Dog Whisperer Saved My Life

Last spring I was stuck. I mean really stuck. I'd been down the unexpected path of living with cancer for the past five years. And, at this point in the road- the place I like to call The Aftermath - I lived in fear that this was how my life was always going to be.

Stuck.

I was in desperate need of a holiday. But I was in need of a getaway destination where I would feel comfortable being a single girl on vacation - not where I would be bombarded by couples holding hands at sunset (help me!). The Oaks in Oja seemed like the perfect spot.
A spartan spa nestled in the mountains just south of Santa Barbara seemed like just the right place to heal my wounds and indulge myself in season 4 of 24.

Sounds perfect, right? Yes, but...THERE WAS NO DVD player. And why should there be - it's a Spartan spa and who really needs an electronic device when you can do endless yoga, mindful breathing and a late afternoon Wasu massage (don't ask). Me, that's who. So now I was left alone and lonely, living off my stash of smuggled in chips, muffins and beer. .

It didn't take long for me to realize once again that the loneliness you feel inside travels wherever you go. Paralyzed, full of despair and in a muffin-coma, I gave in and began watching television: Television with commercials. What was to become of me?

And then something magical happened --I discovered The Dog Whisperer. I watched episode upon episode of Cesar and his dog psychology and it all seemed so simple. I felt Cesar talking not only to the dogs and their owners, but also to me. Why had I been wasting money on shrinks who wanted me to keep on grieving?

One episode touched me deeply - Cesar was visiting with a family with a rescued dog who needed help. I could relate to the family who looked at their dog as someone with a horrible, tragic past. I had done the same thing with my beloved Ellie the wonder dog.

And then Cesar said something that really struck a chord: "Dogs don't live in the past, they only live in the present." I didn't expect words from an animal expert on Bravo to unleash a torrent of emotion, but these did and I was shocked. Sure, we all try to live in the moment as best we can, but it's easier said than done. But something about the canine context knocked my demons for a loop and for the first time in years I felt like they were releasing their stranglehold on me. Like the poor rescued mutt, were I to continue to look at myself (a victim of cancer) as a tragic girl who had been robbed, than that was what I was setting up myself to be.

And so, thanks to he Dog Whisperer, I was finally free. Free to think of myself as someone who had a lot of time ahead of her. Someone who was going to enjoy the present, whatever it might bring. I was not a girl with a tragic past, but someone who had braved the unspeakable and had come out okay. I was finally unstuck.

Tiffany Daniel

'Dog Whisperer' may have a point

By DENISE FLAIM

Newsday

In certain dog-training circles, it takes something approximating courage to make the following statement, but what the heck:

Cesar Millan is not the anti-Christ.

It might surprise the average dog-owning Joe or Jane to know that there is a maelstrom of hostility over the star of National Geographic's ''Dog Whisperer.'' On dog-centric e-mail lists, his advocacy of collar pops and alpha-rolls has led positive trainers -- who advocate reward-based training instead of coercion -- to verbally eviscerate him with a ferocity that belies the training maxim of ''Reward what you like, and ignore the rest.'' The American Humane Association has called his training techniques ''inhumane, outdated and improper.''

Now, I'd just as soon alpha-roll a dog as let him teethe on a pair of Jimmy Choos. But at the risk of having the purely positive police repossess my clickers, I am hard-pressed to join the wholesale condemnation of Millan.

Do I think purely positive training is the ideal? Yes, in the same way I think a natural diet is. Do I think Millan's techniques sometimes cross a line -- or potentially could, in the wrong hands? Yes. But not everyone can work with a clicker, or forgo any and all punishment. Maybe one day compulsion-based trainers will see how much more eloquent and effective positive methods are, but that's the whole point of evolution: It's a process.

There is one overarching message in Millan's show that is as simplistic as it is powerful: Let dogs be dogs.

Sounds commonsensical enough, but is it? We call our dogs ''furkids,'' we dress them up for Halloween with enthusiasm usually reserved for toddlers. We tote them around in fancy carriers, send them to spas, hire animal communicators to let them unburden.

Harmless indulgence? But for your Amex balance, perhaps. But somewhere in the mix enters the idea that people should feel guilty for crating their dog when he needs stricter boundaries, or cutting down her kibble ration when she's getting too chunky.

They are dogs, I remind such owners. Dogs.

Many dogs self-destruct with noodle-spined owners, a tendency that has to do with the species' historic role as consummate moocher.

Nature in her wild wisdom programmed dogs to have a relationship with humans in which we call the shots.

Do I agree with everything Cesar Millan does or says? Certainly not. But you don't have to eat everything at the Sizzler buffet, either. Millan's exercise mania speaks to our suburban dogs, who often wreak havoc in dog parks because their social lives have been stunted by postage-stamp lots and stockade fences. Students of body language can spend hours deconstructing Millan's pivot points and postural inflections. He is talking to those dogs, but not with words.

I don't know if there is a great risk that the untutored or unsophisticated will copy Millan's more physical tactics, despite all the on-screen warnings ''not to try this at home.'' As a friend of mine said on a doggie e-mail list recently, if someone asks you to demonstrate how to turn a screw correctly, ''and if they then take the screwdriver from you and proceed to stick it in their eye, it is neither your fault, nor the screwdriver's fault.''

I don't know how one effectively saves idiots from themselves. What I do know is that a life with dogs is a process, one that ideally leads us away from overtly physical techniques such as Millan's, and toward the more motivational and reward-based ones of the positive trainers I admire.

But I also know that many newbie owners aren't ready for positive training: The lingo baffles them, the sometimes self-righteousness of the movement repels them.

You have to walk before you can run, and therein lies Millan's appeal: He shows us that something has gone wrong in our relationships with our dogs. About that, at least, we should listen.

Monterey County Herald | 10/23/2006 | 'Dog Whisperer' may have a point

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