Treating dogs like humans is disrespectful, Millan says
Posted on Tuesday, December 25, 2007
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — There is a photo that Cesar Millan, of America’s popular Dog Whisperer, likes to show audiences. It depicts a couple of schoolchildren in a Third World land calmly walking beside an unleashed dog. The dog, free as the wind, keeps pace with the kids and, like them, gazes forward in peaceful coexistence.
The next image Millan shows symbolizes “what happens in America.” It’s a dolled-up doggie birthday party.
“We’re not allowing the dog to be a dog first,” says Millan, the star of the National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer, which airs at 7 p. m. Fridays.
Millan can’t say enough about the way we “humanize” our dogs. To Millan, a dog is an animal to be honored as an animal first, a species second, a breed third, a name last. But to those of us who dote on our pooches, who dress them up for pictures and who lavish them with toys and treats, a dog is not an animal first. He’s Buster.
In the bottomless well of our good intentions, we believe that if we connect with our beloved dogs on a first-name basis, shower them with affection and chatter to them as we would to our best friend, we can make them understand and obey.
That’s not the way dog psychology works, says the Los Angeles-based Millan, 38. Humanizing dogs can make them unstable because it doesn’t recognize their essential needs.
“People have these intellectual conversations with their dogs,” says Millan, whose latest book, Be the Pack Leader, has been on The New York Times best-seller list since its release six weeks ago.
“Dogs don’t follow intellectual leaders. You can be a Harvard graduate and not know how to walk a Chihuahua,” Millan says. “Only humans follow unstable pack leaders around the world, not dogs.”
Affection without structure compounds the instability, he says.
“When you give affection first, that’s selfish, that’s for you,” says Millan, who believes canines need ample amounts of exercise and discipline to enjoy the affection we heap upon them.
Millan, a native of the northwestern Mexican city of Culiacan, sneaked across the border into California with no papers at age 21, wandered the streets of San Diego for weeks and found a job in a dog-grooming shop, where he was allowed to sleep at night.
Chasing his dream of becoming a great dog trainer like the trainers of Lassie and Rin Tin Tin, he moved to Los Angeles, where he fell for a young woman named Ilusion, who would later become his wife and the mother of his two sons.
Around him, a new dog obsession flourished, Hollywood-style. Dogs in costumes. Dogs in spas. Dogs in purses. The kid who grew up surrounded by a motley pack of canines at his grandfather’s ranch found a perfect storm of opportunity.
Even now, when Millan shows the video of Prada, the pampered, tantrum-prone Pomeranian he featured during Season 2, he’ll clench his fist in celebration:
“Yes ! I love America !”
And America loves him back. The Dog Whisperer has been hired and hailed by celebrities from Oprah to Will Smith.
To this day, he says, his father doesn’t grasp the enormous success he has found here.
“My dad still doesn’t understand why I get paid for walking dogs,” says Millan.
The business that began out of a Chevy van has exploded into a multimedia enterprise. The inventive immigrant who wanted to be the world’s best dog trainer realized there was much more to understanding dog behavior than mastering training techniques.
Drawing from the lessons of his father and grandfather, their reverence of nature, Millan developed his doctrine of dog psychology.
He has boiled down his “fulfillment formula” for dogs to three basic components: Exercise, discipline and affection — in that order.
Since he believes a dog “is a mirror of who you are and what you represent,” it’s important that you lead a dog by example. If you’re acting neurotic, don’t blame your dog for following your lead.
In exchange, your dog can help you “manifest what you want” if you pay close attention to the patterns of nature within your canine companion, he says.
For all he has taught the world about dog psychology and packleader mentality, Millan often speaks about the things his dogs have taught him. They have taught him to live “in the now.” Dogs don’t have planners or archives or red-star days. This is why they are so much easier to rehabilitate than humans, says Millan.
One of Millan’s greatest teachers is Daddy, his lead dog and his even-keeled Dog Whisperer costar. Daddy is robust, red-nosed pit bull who once belonged to the rapper Redman. Raised in the Millan home since he was 4 months old, Daddy is the picture of Millan’s “calm submissive” mantra, a dog he uses as a guide for unbalanced, unruly canines.
Recently, as Millan visited injured Iraq War veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, he let Daddy lead the way. Millan knew he was visiting brave veterans who did not want anyone’s pity. He knew that pity is something they might get from a human visitor, but never a canine visitor. To Daddy, the veterans might as well have been celebrities or cab drivers — he treated them with the same respect.
This is what Millan loves about dogs.
“I love the honesty, the integrity and the loyalty,” Millan says. “If you can have one relationship with someone based on respect and love and loyalty, that’s beautiful. To me, it’s the foundation of life.”
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
