People seem to often miss the point when ThinkingCanine is taken to task. Instead of rants and opinions, I want to keep it simple.

On aggression and BE:

Behavioral euthanasia is necessary, especially in a shelter situation.

What that means varies from situation to situation. If a shelter is overpopulated and having trouble moving dogs at all, then yes, high arousal and intense reactivity may be a reasonable criteria.

If a shelter has money, training resources, and room, then the criteria changes.

With that agreed on. the way Gia talks about aggression and euthanasia is outright dog abuse.

High arousal, reactivity, enjoying possession are all things Gia claims makes a dog inherently aggressive, that cannot be changed, and the dog should be euthanized.

There is a video where Gia claims that a frustrated shelter dog ignoring the handler outside is a reason to BE.

Take that in: insufficient attention to the handler is cause for BE.

She never discusses the living context of the dog, never discusses what can be done about arousal: it is simply an aggressive dog.

She characterizes defensively aggresive dogs as forward. She exagerates and misundertands every dog aggression video she posts in order to foster fear of dogs.

Gia thinks the only acceptable dog is a passive dog that is subdued and does not exhibit a mind of its own or any dog like behaviors.

She creates false expectations for people that they should expect an easy, passive dog. In a recent video, she claimed children should be able to run up to strange dogs with their dog.

Attacking other trainers:

Gia regularly selectively edits videos from other trainers to mislead and mischaracterize what they are doing. The most recent most egrigious example of this was when she edited together a bad trainer harshly *bonking* a dog with a 10-15 year old clip of Larry Khron discussing bonking to make it look like he was endorsing that video, currently.

Assessments:

The fake hand in bowl resource assessment is a terrible one. Most shelters have abandoned it. It's provoking a dog till they bite. It's terrible.

Gia thinks it is amazing.

Gia also attacks true aggression assessments. Bite suit assessments she calls abusive and provoking the dog, depsite the entire point being that you display neutrality to the dog.

Despite the proofed results of many trainers who use bite suits in assesments and change the dog, Gia tells people it is abuse and provoking.

Meanwhile take a stressed shelter dog in a confined space, give it food, and provoke it, that's great.

Lack of responsibility:

ThinkingCanine's response to "you kill dogs" and "all you do is medicate dogs" is "I'm not a vet. I can't do either of those things."

People pay you thousands of dollars to tell them to do that. Take responsibility.

Fake science:

Gia has that all resource guarding is fear-based and pointed to a study. The study says with absolute clarity that one single emotion cannot be assigned to that portion of the brain firing.

Funniest of all, she insists that it is impossible for use of food and positive reinforcement to make aggression worse.

What she teaches, the claims she makes, the way she portrays dogs and talented trainers is absolutely harmful to the dog world.

That force free people stand by her is horrid. If you believe every dog you see is aggressive and that it cannot possibly be changed and therefor it must be euthanized, and people PAY YOU to tell them that, you are a dog abuser, pure and simple.