with their pets, and that it provides good advice on the need for dogs to exercise and have rules. Horwitz added the show also has the major drawback of attributing behavior problems to dominance when the dog may be misbehaving because it is fearful or anxious. Pet columnist Steve Dale said in a July 2010 newspaper column that while he believed Millan was "blessed with an amazingly intuitive understanding of dog behavior", some of the methods shown on the program, particularly those related to dominance, were inappropriate and not substantiated by science. The Humane Society of the United States Genesis Award Committee presented Milan with a 2008 Special Commendation for his work in rehabilitating animals. Dr. Sophia Yin, a veterinarian, researcher and animal behaviorist, wrote articles and spoke about Cesar Millan's television show and methods, calling Cesar Millan's methods "based on the erroneous understanding of dominance and the need to use force or coercions [sic] as the first-line of training for all problems". She did, however, point out in the same sentence that "there are some good recommendations and lessons one can learn from it and other shows", and went on to list them. In some countries in Europe, the TV show has a warning label text before it starts, for example in Sweden the warning before the show reads: "Note that several methods or techniques in this show could count as illegal animal abuse violations in Swedish law, check the laws carefully before using anything shown in this program", and Sweden has had national debates over Millan's techniques and whether they should be shown or not. Ratings Dog Whisperer premiered in 2004 as a half-hour program but subsequently became first in the National Geographic channel ratings and was expanded to a prime-time, one hour format. In 2007, the network renewed its most popular series to that date with an unprecedented 35 episodes in which Millan travelled the show to U.S. cities like New York and Miami. In 2008, the show in its 100th episode had grown from an estimated 100,000 households per episodes per household to an estimated 1,000,000 people per episode. By 2010 Dog Whisperer had been National Geographic's top-rated series for six years. Awards In 2005 and again in 2007, Millan was awarded the Michael Landon Award for Inspiration to Youth Through Television. The show received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Reality Program in both 2006 and 2007,