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My son was the first to notice, but I might as well go public: I have a little bit of a man-crush on that Dog Whisperer guy.
[For new readers, and others who still aren’t quite sure about me : I’m a happily married father of three. I just think this guy is so cool.]
He reminds me of some of my high school friends (so do Sinbad, Vince Vaughn and Earl). I think if we knew each other, we would be buds. But mostly, I’m in awe at how much he knows about dogs and the people who own them. His name is Cesar Milan. He has a show on National Geographic Channel (probably Animal Planet too, but we don’t get that) where he helps dog owners work through problems that range from “Fluffy won’t stop barking, spinning in circles and wetting herself every time the doorbell rings” to “Mojo tries to kill everything that comes within the radius of his heavy steel chain.” As best I can tell, dogs themselves are the most psychologically healthy creatures on the planet. Their only problem – and it’s a big one – is that they cohabit with humans who mess them up. Ninety-nine percent of the problems dogs have are imposed on them by the humans who “take care” of them.
You know, just like children. Cesar (we’re on a first-name basis) lives in L.A., which offers him a bottomless pool of weird dog-owners, although his client base is nationwide. He starts off by interviewing the humans, trying to figure out which neurotic quirks they have passed on to their dogs. When you’ve been at it as long as he has, this is not difficult. By the time he meets the dog, he already knows why it’s doing whatever it’s doing. Maybe it was abused by a previous owner, or it’s a big dog that is not getting enough exercise, or they’re spoiling it by treating it like a baby. Sometimes he takes the dog back to his place, where he has 20 or so dogs in his “pack” that help him in his work. The messed-up dog is usually okay in a few days, hanging out with the pack, sniffing rear-ends and being happy. Cesar’s challenge is figuring out how to break it to the owner that he or she is the problem, then re-training them. A friend of mine in Andrews was a bird hunter who raised English Springer spaniels and knew a lot about dogs. While some of his hunting pals used shock-collars and still couldn’t control their dogs, his eagerly followed his orders although they were barely audible. One of his dogs had pups and he decided to sell them. They were bred out of field-trial champions and commanded a high price. An older couple came to buy one. Jerry had their check in his hand when, in conversation on the way out the door, he asked the lady what they were planning to hunt. “Oh, no!” she said, laughing. “He’s not going to hunt – he’s just going to be our little boy!” In one motion Jerry gave her back the check and snatched the pup from her hand, saying, “He’s not going to be anybody’s little boy. He’s a hunting dog. He’ll be miserable if he doesn’t hunt.” The couple went off in a huff. Jerry kept the dog and hunted happily with it for more than a decade. Dogs are amazing creatures that sense and reflect the moods and yes, nueroses, of the human they recognize as the pack leader. They’re the species we interact with the most and yet often know the least about. What’s sad about that is that if we knew our dogs better, we’d learn a lot about ourselves, too. I learned that from my dogs – and my cool buddy, Cesar. I wonder when his birthday is? I wonder if Hallmark carries any scratch-and-sniff cards? Bob Buckel is publisher of the Azle News. |
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