Cesar’s Way - Cesar Milan

I was at the dog park this morning with a cup of coffee. It’s sunny now, and the trip to the dog park with my pit bull, Athena, is one of the highlights of my day.

While I was there, a woman was dragged into the park by a black dog, and a brief altercation ensued between the black dog and Athena.

Altercations happen at the dog park, and as the owner of a pit bull, I have to be careful of how my dog is perceived. Even though she never starts fights, many owners are quick to place blame on a deservedly notorious breed. The woman pulled her dog away by it’s collar, and Athena trotted off toward the water bowls.

“She got jumped on by a pit bull when she was little, so she gets really skittish around them. Dogs have long memories, you know,” she told me, stroking the dog in an attempt to comfort him. I bit my tongue and smiled. Later, as two dogs playfully wrestled, the black dog barked obsessively, and the woman told us, “He likes to narrate the action.”

According to Cesar Milan (aka The Dog Whisperer), it is that sort of mindset that has created an epidemic of poor dog ownership here in the United States. We have humanized our dogs, placing our desires onto every little behavior. We now believe dogs love wearing blue sweaters, or root for the Dallas Cowboys, because we want to believe they think just like us, and if they could only talk, they would be wizened sages. In truth, those personality quirks are indicators of a dog’s mental unbalance, and in Cesar Milan’s view, there is no such thing as bad dog. There are only bad owners.

Anyone who’s ever seen and episode of “The Dog Whisperer” on the National Geographic Channel will come away amazed. Every episode typically contains three vignettes in which Cesar, as he puts it, “rehabilitates dogs and trains people.” The neuroses Milan deals with are diverse, from a dog who has become dangerously aggressive (Cesar calls this “the red zone”) to a dog who had slipped on a linoleum floor and was now deathly afraid of shiny surfaces. In the case of the shiny surfaces, Milan had the dog running across the linoleum floor within minutes. Red-zone dogs often require heavy rehabilitation, and Milan will often take them for a week or two to his Dog Psychology Center to interact with his healthy pack of 50 or so dogs that were once considered lost causes.

Milan uses calm-assertive energy to become the pack leader for any dog, and he possesses a special knack for understanding a dog’s mental state. While his ability to connect with dogs is impressive, Milan’s real skill is using that same calm-assertive energy to explain to a dog’s owner where he or she has gone wrong. It’s in the owners that Cesar faces his biggest obstacle, but he deals with each (and some of these folks are lunatics) with patience and honesty.

Cesar’s Way is Milan’s book, which packs all of the tools for being a good dog owner into one place. While the book labels itself a “natural, everyday guide”, labels can be deceiving. In the first half of the book, Milan shares his story of success and anecdotes from his experiences with a variety of dog owners. He also repeats ideas. A lot. But the repetition is important, because we dog owners need to get these concepts through our thick skulls. I was in denial about walking my dog, which Milan points to as the single most important daily activity a dog owner must conduct. It took at least fifteen times before I realized, “If I don’t walk Athena, she is not mentally healthy”.

Beyond dog ownership, Cesar’s Way works as a guide for living life, as well. Operating on a calm-assertive level in all aspects of life should be the goal of any healthy human being, from raising your children to your occupation.

It is important to read Cesar’s Way (and any guidebook, for that matter) with the goal of discovering how you are wrong, what you are failing in, rather than to support your worldview. I’m far from the perfect dog owner, but my experience at the dog park after reading the book has been eye-opening. The majority of owners have no idea what they are doing or how unhealthy their dog is.

The best part is, following Cesar Milan’s methods can take your relationship with your dog to new heights.

Pit bulls, for instance, are high-energy dogs, and need four hours of exercise per day. When I say ‘exercise’, that means walking, not a trip to the dog park or fetch. I, on the other hand, am not a high-energy person. Reading Cesar’s book, I realized that if I don’t change, Athena would be better off with another owner. It turns out long walks around the neighborhood or through Portland’s many parks are good for me, too.

Cesar’s Way is available from Powells City of Books.