In the wake of his successful National Geographic TV show, "The Dog Whisperer", Cesar Millan has generated a huge army of haters -- by which I mean people who despise him irrationally without bothering to try and understand his methods. Deluded by the fetish of pure positive training, they routinely assail him, sometimes for things for which he was merely in the neighborhood. Because a lot of his training methodology looks, to the R+ cultists, like dog training from the 1930's and 40's, it must immediately be discredited.

I would love to use this book as a springboard for doing actual training, but unfortunately, Millan spends precious little time explaining his techniques, save to let the reader know (repeatedly) that dogs need exercise, discipline, and affection, in that order. He also speaks of calm-submissive energy (which the dog needs to have to listen to you) and calm-assertive energy (which you need to have to get your dog to follow you), but he spends almost no time telling us how this is supposed to happen.

Instead, Millan spends much of the book on his personal biography, how dogs relate to each other, and defending his practices on the TV show. In truth, his critics, here and elsewhere, are on very thin ice, for he is in the business of rehabilitating unbalanced and often dangerous dogs. The legions of clicker trainers who have never undertaken such a task yet still find it in their compass to assail, say, the (infrequently used) alpha roll, or even leash corrections, will need to show their bona fides in such matters to have even a shred of credibility. (Speaking as someone who has had such a dog, and has gone through an extended course with an R+ trainer to very limited effect, the insistence that everything can be trained with treats and lurve is just false. Disclosure: I presently have a dog under the training of a Millan student.)

In that regard, the book was a disappointment. We learn little of practical value in the book regarding dog training that couldn't have been published in a dozen pages. That isn't to say the book is a bust; far from it. Melissa Jo Peltier, his not-so-ghostly ghostwriter, is a fine prose stylist, and she teases out of Millan an entertaining and readable account of his rise to fame from his poor, Mexican immigrant roots.

Millan's critics likely score more points when they argue with his understanding of pack behavior; dogs aren't wolves, and there are subtle differences. But it's not clear to me just how much his methods depend on this, as he claims to have learned much of what he knows by observing the dogs on his grandfather's farm. Given the R+ crowd's historic aversion to thorough reviews of the scientific literature, this comes off as hypocritical.

Those seeking actual advice, it seems, will need to purchase the next book by Millan and Peltier, "Be The Pack Leader". In the meantime, this serves as a good companion to the TV show, for anyone wondering about Millan's background, and general information about dog psychology.