The Anti-Dog Whisperer

Here's a guy who isn't famous for training dogs (a la Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan), but he should be! Dr. Ian Dunbar wrote six books on dog training that set the standard all of us probably use with our own pups--yet he's living in happy anonymity in the Bay Area.

And, as you might expect, he takes dog training very serious: "Without training, the life of a puppy is predictable: chewing, soiling the house, digging up the garden, followed by a trip to the shelter where, if it's lucky, it gets another try. Without training, that dog will be dead in less than a year."

Dunbar also has some tempered criticism for the Dog Whisperer, and when a guy with this kind of experience speaks, it's worth listening; Dunbar has a veterinary degree and Special Honors in physiology and biochemistry from the Royal Veterinary College of London University and a doctorate in animal behavior from the psychology department of UC Berkeley!

Mr. Whisperer (a/k/a Cesar Millan) is beginning to fall out of favor with the nation's trainers. Millan subscribes loosely to the idea of the pack, a dogs-as-wolves theory that had long ago fallen out of favor with many trainers. "He has nice dog skills, but from a scientific point of view, what he says is, well ... different," says Dunbar. "Heaven forbid if anyone else tries his methods, because a lot of what he does is not without danger."

If you care to read more about Dunbar and his approach to dog training, check out the very informative article on SFGate.com.