Dog Psychology

No Couch Required

In the If We Could Talk to the Animals, I define and discuss energy as a concept of communication between humans and animals. Whether you know it or not, you and your dog are communicating all the time through energy, with body language and scent thrown in for good measure. But how do you interpret the messages your dog is sending you? And how do you know you are projecting the right kind of energy back to her? It begins by understanding dog psychology—by going back to your dog’s inborn nature and trying to see the world through her eyes, not your own.

Humans Are from Saturn, Dogs Are from Pluto

For any relationship to truly achieve harmony, it can’t be one-sided. The needs of both parties must be fulfilled. Think about male-female relationships. When I was first married, it took me a long time to realize that the way I saw the world as a man was very different from the way my wife saw the world as a woman. The things that made me happy and content in the relationship were not always the same things that made her happy and content—and as long as I fulfilled only my own needs, we would have real problems. It was my way or the highway, partly because I was selfish, but mostly because I didn’t know there was another way.

If I don’t understand the psychology of the most important woman in my life, then how can we truly communicate? We can never become connected to each other, and a relationship without connection is vulnerable to divorce. I had to read a lot of relationship psychology books to learn to see the world through Ilusion’s eyes, and believe me, my doing so made a huge difference in our marriage.

My goal here is to help you make the same kind of positive changes in your “marriage” with your dog, based on a new understanding of your dog’s true nature. It’s only with this knowledge that you can achieve the kind of connection between species—that true man-beast connection—that you desire in your heart.

The first mistake so many of my clients make in relating to their dogs is similar to the one many men make in relating to women—they assume that both their minds work in exactly the same way. Most animal lovers insist on trying to relate to their dogs using human psychology. No matter the breed—German shepherd, Dalmatian, cocker spaniel, golden retriever—they truly see all dogs as furry, four-legged people. I suppose it’s natural to humanize an animal, because human psychology is our first frame of reference. We’ve been raised to believe the world belongs to us, and that it should run the way we want it to. However, as clever as we humans are, we aren’t clever enough to completely undo Mother Nature. Humanizing a dog, the source of many of the problem behaviors I am called in to correct, creates imbalance, and a dog who’s out of balance is an unfulfilled and, more often than not, troubled dog. Time and time again, I am called in to work with a dog that is essentially running her owner’s life, exhibiting dominant, aggressive, or obsessive behaviors, and creating a household in turmoil. Sometimes these issues have gone on for years and years. Often, a baffled owner will say, “The problem is, she thinks she’s a person.” No, she doesn’t. I promise you, your dog knows full well that she’s a dog. The problem is, you don’t know it.

Different Pasts, Different Presents

Animals and humans all evolved differently, from different ancestors and with different strengths and weaknesses to help them survive in the world. In his book Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think, Professor Marc D. Hauser describes different animals as having different built-in “mental tool kits” for survival. I like this “tool kit” analogy because it’s a simple way to begin to understand nature’s great diversity. Some tools we all share, such as the universal language of energy, which I describe earlier. Some tools are specific to one species. Many tools are the same across more than one species—scent, for example—but may play a greater role in the survival of one species over another. Each of these evolutionary “tools” becomes the toolbox of an animal’s mind, so that every species has a psychology that is in some ways very specific and unique. Giraffes have their own psychology. Elephants have their own psychology. You wouldn’t expect a lizard to have the same psychology as a human, would you? Of course not. Because a lizard evolved in a different environment, and lives a completely different life from a human’s. Lizards are “built” for completely disparate functions than we are. Going back to the “tool kit” analogy, you wouldn’t expect a doctor to bring a computer programmer’s tool kit to the operating room. You wouldn’t expect a plumber to bring a violinist’s tools to fix your sink. They all have separate tools because they all do very different jobs. Although dogs and humans have interacted closely—perhaps even interdependently—for thousands of years, dogs were also “built” for jobs very much unlike the jobs we humans were designed by nature to do. Think about it. Considering your different jobs and different tool kits, why would you expect your dog’s mind to operate in the same way that yours does?

When we humanize dogs, we create a disconnect for them. By humanizing them, we’re going to be able to love them the way we would love a human, but we’re never going to achieve a deep communion with them. We’re never really going to learn to love them for who and what they truly are.

It may seem to you, as you read this book or watch my TV show or attend one of my seminars, that I keep hitting these same points over and over: “Dogs don’t think like humans.” “Dog psychology isn’t human psychology.” If you’ve heard enough of it already and are all set to start relating to your dog as a dog, congratulations and more power to you! But you’d be amazed at the number of clients I have, and the hundreds of people I speak to or who write to me, who are reluctant and sometimes downright unwilling to let go of the picture they have in their minds of their dogs as cute little people. Their dogs are their “babies,” and by thinking of them otherwise, their owners are afraid they’ll somehow lose the connection between them instead of strengthen it. During a question-and-answer period at the end of one of my seminars, a clearly disheartened woman stood up and said, “Do you realize that everything you are telling us goes completely against everything we’ve ever thought about our dogs?” I had to say to the audience, “I’m sorry, humans.” Some of my clients are heartbroken and actually shed tears when I tell them that in order to solve their dogs’ problems, they have to start perceiving and treating their canine companions in a way that is completely different from how they’ve perceived them, sometimes for years. Often when I leave a consultation, I fear that the dog I’ve just met is never going to get the chance to live a peaceful, balanced life because her owner seems unlikely and unwilling to change. If you are reading this and fear that you may be one of these people, please take heart. Think of getting to know your dog for who she really is as an exciting new adventure! Consider the great privilege you will be given, being able to live side by side with and learn to see the world through the eyes of a very special member of a completely different species! Remember that by making a commitment to change, you are making a commitment to your dog. You are giving your dog an opportunity to reach her natural potential. You are offering another living creature the highest form of respect, by letting that creature be what she is supposed to be. You are building the foundations of a new connection that will bring you and your dog even closer.

So, what exactly is so different about dog psychology? To begin to understand it, we must again look at how canines live in nature, when humans are out of the picture. Dogs begin their lives in a very different way from humans. Even our most basic senses are different.

Nose, Eyes, Ears: In That Order!

When a mother dog gives birth, her puppies are born with their noses open but their eyes and ears are closed. The earliest, most vital thing in a dog’s life—her mother—appears to it first as scent. The mother is, first and foremost, scent and energy. A human infant can also distinguish his mother’s smell from the smells of other humans, so scent is important to us as well.2 But it’s not our most important sense. For man, “seeing is believing.” When you hear that some guy named Cesar Millan can control a pack of forty dogs without a leash, you’re not going to believe it until you see me do it. Well, for a dog, smelling is believing. If she doesn’t smell it, she can’t figure it out. It’s not real to her. And how’s this for a comparison: while we humans have only about 5 million scent receptors in our noses, the average grown dog has about 220 million. In fact, as handlers of tracking and cadaver dogs can tell you, dogs have the ability to sniff out smells that we can’t even pick up using sophisticated scientific equipment. In short, a puppy grows up to “see” the world using its nose as its primary sensory organ.

Along with scent and energy, a puppy will experience touch as she wriggles close to her mother to nurse, long before she even knows what she looks like. Not until about fifteen days after her birth will she open her eyes and start to take in the world through sight. And not until around twenty days after birth will her ears start to function. But how do we most often try to communicate with our dogs? By talking to them as if they understood us, or by yelling commands at them!

Nose, eyes, ears. My clients get tired of my repeating this, but I’ll say it again. Nose, eyes, ears. Commit that to memory. It is the natural order of senses in dogs. My point is that from the very beginning—from the development of their first basic tools of survival—dogs experience the world in a completely different way than we do. They, in essence, experience a different world.

Even the experience of birth for a puppy is far removed from that of a human infant. For a dog, the calm-assertive energy of the mother permeates everything. Think about a typical birth scenario for a human. Imagine the stereotypical male delivery room role: “Breathe, honey, breathe!” Think about your favorite sitcom, with the husband pacing the waiting room or fainting at the sight of blood during the delivery. Remember that famous I Love Lucy episode when Ricky and the Mertzes rehearse everything for Lucy’s trip to the hospital, but when the time finally comes, they all fall apart?

For first-time human parents, a birth is usually very stressful and frenetic. It’s a different story in the animal world. In her natural environment, a mother dog will not be afraid of labor, nor will she need doctors, nurses, midwives, or Lamaze coaches to cheer her on. She builds her nest, goes to it by herself, and in many cases becomes very territorial about the experience. Have you ever seen a mother dog take her newborns into a closet or under a bed, where she cleans them of the placenta and begins to feed them? It’s a private thing for her. That, immediately, is another difference between humans and dogs. We bring the whole family into the delivery room: grandma, grandpa, cousins, along with a video camera, cigars, flowers, balloons. We create parties around having babies! Which is a very beautiful ritual for us—but again, a distinction between humans and dogs is the very way that life begins for us. Being a dog is not less or more than being a human. But life for a dog is fundamentally a very different experience, from day one.

Let’s look at the early development of dogs as a window into their minds. While puppies are tiny, a mother dog presents herself in the den, and the puppies must find her, must come to her. She doesn’t go to them. As they grow older, sometimes she walks away from them—or even pushes them away—when they approach her to nurse. In nature, this is where both discipline and natural selection begin. The weak puppies will be the ones who have the hardest time finding her, and who can’t compete when it’s time to feed. If a mother dog senses a weakness in one of her puppies, she won’t look out for it. It may even die. You can see right there the enormous difference between humans and dogs. We are the only species in the animal kingdom that takes extra care of a weak infant. There’s no neonatal intensive care unit in a dog pack. It isn’t that the mother dog doesn’t care for her offspring, it’s just that, in the natural world of dogs, “caring” means ensuring survival for the pack, and for future generations. A weak puppy who can’t keep up endangers not only the whole pack by slowing it down, but in genetic terms, it’s also likely to grow up weak, to breed more weak puppies. It seems harsh to us, but in the natural world the weak are always weeded out early.

To a puppy, its mother begins as scent and energy—the same calm-assertive energy that you will read much more about throughout this book. The hormone progesterone, which is still strong in the mother from pregnancy, helps enhance this calm energy, inhibiting her fight-or-flight response so she can concentrate on raising her puppies. Calm-assertive energy is the very first energy that puppies experience, and it will be this energy that they associate with balance and harmony for the rest of their lives. From the very beginning of their lives, they learn to follow a calm-assertive leader. They also learn calm-submission, the natural role of followers in the animal kingdom, and especially in the dog world. They are learning patience. Dogs’ food doesn’t arrive on a Federal Express truck; they have to wait for the mother to return to the den in order to feed. They learn that survival means both competition with their littermates for food and cooperation with their mother—by default, their first pack leader.

The Proper Way to Meet a Dog

This isn’t a book about dog biology, but there’s a reason why it’s important to know how your dog’s body and mind interrelate, and how your dog developed from the puppy he or she once was. Its mother is the first “introduction” a puppy will have in the world. She’s the first “other being” a puppy will meet. Now, contrast the calm-assertive scent and energy emitted by a mother dog with how we normally introduce ourselves to a dog. What do we usually do when we see a cute little puppy? “Ooooo!” we exclaim loudly, usually in a high-pitched voice we reserve for babies. “Come here, you cute little thing!” By doing this, we are introducing ourselves to the dog using sound first—and not only sound but usually very excited, emotion-charged sound. What we’re doing is projecting excited, emotional energy, which is the furthest from calm-assertive energy that we can get. To a dog, emotional energy is weak and often negative energy. So from the get-go, we’re telling the dog that we don’t exactly have it all together.

And what happens next? We approach the dog, not the other way around. We rush up to her, bend down to her level, and give her affection—usually a pat on the head—before she even knows who we are. By this point, the dog has already figured out that we really don’t understand anything about her. She’s also getting the clear message that we’re coming to her—and from that point on, we are signing a contract that says that we are the followers and she is the leader. Do you blame her, after we’ve made such an unstable first impression?

Let’s replay that first-meeting scenario using dog psychology instead of human psychology. The proper way to approach a new dog is not to approach her at all. Dogs never approach each other face on, unless they are challenging each other. And pack leaders never approach pack followers; the followers always approach him. There is such a thing as etiquette in the dog world, and a canine Emily Post would demand that when meeting a dog, you not make eye contact, you maintain calm-assertive energy, and you allow the dog to come to you. How will this dog check you out? By sniffing, of course. And don’t be alarmed if she sniffs your crotch. Of course among humans it would be considered downright offensive to sniff someone’s genitals upon first meeting him, but that’s how dogs greet each other all the time. They usually don’t mean anything sexual by it; it’s simply a way that they get important information about each other—gender, age, what the other dog had for lunch. A dog who sniffs you is getting similar information about you. While sniffing you, the dog is reading not only your scent but also the all-important energy you are projecting. Now, that dog may end up not being very interested in you and may wander off in search of other, more fascinating scents. Or she may stick around to explore you further. Once a dog has decided to initiate contact with you, by nuzzling or rubbing up against you, only then should you offer affection to her. And save the eye contact for when you really know each other better—sort of like not going too far on a first date.

Sometimes, after examining a new person, a dog will lose interest and begin to wander away. Naturally, the dog lover will reach out after her and attempt to give her affection in order to bring her back. With some dogs, this can be perceived as an unwanted advance and can precipitate a bite. Even with a friendly dog, I usually suggest that people don’t offer affection right away. Let the dog get to know you, feel comfortable with you, and do something to earn your affection first.

This advice almost never goes over very well, because we humans get such a great sense of satisfaction from sharing affection with dogs. What most animal lovers don’t understand is that by sharing affection first, we are not doing the dog any favors. We might be fulfilling our own needs—after all, dogs are so sweet and appealing and soft and fluffy! And as it turns out, they are important to both our physical and mental health as human beings. As animal behaviorist Patricia B. McConnell points out in her book The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs, petting an animal can actually have significant physical benefits for people. According to McConnell, studies have shown that stroking a dog reduces heart rate and blood pressure in humans—as well as in the dog!—and releases chemicals in our brains that help soothe us and counteract the effects of stress. But when we come to a dog we barely know and offer unconditional affection right away, we may be creating a serious imbalance in our relationship with that dog. Particularly, if we are to be the dog’s owner, a simple first meeting like this is often where behavior problems begin. Just like in the human world, to a dog a first impression counts a lot.

Many dog lovers may feel angry at me here, and let me make it clear that I understand that people have the best intentions in mind when giving a dog affection first. To reach out to another being with affection is a natural impulse for most of us, and part of what is most beautiful about being human. But we must try to remember that by doing so, we’re fulfilling our own need for affection, not the dog’s. Like most mammals, dogs do need and crave physical affection in their lives. But it’s not the first and most import thing they need from you. If they get affection first, it tips the scales of your relationship—in the wrong direction.

Seeing Things Backward

You now understand how, in relating to dogs, we usually communicate everything to them “backward”—using sound, then sight, and generally ignoring scent. Dogs experience the world through scent, sight, and then sound—in that order. That’s vital to remember if we want to communicate correctly with them. Never forget my formula: nose, eyes, ears. Repeat it to yourself the way I repeat it to my clients, until it’s second nature.

There is another critical thing we do backward when we associate with dogs, although this concept is a little more difficult to understand. We relate to dogs the same way as we do to humans—as a specific name or personality first. When I relate to people, I expect them to see me first as Cesar Millan, next as Hispanic male, last as human being (Homo sapiens). When we relate to one another, we rarely think about the species we belong to, and almost never remember that we are all members of the animal kingdom. That information just doesn’t enter into our minds when we meet our friends for coffee at Starbucks. A friend is a name and personality, period.

Naturally, we think of our dogs and most of our pets in this same way—name and personality first. In fact, we usually think of our dogs as name and personality, then breed, then…human! Take a famous dog—say, Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua, Tinkerbell. We automatically think of the dog as a name first—Tinkerbell. At the same time, we might think of something about Tinkerbell’s personality—say, she’s spoiled. Or she wears cute outfits. Then we think of her as her breed—Chihuahua. Last, we remember that she is a dog, although the way she is always carried around from place to place in designer handbags and limousines, it would be easy to mistake her for a doll or small child. Because Tinkerbell is so enmeshed in the human world, it rarely crosses our minds to think of her as animal—or to relate to her as such. But animal she is. This is another place where we go very wrong in how we communicate with our canines.

When you interact with your dog—and this is most important when you are trying to deal with her issues or correct her behavior problems—you must relate to her this way, in this order:

First, as

1. animal

2. species: dog (Canis familiaris)

Then, as

3. breed (Chihuahua, Great Dane, collie, etc.)

And last and least important

4. name (personality)

This doesn’t mean Paris can’t love Tinkerbell for being Tinkerbell. What it does mean is that Paris needs to recognize the animal and species in Tinkerbell first, in order for Tinkerbell to live a well-adjusted life. All the designer handbags and limousines in the world won’t make her a happy, balanced dog.

Recognizing the Animal in Your Dog

What do you think of when you think of the world animal? I think of nature, fields, forests, the jungle. I think of wolves, whose territories extend for miles and miles in their wild state. I think of two words in particular: natural and freedom. Every animal, including the human animal, is born with a deep-seated need to be free. But when we bring animals into our lives, by definition they are not “free” anymore—at least not in the way that nature intended them to be. We contain them when we bring them into our environment. Most of the time, we do it for good and well-intentioned reasons. But regardless of whether it’s a kitten, a chimpanzee, a horse, or a dog, whether we provide a one-room apartment or a mansion as big as Paris Hilton’s, all animals still have the same needs that Mother Nature originally gave them. And if we’re going to make the choice of having them live with us, we have a responsibility to fulfill those natural animal needs in them if we want them to be happy and balanced.

Animals are beautifully simple. To them, life is also very simple. It’s we who make it complicated for them by not allowing them to be who they are, by not understanding or even trying to speak their language, and by neglecting to give them what nature intended for them to have.

The most important thing to know about animals is that they all live in the present. All the time. It’s not that they don’t have memories—they do. It’s just that they don’t obsess over the past, or the future. When someone brings me a dog who attacked someone the day before, I look at her as a dog who is probably unbalanced and needs help today, but I don’t think, “Oh, she’s the dog who attacked a man yesterday.” That dog isn’t thinking about what she did yesterday, and she’s not planning the strategy for her next bite. She didn’t premeditate the first bite either—she only reacted. She’s in the moment, and she needs help in that moment. That’s perhaps the most wonderful revelation I have had from a life working with dogs. Every day when I go to work, dogs remind me to live in the present. Maybe I had a fender bender yesterday, or I’m worried about a bill I have to pay tomorrow, but being around animals, I am always reminded that the only real moment in life is now.

Although humans are animals, too, we are the only species that dwells on the past and worries about the future. We are probably not the only species that is aware of its own death, but we certainly are the only animals who actively fear it.

Living in the moment—what animals do naturally—has become the Holy Grail for many human beings. Some people spend years learning to meditate or chant, and spend thousands of dollars going on retreats to monasteries on high mountain-tops, trying to learn to live in the moment, if even for a little while. But almost all humans can’t help but lose sleep over the past or the future some of the time, unless something dramatic happens in our lives. For example, take a person who almost dies. From that point on, suddenly the sky is beautiful, the trees are beautiful, his wife is beautiful! Everything is beautiful. Finally, he understands the concept of living in the moment. Animals don’t need to learn that lesson, because they are born with that insight.

Human beings, of course, are also the only animals who use language. Though scientists have recently discovered that many animals—including primates, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), birds, and even bees, to name a few—have more intricate and complex communication systems than we ever imagined, humans still remain the only animals who can put together complex words, thoughts, and concepts to create speech. Speech is our number one form of communication, and because we are so reliant on it, we neglect using our other four senses or the “sixth sense” I describe in If We Could Talk to the Animals: the universal sense of energy. I’ll repeat: All animals communicate using energy, constantly. Energy is beingness. Energy is who you are and what you are doing at any given moment. That’s how animals see you. That’s how your dog sees you. Your energy in that present moment defines who you are.

Species: Dog

Like all other animals, dogs have the inborn need for food and water, sleep, sex, and protection from the elements. Dogs are descended from wolves; in fact, the DNA of dogs and wolves is almost indistinguishable.7 Dogs can even mate with wolves and produce fertile offspring. Though there are many differences between domesticated dogs and wolves, we can learn much about our dogs’ innate natures by observing wolf packs in the wild.

Many North American wolves spend their springs and summers foraging for small game and fish, and their winters in organized hunts, pursuing mammals, sometimes as large as moose. Biologist David L. Mech observed wolves in the wild and noticed that only 5 percent of their hunts were successful. But the wolves still went out every day to hunt. They didn’t get together and say, “You know, we’ve had a run of bad luck. Let’s blow off the hunt today.” Whether they caught their prey or not, they got up and went hunting. So the need to hunt—to go to work—is hardwired into wolves.

Biologists and other experts think that somewhere between ten and twelve thousand years ago, the first Proto dogs learned that hanging around humans was an easier route to survival than all those frustrating hunts. They began supplementing their hunting by scavenging from human camps. But early humans did not give these dogs a free ride. They exploited the dogs’ natural ability to scent out and capture prey, and later, to keep farm animals in line and pull equipment too heavy for humans. So dogs have been working for thousands of years—whether for us or for themselves. Even if they’re not going out to hunt every day, it’s natural for them to expect to work for their food. It’s what they were built for.

Like all other animals on earth, dogs need jobs. Nature designed them for a purpose, and that inbred desire for purpose does not go away when we bring them into our homes. Neither do the specific tasks humans have selectively bred into them—tasks such as hunting, retrieving, herding, running. But when we domesticate them, we often take their jobs away. We spoil them with comfortable beds, piles of squeaky toys, dishes of free rich food, and tons of affection. We think, “What a life, to be such a dog!” Maybe that would indeed be a nice life for a retired accountant relaxing in a condo complex in Florida after forty years on the job. But the genes of a canine are crying out for her to go out and wander with her pack, explore new territory, roam around, and search for food and water. Imagine how it would feel to have those ancient needs embedded deep inside you, then to have to live your life locked up alone in a two-room apartment all day. Millions of city dogs live like that. Their owners think that taking the dog for a five-minute walk to the corner to poop and pee is enough for them. Imagine how those dogs are feeling in their souls. Their frustration has to go somewhere. That’s when they develop issues, and that’s one of the ways I get so many clients.

As long as dogs live with humans, their world will be turned upside down in this and countless other ways. It’s our responsibility—if we want happy dogs—to try to remember who they are inside, who Mother Nature created them to be. When a dog has a problem, you can’t fix it by connecting with the dog’s name. You have to see the dog as animal first, dog second, before you can begin to deal with any issues she might have.

The Myth of the “Problem Breed”

When I go to see a first-time client, I sometimes don’t know what the problem is that I’ll be dealing with. I often don’t even know the dog’s breed. I like to come in cold and trust my instincts and observations because what the owner tells me is often very far from the source of the real problem. The first thing I’ll do is sit down with the owner and listen to his side of the story. I can’t count the number of times someone who has read too many books on dog breeds will say, “Well, because she’s a Dalmatian, she’s naturally nervous,” or “He’s part border collie, part pit bull, and it’s the pit bull that’s the problem.” Or “Dachshunds are always a problem breed.”

I have to explain to these clients that they’re making a fundamental mistake by blaming the breed of a dog for its behavior problems. It’s the same thing when people make generalizations about human races and ethnicities—that all Latinos are lazy, that all Irish are drunkards, or that all Italians are mobsters. When it comes to trying to understand and correct a dog’s conduct, breed always comes third in importance, after animal and dog. In my opinion, there’s no such thing as a “problem breed.” However, there is no shortage of “problem owners.”

Breed is something humans created. Geneticists and biologists believe that the first humans to live with dogs selected stray wolves with the smallest body size and teeth—perhaps because these animals would do less harm to us and be easier to control. Then, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago, we began to mate dogs to create offspring that would excel at certain tasks. Bloodhounds were bred to have heightened scenting abilities. Pit bulls were bred for fighting bulls. Sheepdogs were bred not only to herd sheep but also to look like them. So today we have the German shepherd, we have the boxer, we have the Chihuahua, we have the Lhasa apso, we have the Doberman. We have hundreds and hundreds of different breeds to choose from. When you are selecting a dog, breed is definitely important to keep in mind, and we’ll go more deeply into that later. But it’s vital to remember that every breed is still always an animal/dog first. All dogs share the same psychology. The breed is just the outfit that that particular canine is wearing, and sometimes a set of special needs he or she might have. You’re not going to be able to understand or control your dog’s behavior by considering him or her simply as a “victim” of a breed.

All dogs share the same innate abilities, but certain breeds have been selected to accentuate certain characteristics. We have a tendency to misinterpret those conditioned skills as the dog’s personality. One conditioned skill is tracking ability. Because of their breeding, bloodhounds are naturally going to be better at it. They are going to be able to maintain themselves on the ground for longer periods of time. They don’t care if they take a break to eat or not, as long as they find that scent! Can all dogs track, can all dogs find things with their noses? Absolutely. They all recognize the world through smells, and all of them use their noses the way we use our eyes, but some of them are going to be better than others at sniffing out a target.

This isn’t to say the breed doesn’t affect how sensitive a dog is to certain conditions and environments. In fact, the special needs a particular dog might have based on her breed is one of the most important things a new dog owner should be aware of when selecting a breed of dog for a companion. For example, in nature, all dogs travel, but Siberian huskies were bred to travel for longer periods of time. The Siberian husky as a breed can travel for days on end—that’s its natural “job.” This innate ability, however, makes it harder for a Siberian husky to live in the city because its genes are telling it to range over long distances and take long hikes to work off its excess energy. Without sufficient exercise, it will get frustrated more easily than, say, a dachshund. But when a Siberian husky is frustrated, it will develop the same symptoms and side effects as a dachshund that’s frustrated. Or a pit bull that’s frustrated. Or a greyhound that’s frustrated. Nervousness, fear, aggression, tension, territorial behavior—all these issues and illnesses result when the animal and the dog in her is frustrated. It doesn’t matter what breed she is. That’s why it’s a mistake to obsess about the breed when you’re dealing with a problem behavior.

Once again, we come back to energy as the source of behavior. All animals, as individuals, are born with a certain level of energy. There are four levels of energy regardless of the breed—low, medium, high, and very high. This is true for all species, including humans. Think of the people you know. Regardless of race, regardless of age or income, don’t you know people who are naturally very low energy? Who are “couch potatoes”? What about people who never seem to stop running around, 24-7? Or people who go to the gym for two hours a day, seven days a week? I have two wonderful sons. My eldest, Andre, is medium energy, like my wife—always thoughtful, but when working on a task, focused like a laser beam. My younger son, Calvin, on the other hand, is more like me—very high energy. He’s just naturally a ball of fire, and sometimes nothing can slow him down. No energy level is better or worse than any other, but when choosing a dog, it’s a good idea to try to match your energy levels with hers, and vice versa. I tell my clients that they should never knowingly choose a dog with an energy level higher than their own. If you are a laid-back kind of person, I wouldn’t recommend picking the one dog at the shelter that’s jumping around madly in its cage. Choosing an energy level that’s compatible between dog and owner is, in my estimation, far more important than choosing a breed—especially if you are looking at a mixed-breed dog or rescuing a dog from a shelter.

A Dog by Any Other Name

So now we’re left with everybody’s favorite subject: names. This is Billy, this is Max, this is Rex, this is Lisa. Names are something that we—human beings—create. We are the only species that gives its members names. Dogs don’t look at a magazine and recognize Will Smith, Halle Berry, Robert De Niro, all those wonderful people. They don’t see humans in that way. But we tend to see dogs in that way.

Names go hand in hand with personalities. We’re also the only species that identifies its members by their personalities. You can be the charming newscaster or you can be the shifty politician. You can be the teacher who is patient and sweet or the teacher who is stern and strict. Those are personalities. Although dogs don’t recognize one another in that way, we tend to project our very human concept of personality onto them.

“What,” you say? “My dog, Skipper, has a very definite personality!” In this area, I get a lot of argument, and some resentment, from dog lovers who think their dog is the absolute best, the most unique, original dog that ever lived. I do agree with you that every animal, like every snowflake, is one of a kind. But I challenge you to accept a new way of thinking: that your dog’s personality may be something that you have projected onto her. You may be misinterpreting a natural condition, skill, or behavior for what to us humans seems like “personality.” You may even be calling a neurosis or problem a “personality quirk”—which isn’t necessarily good for your dog.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say a man has two terriers. One is named Lady, the other Columbus. The owner named the one Columbus because he loves to explore. Lady is quiet and shy and never explores, so she’s “ladylike.” That makes sense, doesn’t it? A little terrier who pulls on his leash because he loves to explore? And another terrier who stays in the corner and acts like a little lady? According to the owner, the dogs were named after their “personalities.” But the truth of the matter is, all dogs love to explore. Exploration is part of their nature, and when I see a dog who doesn’t seem to like checking out new things—she’s unsure, she’s fearful—I immediately know she has a problem. What this owner is doing is accentuating elements of his dogs’ behavior and labeling those elements as personality. In the animal world, there is dominant and there is submissive (which we’ll soon look into more deeply). Lady is clearly the more submissive of the two dogs, and she also probably has a naturally lower energy level. But if we work on her self-esteem, we hope she will turn out to become just as curious as Columbus.

Of course, in the natural world, dogs do recognize one another as individuals, but not in the same way that we do. Their mothers don’t give them names. A mother will see her pups as the strong energy, the medium-level energy, or the low energy—those are her kids. Her kids are energy. Her kids are a very distinct and recognizable scent. Later, when they grow up, the other members of the pack will also identify them as scent and energy, and their “personality” and “name” will correspond to where they fall in the group’s hierarchy. It’s a hard concept for us to get our minds around, but remember the main point of this chapter: dogs see the world completely differently from the way we see it—not better or worse—and owners must learn to appreciate the unique psychology that comes from that disparate worldview.

Most of the time, our pet’s personality and name exist because we believe in them. Our wishing makes it so, and it makes us feel better to associate with her in this way. That’s a beautiful thing and very therapeutic for us as humans—that is, when it doesn’t interfere with the dog’s being a dog. But when a dog has issues, you can’t begin to solve them by dealing with “Columbus.” You have to start with the animal, then the dog, then the breed, and then work your way down to the name stenciled on the food dish.

Don’t Analyze This

Unfortunately for us humans, dogs can’t lie down on a couch and be analyzed. They can’t speak up and tell us what they want or need at any given moment. But in actuality, they are telling us all the time, with energy and body language. And if we understand their psychology, by attending to their instincts, we really can fulfill their deepest needs.

I often have clients who have adopted a dog with issues from a shelter, and have spent months pondering what terrible thing might have happened to it as a puppy to have caused its present-day problems. They’ll say about a troubled dog, “He must have been kicked by a woman with high-heeled shoes, because now he’s afraid of women with high-heeled shoes.” Or “She was scared by the garbage man, so now she goes crazy every time the truck goes by.” All these things may be true. But these owners are talking about their dogs’ fears and phobias as if they were human fears and phobias. As if the dogs sat and obsessed all day over a traumatic puppyhood, or spent their free time worrying about garbage men and high-heeled shoes. They don’t. Dogs don’t think the way we do. To put it simplistically, they react. These fears and phobias are conditioned responses. And any conditioned response in a dog can be unconditioned if you understand the basics of dog psychology.

Let me give you an example of a case from the first season of Dog Whisperer. Kane is a beautiful, sweet-tempered three-year-old Great Dane who, while running and playing on a linoleum floor, slipped and skidded hard into a glass wall. His owner, Marina, heard the thud and rushed over to him, exclaiming, “Oh my God, Kane, are you all right? Oh, poor baby…” and on and on, with a lot of excited, emotional energy. Although Marina meant well and was genuinely concerned for Kane’s well-being, what she was doing was reinforcing Kane’s natural distress at that moment. In nature, if Kane had been with a balanced dog from his pack and the same kind of accident had occurred, the other dog might have sniffed him and checked him out to make sure everything was okay. Then Kane would have stood up, shaken himself off, and gone on with his day. He would have moved on, and perhaps have become a little more cautious about running on slippery surfaces. But because of his owner’s reaction, Kane associated this minor accident with a major trauma. And a phobia was born.

From that day on, Kane was terrified of shiny floors. For over a year, he wouldn’t go into the kitchen, and he couldn’t be taken to the school where Marina taught and had previously brought him every day. He wouldn’t even go to the vet’s; Marina always had to bring along a carpet fragment and roll it out in order to get Kane to walk through the veterinarian's waiting room. Marina tried coaxing and sweet-talking Kane into walking on linoleum, to no avail. She tried treats and affection. The more she begged and pleaded, the more she petted and cooed and comforted, the more stubborn—and fearful—Kane became. Plus Kane weighed 160 pounds, so if he didn’t want to go somewhere, no amount of pushing or pulling could make him go.

Marina’s approach to Kane’s phobia might have been appropriate had Kane been a small child. A psychologist with a patient who has been in an airplane crash doesn’t insist that the patient get back on an airplane during the first session. Similarly, when our human children have accidents, they do need some comforting and sympathy from us. But most parents realize that even children often react in proportion to their parents’ reactions to their “boo-boos.” That’s why we try to comfort our kids without making too much of their mishaps. But unlike human children, dogs don’t dream about or obsess over past experiences the way we do. They live in the moment. Kane wasn’t spending his days worrying about shiny floors, and he naturally reacted to protect himself when the original accident happened. But since his owner intensified the traumatic experience with her overly excited, emotional energy, then nurtured that fear by giving him affection every time he got near a shiny floor, Kane now saw shiny floors as a very big deal indeed. Whenever an animal isn’t allowed to move through its fear, that fear can become a phobia. What Kane needed was a calm-assertive pack leader to recondition him and show him that shiny floors were just business as usual. That’s where I came in.

First, I took Kane on a long walk with me, in order to bond with him and ensure my dominant role. Once I was sure he saw me as his leader, I was ready to tackle his phobia. Because Kane is such a large dog—he weighs more than I do!—I had to get a running start with him to get him into the hallway where the original accident had occurred. It took me two tries, but on the second, he ran in right next to me and was on the floor before he knew what was happening or how he’d gotten there. Once on the floor, he reacted as he’d been conditioned—he panicked. He squirmed, he drooled—you could see the terror in his eyes. The difference this time was me. I did nothing but hold him steady. I stayed calm, strong, and unaffected by his reaction. I didn’t comfort him or talk sweetly to him the way Marina always had—that behavior had only reinforced his negative responses. Instead, I sat with him while he went through all the old emotions—and I watched the fear literally drain out of him. In under ten minutes, he was relaxed enough for me to start walking with him—on the shiny floor itself. He tottered next to me, shaky and unsure at first, but after a few passes back and forth, his confidence began to return. Once again, I stayed calm and assertive. I didn’t baby him. I offered him the guidance of a strong pack leader and communicated with my energy that this was a normal activity and nothing to be afraid of. In well under twenty minutes, Kane was striding confidently on the same floors he’d been afraid of for more than a year.

The big test came when Marina and her son, Emmet, had to take over for me. Marina expressed to me how difficult it was for her to project calm-assertive energy when she was so worried about how Kane was feeling. It’s a natural thing for a human to feel sympathy for another animal who’s in distress, but dogs don’t need our sympathy. They need our leadership. We are their reference point and their source of energy. They reflect the psychological energy we are communicating to them. It was quite a challenge for Marina to learn how to be Kane’s leader when her heart was bleeding for him and she believed her role was to be his “mom.” To her credit, however, she worked hard to change—and taught both her husband and son to be better pack leaders as well.

Among animal behaviorists and human psychologists, the technique I used with Kane is sometimes known as “flooding”: the prolonged exposure of a patient to fear-arousing stimuli of relatively high intensity. To some animal advocates, this technique is very controversial. I believe that when working with animals, people need to follow their own consciences. In my opinion, the way I worked with Kane was not only humane, it was also instantly effective. Since that day, Kane has had no more problems with shiny floors—or any other phobias, for that matter. He’s a wonderfully balanced, calm, peaceful dog.

The beauty of dogs is that, unlike humans with psychological issues, dogs move on right away, and they don’t look back. We humans have the blessing and curse of imagination, which allows us to soar to the heights of science and art and literature and philosophy, but which can take us also to all sorts of dark and scary places in our minds. Since dogs live in the now, they don’t hold on to the past the way we do. Unlike the Woody Allens of the world, dogs don’t need years of therapy or long sessions on a couch struggling to understand what happened to them when they were puppies. When it comes down to it, they are creatures of cause and effect. Once they’ve been conditioned to react in a new way, they are not only willing but also able to change. As long as we show them strong, consistent leadership, they can move forward and overcome nearly any phobia they’ve acquired.

Cesar Millan with Melissa Jo Peltier.