Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer

Recently, my aunt and uncle came to visit us in Baker City, Oregon. Being such a small town, we actually had to spend time together. It turned out to be not so bad (!!!!!).

 Anyway, they both raved about a show that they had been watching called the “Dog Whisperer”, and how amazing this dog-guru was. Being dog lovers and caretakers, I was eager to look more into it.

So for Christmas, I bought my husband Cesar Milan’s book.

 

I’ve never known Whitey to finish a book so quickly — a day and a half later, my husband not only finished the book, but was determined to “Master The Walk”.

Mastering the Walk entails being able to walk your dog on a leash, while never allowing the dog to walk ahead of you or pull on the leash. If you’ve ever met Barkley, you’d know that this is a virtually impossible task. Here’s our stubborn pup, Barkley:

While Barkley is a loving, kind, sweet dog, he’s also the devil. Yes. Satan. He pulls so hard on a leash, it hurts. It hurts whoever is at the end of the leash, as well as his own throat, and sometimes he’d have a cough so bad after a walk that we’d feel guilty taking him again.

Enter CESAR MILLAN, Dog Whisperer.

After Whitey read his book, he announced that we would be walking the dogs the next morning.

WHAT?!???

Sure enough, as soon as we woke up, Whitey was getting the leashes ready, and informing me of the rules.

We must be calm before they were allowed to walk. We must leave the doorway before we allowed the dogs to. We must never allow the dogs to walk before us. We must be crazy.

Okay, the last one was not really a rule, but what I thought when he explained all of the rules.

And yet, he was right.

I have never, NEVER, been able to walk our Rottweiler on a leash with such ease. The dog practically asked me to guide him by the time we got home. And Barkley, while still a more difficult dog, had such a different demeanor that Whitey proclaimed him as “cured”.

Since then, we’ve found “The Dog Whisperer” TV show on the National Geographic Channel, and have watched about ten episodes in the last three days. The guy is a friggen genius. Seriously. He’s got about 35 dogs (no, not a typo), and he walks ALL OF THEM TOGETHER without leashes.

 

They all walk behind him, and love it. And these aren’t special dogs, they’re all pound-puppies, “free-to-good-home”, or about to be put down dogs. Aggressive, vicious, fearful, depressed….. dogs that have serious issues. And yet they’re all the kind of dogs you’d meet and want as your own.

 If you have a dog, you owe it to yourself to read Cesar’s book. Also, try to find his shows on your cable channels. If not, he’s got a DVD collection, but the book says it all. The shows just have more impact and make you a believer.

Not like those religious shows, mind you.

One of these days, I’ll post a video of Barkley on our treadmill. It will make more sense if you’ve seen “The Dog Whisperer” or have read Cesar’s book. Really. Our hyperactive dog doing a 2.0mph on a 3% incline is enough to make anyone a believer, especially those that know Barkley. And it only took three days of training for Barkley to get excited about it. Dang straight. Just wait until we get the Rottweiler cruising at a 5mph trot on it. Pure genius.

Cesar Millan is truly a dog genius.

Here’s a video that another gal made of walking her large dogs that were normally BAD DOGS on leashes. She watched two episodes of “The Dog Whisperer” and was amazed at how great her dogs became:

And here’s a short snippet of the guru himself: