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The Dog Whisperer: The Latest Craze in Doggie Discipline

Over the last year I’ve run into countless dog owners saying things like, “I’ve been watching the Dog Whisperer so I’m trying to do X to correct X behavior. Bear with the process.”

“X” and “X behavior” can range from the owner trying to stop the dog from pulling too hard on the leash, to getting a smaller dog not to be aggressive to bigger dogs, to stopping their dog from jumping on people in greeting. Or it can be other problems they’d like to correct using tips they’ve seen from the show.

I didn’t know who this Dog Whisperer was until Karen, who’s Tucker’s (Murphy’s best friend) mom, called a few months back to say, “Court, you have to watch this show. It’s on the National Geographic Channel. This guy’s amazing.”

So I watched. I wasn’t very impressed. Yes, he was correcting the dog’s behavior in a short time, but shame on the people for being the ones who created the problem to begin with and not realizing it. (Granted, when pointed out they do take responsibility, but I have a hard time understanding how they can’t already know they were to blame. They all were blaming the dog at first.)

Anyway, Karen was disappointed I wasn’t as enchanted with him as she’d been, and I felt bad because I wanted to be. I just felt it was common sense, time, and patience to do what he was doing. His true talent is being able to communicate the needed behavioral changes to the owners.

Then my dad sent me the book, Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems. I wasn’t very excited.

However, I took it with me when I had to take my car in to get some brake work done. I figured if nothing else I could read it to write about for Families.com. An amazing thing happened: I really related to Mr. Millan.

He loves dogs. He grew up with them, watched them, studied them, and learned from them. Combine that with tapping into his natural instincts for understanding dogs, and you have someone who’s made a nice niche for himself among the dog training echelon. But he’s also humble and fully admits, “My way is only one way. It might not work for everyone.” I really respect that.

Then the other day our good friend Lee stopped for the night on his way from Jacksonville to St. Louis. Like I do with all guests, I gave him control of the remote. He happened to stumble across an episode of the Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic Channel.

“Mind if we watch this? I love this guy.”

I laughed to myself. But then laughed harder when Wayne, who’s never watched an episode, got interested.

“Wow, this guy is pretty good. That’s amazing.”

I’m still not a fan of the show, but I am a Cesar Millan fan. If for no other reason than because I respect someone who loves dogs as much as he does. He is completely devoted to saving the ones the rest of society shuns (like put bulls) and to rehabilitating the ones others have given up on (like dogs who’ve had aggression problems). I do think it’s remarkable and commendable he puts his instincts to work trying to figure out why they’re unhappy and then working to remedy that.

That is pretty amazing. Imagine what kind of world we’d live in if we extended that kind of attentiveness to all creatures, be they human, canine, feline, or otherwise.

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