German Shepherd dog

WARNING:  The following post is OFF TOPIC because I didn't see the last episode:

As a matter of fact,  between the stupid advise and "critiques"  from the panel of "experts" and the embarrasement of neorosis displayed by  many of the owners,  I couldn't stomach more than 2 episodes.   Most likely what looked like an "elephant charge" was a lot of smoke, mirrors and camera angles.  In other words, Hollywood  danger!  I imagine the dogs and their handlers were placed in such a way they were never in any danger from the elephant.     The shows insurance carrier would have seen to that if the common sense of the production company didn't.

Here is the "elephant charge"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxgpYrWdtqQ

What a stupid show!   As far as dogs wanting to protect the owner and attacking the elephant, well a dog would have to be dumb as dirt to attack an elephant.  I am reminded of the wisdom of Jeff Corwin when he was talking about getting close to elephants (or was it bears?) in the wild.  He said something to the effect that  if worse came to worse, and the animal charged, he knew he could always out run the camera man.

I'm so glad I don't have cable. That was just plain retarded! That boxer did seem to want a chunk of that elephant, stupid little Shitzu was too brain dead to do anything but listen to mommy. Better dog? LOL

Now when I see dogs in a sit stay on the highway, in front of a barreling Mack truck, I'll understand. The public I'm sure takes this crap as gospel.

The night the two judges got into a word fight on tv with words and insults back and forth right infront of the dogs, the camera and owners of dogs...I thought they were gonna get into a fist , hair pulling contest. It showed how unprofessional all this was. Once I thought , why wasn't there a german shepherd on this show to show these people what a real dog does. Now after the elephant fiasco, glad there wasn't. I am not sure if even a podium , hard, hard SchH3 WUSV dog would have waited for the elephant to get that close , belloring like it did. Might have lost its trunk.

Surely , it was staged and not done all at one time. However when the elephant walked back and forth in front of the last two , it did not look staged..One wrong move and dog and persons would have been flattened.

I guess some will do anything for a  DOLLAR>

What a load of bull****.. That little dog who won probably was frozen stiff from fear.

I don't know if the elephant was that bad...

I heard about a police-dog "test" that an acquaintance's dog failed. They tried to land a helicopter on him and he broke the down. Imagine that?!

Mary

It's a TV show, EK.  A really stupid TV show.

LOL LOL fire fight that was cute!

I've been following it and was in complete shock at that episode!  Not only did the dog have to stay while an elephant came towards it... for the elimination challenge they had to jump off a ledge about 30 feet in the air.  Stupidest American Dog?  I know my dogs would never make it in that show... and I'm proud of it   For the most part it has been a great let down as it is really focused on the owners, not the dogs... but most viewers probably wouldn't appreciate a show really based on the dogs as it may not be as entertaining... I mean how many people watch the different dog competitions aired?  Probably not as many as are watching this show.  And for Victoria... I like her show "It's Me or the Dog" but this show is making her look like a snooty bitch.

I almost Sh-- myself watching from the comfort of my home!!!!

Smart dog was the Boxer................................

 Hey guys, I have followed the show, though the "judges" have driven me NUTS throughout. How inconsistent can a trainer be ONE week Star is being pushed too hard, the NEXT week she wasn't pushed hard enough. The judges were all OVER the place on this show. And Victoria is definitely using the show as a platform for her training viewpoints. She even states it in interviews that that is what she is doing. It drove me BATTY when she went off about snarl bands. Every studio trainer in the book knows about using snarl bands and many find them a better alternative then some of the methods one might use to actually teach a dog to snarl. So when Victoria first didn't know what they were (how often does she work on sets?) and second considered them inhumane, I was ready to throw the tv through the window! 

I have a trainer that worked on the set throughout the show. They always had trainers on duty though they weren't allowed to give any help. I haven't had a chance to talk to her about this particular episode but I DID read something from the AHA about it. Editing did play a role here a bit. First, according to them anyways, the dogs DID get a chance to acclimate to the elephant before the scene was shot. Second, according to them, the footage of the elephant running fast was actually shot separately, the elephant was actually not running as fast when the dogs were in the scene as was shown with good editing. And third, according to them, the trumpeting was put in after the fact. Elephant didn't do that then apparently. This according to an article I read that quoted American Humane. I can find the link if anybody wants it. 

While I still didn't agree that it was anywhere near a good or truthful test of a dogs courage (more a test of a dogs stupidity if you ask me....if I backed down from an elephant coming towards me it wouldn't be because I wasn't courageous, it would be because I'm bright enough to move out of the way!) and I didn't care for it in the show (merely for entertainment value) it wasn't AS bad as it looked according to AHA. 

Also, as far as the jumping from the tower...the dogs were in harnasses and had been conditioned to it. Not much different then lets say lowering a search dog from a copter? Well, maybe a difference, but I didnt' have so much a problem with that as with the elephant. Heck, many of us teach our dogs to go running full force at a decoy again and again....can't this provide injury as well???

Again, I didn't necessarily agree with it, but I could think of another viewpoint here.