Nature Seeks Harmony, Not Confrontation, continued.
Cheri Lucas, Second Chance at Love Humane Society. Cheri Lucas, former trainer
with Cesar Millan, founder of Second Chance at Love Humane Society, Templeton, California, and co-owner/oper- ator of Lucas Agnew Workshops. Cheri’s dog training career, as she puts
it, “Was a means to an end.” She founded Second Chance at Love Humane Society 28 years ago, and never had to euthanize a dog for behavioral issues. “As a result, we took in a lot of dogs
with issues from other shelters. It was not in my mind to become a trainer, but sud- denly I realized the mess I had created for myself. We had a shelter full of dogs with multiple behavioral issues, and none of them was adoptable,” Cheri told us. After reading an article in the L.A.
Times about Cesar Millan, she called him. “He picked up the phone. Of course, this was long before his television fame. He spoke very little English, but fortunately, I am fluent in Spanish. He invited me to where he was training, in South Central Los Angeles - the ‘hood. I was immediately mesmerized by what he was able to do with the dogs.” Millan was frustrated with the limited
68 THE NEW BARKER
space with which he had to work, and that he couldn’t take the dogs off-leash in public. Cheri invited Cesar to set up shop on her property. The offer included a place for him to stay, in exchange for helping her work with the problem shelter dogs. He brought his wife, kids and their dogs. “I thought he was going to fix our
shelter dogs and leave.” Cesar quickly pointed out that it was more about Cheri, not the dogs, and how she was not providing any fulfillment for them in any way. “He taught me how to elicit my own change.” Cesar told Cheri to stop humanizing
the dogs in her care. “I saw all of these dogs as my furbabies,” she said. “Rescue work attracts a lot of bleeding hearts. Cesar told me that it’s not enough to save and love a dog. Animals thrive on leadership and structure. That’s what the dogs at our shelter were missing.” Today, as a noted trainer, by the time
people come to Cheri with their dogs, they are at their wit’s end. Specializing in dogs that have reactive and aggression issues, Cheri does not train with food, believing that it only makes a dog excited.
Y
The Four Quadrants, mentioned throughout this article, refer to the Four Quadrants of Operant
Conditioning - using consequence manipulation to increase or decrease the frequency of a particular behavior.
Briefly defined, they are: Positive Reinforcement: The dog’s behavior causes something positive to happen.
Negative Reinforcement: The dog’s behavior causes a negative thing to stop.
Positive Punishment: The dog’s behavior causes a negative thing to happen.
Negative Punishment: The dog’s behavior causes a good thing to stop.
www.TheNewBarker.com
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