From Fan to Frustrated: My Thoughts on César Millán

When The Dog Whisperer first aired in 2004, I was hooked. I watched it religiously. That first Chihuahua episode? Something felt off even then. But I brushed it off because he had presence. He looked like he knew. He had answers. He was confident, charming, grounded. He made dog training look clean, quick and certain.

I admired that.

He had the underdog story too - crossing the border, building a name, talking openly about the strong women in his life. His mum. His gran. His wife. It felt personal. Like he really cared. He was my hero for a long time.

And the truth is, back then, you didn’t have many places to learn about dog training. No streaming. No online courses. No YouTube tutorials or social media pages run by qualified trainers. You got your info from the telly, your family, your friends, or some local bloke shouting across a draughty village hall.

That’s where I started. For a couple of quid a week, I was crammed into a freezing hall with twenty other dogs, all barking and lunging, trying to stay out of trouble. If you couldn’t control your dog or shut it up, you were asked to leave. No support. No questions. Just do better or get out.

That was the culture. Dominance theory. Pack leadership. Show them who’s boss. If your dog pulled or barked or so much as looked at another dog, it was your fault for not being "alpha" enough.

I’m a crossover trainer now. That means I used to train using those punishment-based, dominance-driven methods. The ones I saw on telly. The ones I was taught in halls like that. I believed them. Repeated them. Thought I was helping.

And looking back, I feel awful. Not because I was being cruel. I wasn’t trying to be. But because I thought I was doing the best for my dog.

But I wasn’t.

It’s a horrible thing to sit with. Knowing you may have scared or shut down your own dog because you were following bad advice. That you corrected or forced them into situations they couldn’t handle. That you mistook silence or stillness for success.

It doesn’t help that some people still think those methods are the gold standard. That they still cling to this idea of dogs trying to dominate us. That if you don’t show strength, your dog will “take over the house.” It’s nonsense. It’s been picked apart by science for years. But it’s persistent, because it feels simple. And people like simple.

Here’s the reality: if your training approach ends with the dog biting you, shutting down, or looking terrified then something’s gone wrong. If your strategy is to push a dog past its limits until it gives up, that’s not success. That’s survival.

Flooding a dog with the thing it fears is not training. It’s trauma.

And yes, those methods “work” in the sense that they suppress behaviour. But suppression is not understanding. It’s not communication. And it’s definitely not kindness.

I’m not proud of how I started, but I’m honest about it. Because I know I’m not the only one. Loads of us started that way. It was all we knew. But once you know better, you have to do better. That’s it.

Dog training, real dog training, is about helping dogs feel safe. Not obedient. Not submissive. Just safe. In their own skin. In our world.

Because we all start somewhere.

I started with César Millán.

I just didn’t stop there.