar Millan as he has no reputable/professional dog training or behavior credentials. 47.7.11.178 (talk) 02:42, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Someone has just added in Millan references. If you check the references the information cited is not on the pages of the book given as the source. Canis5855 (talk) 03:57, 10 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree that this is bad sourcing. Cesar Millan is not formally trained in dog training or dog behavior and his opinion should not be treated as if he is a reliable source. Moreover, as Canis5855 mentioned, the "source" somebody provided doesn't even contain the quote given in this article. I've added the failed verification tag for now while we sort this out because I'm not sure whether I should remove the entire quote without first discussing it. Glitchhiker (talk) 07:22, 6 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Ok, I found it in the article after a second look, but my assertion that Millan is not a reliable source still stands. I've changed the tag to reflect that. Glitchhiker (talk) 07:45, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Stanley Coren "alpha wolf" updated quotation
Stanley Coren is quoted in the dominance-based training section as saying "You are the alpha dog... You must communicate that you are the pack leader and dominant." While this is correctly attributed, in 2010 he wrote in his own column on Psychology Today :

"The first research on wolf behaviors seemed to support the idea of a rigid, military-like canine social hierarchy, usually supported by physical confrontations which ultimately established a leader—the "alpha wolf"—who maintains his leadership through force and intimidation. Unfortunately, later research would show that this is an artificial and erroneous view of canine social organization.

David L. Mech, who is now a senior research scientist for the U.S. Department of the Interior, was one of the first people to study wolf behavior in the wild. In his 1970 book, he was influenced by earlier ideas, including those of Lorenz, and referred to the pack leader as the "alpha wolf." Looking back 40 years later he has come to doubt the usefulness of this concept. He now maintains that the label is wrong because it implies that the wolves fought to determine dominance." ... "The reason that all of this is important is that it tells us, (regardless of concerns about the amount of force used in training) that Cesar Millan's technique, and that of many other trainers who use a military-like concept of canine social hierarchy as the basis of dog training and problem solving, is based on a false premise. It is a holdover from German military service dog training at the turn of the last century, and generalization from outdated wolf research based on artificial packs of captive wolves.

Perhaps it is time to revise our dog training and obedience concepts to something along the ideas proposed by advocates of Positive Training. In that view, controlling the dog's behavior is more a matter of controlling the things that a dog needs and wants, such as food and social interaction, rather than applying force to achieve what the science suggests is an unnatural dominance over the dog."

I think it's important that his modern views should be included as well since they contradict his views from 2001, but I'm told Psychology Today is usually not a reliable source. In this instance, I feel that it is reliable in this context to be sourced and quoted alongside the current 2001 source to give readers the full picture, and that Coren no longer stands by the "alpha wolf" theory. Glitchhiker (talk) 08:31, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Dog training
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Dog training's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "sciencedirect.com": From Shock collar: Ziv, Gal. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1558787817300357 Journal of Veterinary Behavior. Volume 19, May–June 2017, Pages 50-60. The effects of using aversive training methods in dogs—A review. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2017.02.004 From Dog behavior:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. Feel free to remove this comment after fixing the refs. AnomieBOT ⚡ 22:35, 4 July 2023 (UTC)