Cesar Millan

Cesar Millan

Cesar Millan has become the world’s biggest name in dog training over the last few years.

Now, the man known as The Dog Whisperer  is back with both a new TV show in the form of Leader Of The Pack and a new UK arena tour scheduled for the beginning of next year.

With this news in mind, we spoke to Cesar about the where his skills come from, his passion for rescue dogs and answers questions on his sometimes controversial style.

 

So, what’s this new about Cesar?

Well, my goal this time to really help people understand why the fundamentals are so important. This is where the true relationship begins. The last show was about dog psychology but this one’s about what triggers an animal. My goal is to help people reconnect themselves back to these things.

At one point, human beings were connected to mother nature, but somewhere, they became disconnected because we focussed on intellectual aspects and became very smart. My clients are Harvard graduates, but they can’t work a Chihuahua.

This is the difference between being instinctive and intellectual.

How do you think we can get re-connected then?

Number one, what we have to recognise is who we are in the animal world as energy. They don’t know what they do for a living! A lot of people think that their dog is doing something to get back at them. There’s no way in the world a dog would chew on your shoes just because he wants to tell you how much he hates you. That’s rational, only humans do stuff like that.

The next step is understanding the meaning of calmness, just like a dog understands when people are afraid. You don’t have to tell them you’re afraid, they just know. This is just energy. At the same time, people do not exercise the state of mind of being calm. Most the time people practice excitement like “Do you want to go for a walk! Let’s go!” This is how my clients interact with their dogs, its constant excitement. So the goal is for you to learn to understand calmness and see what happens. You’ll see an immediate reaction and this is not the dog thinking, it’s them reaction. Now you’re connecting to the animal.

People around horses are very aware that the best way to be around them is to be calm, it’s a general rule that everybody knows and teaches. It’s not about riding the horse, that’s secondary, the first thing is that you’re calm around the horse. But the dog doesn’t get this treatment; they get the treatment of excitement and humanising. Then they expect the dog to behave, but when you’re dealing with a dog, you’re dealing with an instinctual side of him that is predatorial. That when people get bitten by man’s best friend, because they trigger it.

What made you realise you had such a connection with animals?

Actually, I noticed when I came to America to learn how to train dogs, but once I saw the country and the relationship that 99% of people had with their dog was odd. I wondered “Why are these people so afraid”. They were walking with their dog and getting pulled along, when they go to a park, there’s dog fights all the time for no reason at all.

So I thought, instead of learning how to train dogs, I just train the people, I’m just going to teach them what my grandfather taught me. So I started trying to teach people how to walk a dog properly. Most people, when they walk a dig, they have it out in front. When a dog is in front, he’s leading! But 99% of people don’t know this.

The only people who know this are the homeless and the blind. Blind people have the dogs next to them, the homeless have them behind them. That’s a very small percentage of people!

Everyone else has the dog in front of them, and they don’t realise that this is a dominant position and he feels he needs to protect whoever’s at the back. He’s going to act dominant, then people will pull on the leash, which creates tension and then comes aggression.

You’re known as the dog trainer to the stars, so how do you deal with them?

Well, obviously, I was the guy to come to with larger breeds that have aggression issues. The best thing with dogs and their celebrities is that they don’t know they live with celebrities. That gives them a much more humble position, which they enjoy as they understand energy as a performer. I’m talking about movie stars here. They understand energy, because when they’re playing a character they have to embrace the energy and put that across.

So when I say to them that they have to play a calm and confident character, who their dog’s going to call pack leader. That’s what I was teaching them. Everyone else was saying they had to train the dog, I’m saying that they had to train themselves or else they’d never be able to teach them anything.

Some people have called your techniques controversial, what do you say to that?

Well, I respectfully disagree, they misunderstand my goal. My goal is to teach people fundamentals, before they enter higher techniques. I’m definitely a professional; I know what I’m doing and when to use different things.

Many times when a dog comes to me, it’s as a last resort. It’s me or euthanization, and I’m going to do everything I can to keep that dog alive. So, something I might use at that time is not what I would use for everything, it’s just to help the dog snap out of it and come back so I can become the source of his direction. Once you’re dealing with aggression, their goal is to kill another dog.

One of the reasons I think England banned pitbulls was that part. It was hard to control, so they banned it. I’m saying let’s educate instead!

So, tell us about the Millan Foundation.

The Millan foundation’s main focus is education, so I created a curriculum that is given to kids in America in over 1200 schools, where kindergartners and pre-schoolers are learning how to retain instincts and understand empathy and compassion towards animals. A lot of these kids, especially in poor environments, the parents don’t educate the kids properly when it comes to these things. We teach them things about animal adoption, spaying and neutering, sorts of things we learn later on in life.

They don’t know pitbull, Rottweiler, German Shepard; they just see everything as a dog. So they learn that their energy is very important and stay calm and not approach a dog and let the dog come to you.

America has a really bad habit in teaching kids of how to introduce themselves to a dog. They tell them to ask if they can pet the dog, to me, that’s an absolute no-no. To me, it should be ‘let the dog come to you’, let them be intrigued by you.

 A lot of times, the dog is twenty feet away from the owner and a kid asks to pet it, the dog is already sensing that kid’s energy and is tense about it and nobody’s looking. So people wait to hear the owner say yes, but no-one’s asked the dog! So when the kid approaches, it gets more and more tense and then the dogs snaps. The dog’s now at fault for snapping at the kid and that can be prevented.

Finishing up, what can you tell us about your new TV show Leader Of The Pack?

The Dog Whisperer helped me save relationships; Leader Of The Pack is going to help me save lives.  This is a show that’s going to teach the world what they can do to help that situation. Also, for the audience, it’s going to teach them what the first step is if they want to adopt a dog.

First step is compatibility, a lot of people adopt a dog they feel sorry for, then that changes and they bring it back to the shelter. So you need to know what dog belongs to you. It’s not about the way they look, it’s about how they feel. It’s all about instinct, they’re talking to us and we’re just not listening.

Dog Whisperer was about rehabilitation, this is about rescue and rehoming, two things I’ve never touched on in a show before. They rescue us every day! They rescue us from our chaotic life; it’s only fair that we rescue them too.

 

Cesar Millan's 'Trust Your Instincts' 2013 UK Tour begins 12 April and runs until 28 April. For tickets and more information, visit www.cesarmillanlive.com.

FemaleFirst Cameron Smith

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