Putting man's best friend in his place

[DoozyDog]

September 12, 2007 12:00am
Article from: http://www.news.com.au/entertainment...07183,00.html#

Cesar Milan is on the Californian set of his Emmy-nominated series Dog Whisperer and has just taken a dog called Gizmo through a two-day boot camp of attitude re-adjustment.

Milan's a rescue guy for owners who have become pets to their dominant dogs, and Gizmo was one such uber-bully. His case would be funny if it wasn't true.

"Gizmo is aggressive with everybody including his owner, Julia," the guru says. "This is the type of dog Julie cannot carry or give a hug.

"If she wants to move him, he will attack. If he's playing with a toy and Julie goes anywhere near him, he will attack. If he's eating, he'll attack if anyone approaches him.

"He attacks people when they go for a walk and if he can't get to the people he turns on the owner. So it's an extreme case of aggression about anything and for whatever reason.

"Some cases of aggression are very specific, so they're only aggressive in certain areas but this guy is aggressive everywhere.

So for six years Julie has been living with a dog she loves but cannot trust. On his terms he's nice so that means the dog is controlling the relationship, and not only that - he's abusive."

So abusive that Julie carries a baseball bat around the house at dinner time and yes, he attacks that too. But astonishingly, Gizmo is not the problem. It's Julie who has allowed the situation to arise where the dog has ruled her life for six years.

"A lot of my job is to coach the owner into letting the past go," Milan says. "For me to tell the dog, 'Don't attack your owner anymore,' is a piece of cake. But to make the owner do the same thing is more difficult because humans retain the past and want to know about the future.

"Animals live in the now, so it's easier to rehabilitate an animal than a human. You need to get the human to stop focusing on being bitten, to focus on control and become the pack leader. What makes you the pack leader? You create a different energy."

By the end of two days Gizmo is under Julie's command, a seeming miracle. He walks next to her, not in front. He doesn't attack strangers and for the first time has welcomed a canine guest into their home, so how does Milan do it?

He says being raised in a poor country like Mexico meant he developed a strong instinctive education. He sees dogs as dogs and he doesn't treat them like humans in the way the West does.

"Right now we live in a world that is led by unstable pack leaders, and we're the only species to follow unstable pack leaders," he says.

"Animals don't follow instability."

* Dog Whisperer, Monday-Friday, Bio (Pay TV), 5pm