So - is it true what Heather says - that positive methods are “ineffective”? My answer to that would be - “Yes” - if the trainer is either unconvinced they can work, or has never learned how to apply them properly.

I would guess that there are trainers such as Heather Houlahan who will probably always find positive methods to be “ineffective”. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are many, many OTHER trainers out there who have had great successes with using positive methods to train lots and lots of different kinds of dogs - including pit bulls, dogs with aggression issues, dogs who are timid, dogs who are high energy, dogs who are distractible, dogs who are slow and deliberate, and so on - just about every kind of dog there is out there.

As long as the trainer is committed to learning how to use them properly, positive training methods can be an eminently effective way to a well trained dog.

I, too, would like to know precisely what ineffective training methods consist of.

[Heather? Will you enlighten us?]

EVERY YEAR, the Denver municipal shelter kills more innocent family pets they ID as “pit bulls” than all the so called professional dogfighters in this country put together. Or so I guess, since it IS true that EVERY YEAR across this country, 10’s of thousands of innocent pit bulls are killed in “shelters”. They are given no chance of finding homes, just because of their appearance, and in part because of the hysteria about dogfighting (few if any of these pit bulls have anything to do with dogfighting).

of course, dogfighting is disgusting and brutal and should be wiped out.

But think about what constitutes the REAL cruelty in this country, promoted by PETA, HSUS and many many shelters. The automatic, mindless slaughter of innocent dogs.

Where are the headlines, and PSA’s about that? And where’s the money to fight against it?