My Date With Cesar Millan

OK so it wasn't a DATE ... we just went to see him live on stage with a few thousand other people. Either way, Cesar is just as magnificent live as he is on the National Geographic channels' "Dog Whisperer" show. When you watch the show you might think how the dogs just magically behave when Cesar takes hold of the leash is some kind of back-room-editing trick; kinda like how Julia Child would put a roast in the oven after she cut the dickens out of her finger and the roast would mysteriously be ready before the show ended. But I'm here to tell you there's no editing when you're live...Cesar is the real thing baby! He had four people come up on the stage with their dogs with various issues (aggression, shyness, hyperactivity, etc) and it was like watching the magician saw the girl in half leaving you saying to yourself "how did he do that?"

The main focus of Cesar's message is about your energy and state of mind in your relationship with your dog. If you are tense or nervous that energy will translate to your dog that you are not a balanced pack leader and you'll end up with a tense or nervous dog that is constantly trying to figure out who his leader is. The gist of it is that your calm assertive energy will result in a calm submissive dog. (Don't confuse assertive here with aggressive or submissive with fearful!)

Secondary to your energy is to view your dog in a particular order; first as an animal, second as species, third by breed, fourth by name. We humans mess it up by viewing our dogs backwards and impose all our human emotions and irrationality onto our pets. No wonder they're F'd up! I've never had a problem viewing my pets as animals; that's what they are. (My issue has always been my energy; it's rather frenetic!) Dogs are not people; I get that. They don't understand happy, sad, guilt, anxiety...they understand ENERGY. That's not to say they can't probably experience these energies when we mistakenly encourage bad behavior with a nurturing "it's OK" or pat on the head while our dog is in the midst of unacceptable or negative behavior.

Thirdly when we greet a dog, practice no touch/no talk/no eye contact if you want to gain any respect from the dog. It's funny to watch Cesar jokingly mock the way we greet dogs; our bodies wiggle, we bend down to the dog's level and in our highest pitch voice we squeal "hi cutie schmookie pookie schnookie bum!" Everyone in the audience had an LMAO moment with that because let's face it; that's exactly how we do it! It's good we can laugh at ourselves and not take the whole thing so darn seriously.

Fourthly, (is fourthly a word? eh tough I'm goin with it...Probably a good time to remind you of my legal disclaimer that I make no promises in my blog for proper grammar, punctuation and the like. I'll save that task for my publisher one day) Cesar swears by his formula of exercise + discipline + affection + rules/boundaries/limitations = a balanced dog. Having a balanced dog is what Cesar is all about. We cannot have that until we apply this formula AND remove our over emotional attitude and pleading negotiating games we play with our dogs to get them to do what we want.

Not every trainers' methods are going to jive with every pet owner. But if you really listen to Cesar's message you'll see he is totally in the mindset of a dog! And how better to know someone or something than to get inside its head. "Think like a dog" I always say! (that's also the title of a book I'm working on...Geesh if I ever finish a book instead of just starting one I might actually get rich, but that's just my Gemini nature which is a story for another day...oooh or a book for another day! there I go again)

I must make mention of Cesar's foundation, which has many programs but there was one that he highlighted during his tour that I thought was just an amazing concept. The program goes around to U.S. schools to teach preschool and primary grade students essential skills for caring, empathy and respect, building relationships, acting ethically and responsibly then applying these skills in their interactions with people and animals. If our young children can learn at an early age how to respect animals they can grow up to be responsible pet owners and we might just have less issues with aggression, lack of training, lack of socialization and less dogs given up for adoption. I love it!

Until my next blog, Think like a dog! WOOF!