What I have learned

I was reading here and somehow ended up clicking a youtube of Cesar Milan (Dog Whisperer) supposedly training a lab that had killed two chickens not to kill chickens anymore. The comments below the video were many people ranting that his tapping was somehow dog abuse! Wow, just wow. Anyway while I think he has a lot to teach and the commenters were way off base, I don't think he could possible have trained the chicken killing habit out of that dog in the few minutes of the video clip. This got me thinking though, that maybe others would benefit from my dog/chicken intro experience.
When my two goldens, male and female, first saw chickens they were extremely excited and I could see the "bloodlust" in their eyes, especially the female who is an accomplished rodent hunter. However I firmly told them "NO!" whenever they showed interest, and the female still needs reminding at times but they can now safely roam freely with the chickens. BUT I suspect this technique would NOT work with all breeds, in fact my house dog, dachshund, I do not consider trustworthy with the chickens. Her small size makes it unlikely she could actually do much BUT she can't overcome the desire to hunt/chase the chickens.

Cesar Milan's TV show is exactly that - a TV show. It's not reality, it's heavily scrubbed, and there's not much to learn from it - it's entertainment. He's had several dogs die during his training sessions, he's been attacked by several dogs, and a large percentage of the dogs he has "trained" have later been put down for attacking their owners or bystanders. What he does is dangerous, and unneeded.

There's a reason that pretty much every major vetrinary society, and pretty much every major group of animal behaviorists thinks he's a quack - he is.

if you ever watch the show and see the one dog he couldnt fix, it is a friends daughters dog. the animal somehow made it across the ocean in the front wheel section of an airplane and was nuts. it ate two of the owners cats. then cesar took it off her hands.