Dysfunction Junction

“If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.”

—Woodrow Wilson

There it was again. That sound. That terrible hissing, whirring, grating sound. It was coming from the garage, and as usual, Lori knew exactly what was going to happen. She braced herself, and waited.

Sure enough, Genoa, Lori’s nine-year-old golden retriever, came dashing from out of the bedroom where she’d been napping. Lori’s usually sweet, docile dog started tearing around the room in a panic, hiding behind furniture, whimpering. Lori went over to comfort her. “You hate that air compressor, don’t you,” Lori whispered in a low, soothing voice. But Lori’s petting had absolutely no effect on the trembling dog. Lori sighed and shook her head. Genoa was having another of what her husband Dan called “panic attacks.”

Unstable Owners, Unstable Dogs

When husband and wife Lori and Dan adopted Genoa, they found she was as near to perfect as any dog could get. She was the classic golden retriever, with a Hollywood-elegant coat and a loving loyalty that put Lassie to shame. Genoa was superaffectionate and obedient, and she even ran out in the morning to the curb and retrieved the morning newspaper. Lori and Dan had their dream dog, and they couldn’t imagine their family without her. But there was just one thing.

For the past nine years, ever since the children had grown, Dan had developed a hobby of coming home from work, changing his clothes, then going into the garage to work on his cars and bikes. This usually involved turning on his air compressor. But all of a sudden, the couple noticed that Genoa had begun to grow more and more panicked at the sound. She would run in circles, whimper, and run into the back bathroom and huddle in the tub. Lori would often end up behind a piece of furniture, comforting this magnificent animal who had changed from a sweet, mellow companion to a trembling, neurotic wreck, as if someone had flicked a switch.

Lori and Dan sent in a home video of Genoa’s behavior to our Dog Whisperer staff, who thought the behavior looked pretty extreme. Our producers pre-interviewed Lori and asked her the usual health questions. Had Genoa been checked by a vet for any physical or neurological problems that could explain the behavior? When they learned that Genoa was in perfect health, it looked to the staff that they’d be sending me out on a class “phobia” case. They—and the couple themselves—were in for a shock.

Four-legged Mirrors Never Lie

As we’ve discussed regarding the case of my friend the tycoon, there is no more accurate mirror of our inner lives than our dogs. Because they don’t live in a world of thought, logic, past regrets, or future worries, dogs interact with each other and with us in the now, and on a purely instinctual level. Their interest in us centers on how our personal behavior and energy is going to affect the rest of the pack. And if something inside us is threatening to make the pack unstable, our dogs are going to reflect that right back—sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically.

Earlier on in this book and in Cesar’s Way, we looked at the different issues our dogs can develop and examined various ways of dealing with them. What we haven’t faced full-on is the fact that 95 percent of the time, the cases I’m called in on have much more to do with an unstable human than an unstable dog. You can’t even begin to correct your dog’s behavior until you correct your own behavior. And in order to correct your own behavior, you have to be willing and able to see what needs fixing. We have big blind spots in our lives that make their homes in our prefrontal lobes and call themselves “rationalizations.” That’s where our dogs come in to save us! If you are having a problem with your dog, chances are, there’s something in your own life that’s out of sync. Unlike humans, dogs don’t selfishly think about their needs all the time; they don’t put priority on the protection of their own egos. Dogs think about the good of the pack. And if you the human don’t have your ducks in a row, your dog will find himself living in an unstable pack—and will act accordingly.

There are many ways through which our dogs sense our emotional states. One way is through their incredibly powerful noses. Those noses are life savers in search-and-rescue operations, and dogs are even being used now by scientists to be able to scent out everything from rare species of endangered animals and plants to whale droppings on the high seas! Dogs today have new jobs, sniffing out cancer, diabetes, and other serious illnesses in people. They seem to be able to sense nearly invisible changes in human bodies and human chemical composition. In his classic and important book The Dog’s Mind, Dr. Bruce Fogle refers to studies from back in the 1970s showing that dogs can detect butyric acid—one of the components of human perspiration—at up to a million times’ lower concentration than we can. How do police lie detectors work? By electronically measuring increases in human perspiration. This is only one of the ways your dog is your “four-legged lie detector.”

In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman reminds us that 90 percent or more of any emotional message is nonverbal. We are constantly transmitting signals through our body language, faces, and body chemistry—signals that our dogs find relatively simple to read. Although we humans place the highest worth on what we say with our words, all animals communicate using nonverbal cues. Many of these messages we send are automatic—we don’t even know we’re doing it. And according to Allan and Barbara Pease in The Definitive Book of Body Language, human body language is almost impossible to fake, because the observer (animal or human) will instinctively notice that all the gestures won’t be congruent, especially with what the subject pretends to be communicating. “For example, open palms are associated with honesty, but when the faker holds his palms out and smiles at you as he tells a lie, his microgestures give him away. His pupils may contract, one eyebrow may lift, or the corner of his mouth may twitch, and these signals contradict the Open-Palm gesture and the sincere smile. The result is the receivers, especially women, tend not to believe what they hear.” If you can’t fool a person by faking your body language, how can you possibly expect to trick an animal?

Interestingly, animals can and do trick each other at times. Being able to deceive another animal has been selected across many species as a trait that greatly assists in survival. Harvard ethologist Marc D. Hauser gives many examples of deception in the animal kingdom in Wild Minds, such as birds in the rain forests of Peru that use “false alarms” to distract competitors away from food in order to claim it; mantis shrimp that pretend to be tough during their vulnerable molting periods; nesting plovers that fake injury in order to lure predators away from their nests. Dogs—especially loud, little dogs—bluff each other all the time when they act overly aggressive but are really feeling fear. The question is, do animals “lie” intentionally, or are these simply survival techniques? Hauser writes that nature has evolved a built-in “honesty policy,” where most of the time, what you see is what you get in the animal kingdom. But animals clearly read below each other’s surfaces. In their book on body language, the Peases describe an experiment where researchers tried to trick dominant birds into believing submissive birds were also dominant: In many bird species, the more dominant a bird is, the darker its plumage will be. Darker-colored birds are the first in line for food and mates. The scientists dyed some weaker, more submissive birds darker, to see if they could visually lie to the real dominants. They couldn’t, because the liars were still displaying the weak, submissive body language and energy. In a later test, the researchers injected the “liar birds” with testosterone, which made them display dominance in their body and actions. This time they completely fooled the real dominant birds.

Although most of my clients are not consciously trying to deceive their animals or the other humans in their lives, they often go about their lives totally unaware of their own true emotional states. Because we humans have the amazing power to rationalize, we can find excuses for all sorts of behavior that would be unacceptable in the natural world. The miracle of dogs is they are four-legged mirrors—and when it comes to us, they never lie. I try to teach my clients how to see their own dysfunction in the mirror of their dogs’ behaviors.

Genoa’s Nightmare

Lori and Dan turned out to be a fit, very youthful-looking couple in their forties. When I arrived at their cozy home, we sat down in their backyard and Genoa curled up at my feet. When they described to me her extreme behaviors and what they thought was her “phobia,” I sensed an inconsistency there. Genoa’s energy was perfectly calm, relaxed—in fact, she seemed totally balanced. The instability must have been coming from somewhere else. But where?

It came to me the moment I asked the couple about when the behaviors happen. Dan said, “It’s only when I turn on the air compressor.” At that moment, a fleeting expression passed across Lori’s face. A little eye roll, a little dip of her mouth. Just like that. Talk about body language never lying! “Lately, it happens even if he just goes into the garage. And he’s been going out there a lot, lately!” I laughed at the way Lori had said “a lot.” That, to me, was a conversation Lori was trying to have with her husband. The conversation was internal, but to me it was crystal clear. To me it said, “I’ve been trying to tell you this for a long, long time. I totally hate it when you spend time in the garage.” I am obviously not a human psychologist, and I am certainly not a marriage counselor, but as it happens, most of the time my work tends to involve starting with the humans and working backward to the dog. As politely as I could, I asked Lori how she felt when Dan went into the garage. She hesitated, because now she couldn’t be passive-aggressive about it anymore. She had to be honest. She finally admitted that, yes, she resented it when Dan had been at work all day, then came home and spent more time in there than with her.

Wow. There it was in a nutshell. Lori was furious about her husband working in the garage every night. It was so simple. Her husband, who hadn’t picked up the signals at all, began laughing nervously. But Lori got it right away. “You mean she’s getting it from me?” She gasped. “That’s right,” I replied. It was a classic “triangle” situation. The wife was hiding her feelings of hurt, resentment, frustration, and anger. Her husband was ignoring her to go work with that bicycle, and every time she heard that compressor, it just intensified the feelings. The garage and the compressor had become Lori’s rivals, competing for her husband’s attention. She was having an angry conversation in her head every time the husband went into the garage—and Genoa was “listening” to that inner conversation. Lori was eventually going to explode, but for nine years she had managed to keep her feelings inside her. But the dog, which could only be honest about the feelings, had exploded a long time ago. The compressor was just the tipping point for Genoa, the trigger—the thing that came to signify the moment when all those angry, tense, negative emotions would surface in the house. And like a child whose parents are always fighting, poor Genoa was so overwhelmed by Lori’s toxic feelings, she would have to run and hide.

Once we made that important breakthrough, solving Genoa’s issue was simple. We went into the garage and Dan worked with his air compressor. Using peanut butter to calm Genoa’s mind, I talked to Lori about pleasant things to distract her from her long-standing resentment of Dan’s garage-related activities. But mostly I worked with Lori, trying to change her belief about the garage. Even though the verbal conversation was between Lori and me, Lori’s changed energy went directly to Genoa. As we talked, I could feel Lori’s tension beginning to melt away. She had finally gotten her terrible, angry secret off her chest, her husband was finally listening to her, and she was clearly very relieved. And at the moment Lori changed her feelings about the garage, Genoa changed—a perfect mirror. The whole exercise took only sixteen minutes before Genoa was completely relaxed. Then the three of us discussed ways Dan could reach out and incorporate Lori into his activities in the garage, to make it a pleasant place for both of them to enjoy.

Like Human, Like Dog

The story of Lori, Dan, and Genoa is a classic example of how our emotions affect our animals, and how our animals become the mirrors of our emotions. I would have to say that, in one way or another, the majority of my cases involve some element of that principle. Though the people I work with deeply love their dogs and truly want the best for them, time and time again, they end up blaming their pets for issues in their own lives that they are avoiding, or are unaware of. It’s like a boss blaming his employees for being unsure of themselves, when at the same time, he’s constantly finding fault with them. You can’t have it both ways. Like Lori and Dan, we all need to look inside ourselves before we can fix our unstable dogs. And we can’t do anything at all until we admit there’s a problem.

Denial of Danger

The moment Danger saw Onyx from across the park, the hair on the back of his neck went up, his lips curled in a snarl, and he sprang forward on his leash, so hard that he pulled his owner, Danny, about five feet.*2 Even though Onyx was a good hundred feet away, Danger strained on his leash, trying to get at him. Onyx, who had been behaving well for the past hour, immediately returned the aggressive energy. Then, it happened. Danger redirected his aggression toward the human closest to him—one of his owners. He turned around and sunk his teeth into the arm of Danny’s wife, Heather. Heather, a delicate redhead in her late twenties, gasped, grabbed her arm, and started to cry.

It was a cool but sunny winter’s day in L.A., and I was in a dog park helping a client, Barbara, with the dog-aggression of Onyx, her lab mix, when Danger, an enormous two-year-old Rottweiler, came into our lives. I had been working with Barbara and Onyx for several hours already, and they’d already progressed by leaps and bounds. But Danger was Onyx’s archenemy. The two dogs hated each other so much that Barbara and Danny, Danger’s owner, always checked with each other to make sure they wouldn’t be in the park at the same time. Barbara had lost track of the time during our session, and had forgotten that Danny, Heather, and Danger might soon arrive. Barbara had mentioned Danger to me before, but she was more concerned with controlling her own dog’s behavior and learning about how she was contributing to it. In this sense, Barbara was an excellent client. Yes, she had been doing a lot of things wrong when it came to Onyx, but she was willing to look at her own issues and was determined to make it work. Not all owners are willing to admit their dogs have a problem, let alone admit that they do. As long as they continue to deny, I can’t help them or their dogs.

Danger’s owners fell into the latter category. Of course, Danny, Heather, and Danger were not my clients, and they hadn’t made the decision to ask for help, which is a vital first step. But when I saw Danger redirect his aggression toward Heather, I ran over to see if I could help. Fortunately, Heather had been wearing a thick jacket and Danger’s bite, though fierce, hadn’t broken her skin. Tears still in her eyes, Heather told me, “It’s okay, I’m used to it. He’s done it before.” What? This was a 120-pound, dog-aggressive Rottweiler that was also biting his owner, and she was “used to it”? Nearby, instead of tending to his injured wife, Danny was in an even deeper state of denial. He had Danger’s head in his lap and was stroking him. “That’s okay, big guy. You’re really a sweetie. You didn’t mean it, did you?” He sheepishly assured me that Danger was a real softie back at the house.

I was immediately concerned. Danger was a large, aggressive dog belonging to one of the most powerful breeds there is, and his owners clearly weren’t able to manage him. His very name said it all! And yet even though they were fully aware of his behavior, here they were, in a dog park—exposing this out-of-control dog to other dogs! Danny, a charismatic man in his mid-thirties who told me he had a stressful career as an agent, was clearly deeply attached to Danger, but he was powerfully reinforcing with affection the fact that (a) Danger had been aggressive toward another dog, and (b) Danger had actually bitten his wife. After talking with Heather for a while, I learned that Danger had been kicked out of two other local dog parks for his aggressive behaviors, and that he’d not only bitten her, but had bitten their dog walker and several other dogs. Yet when I offered my help, Danny was outwardly willing, but I could tell he really didn’t want to hear me. Heather was a little more open, but she was following Danny’s lead. Danny showed me how he walked Danger. Danger was clearly the one in command. It was clear to me that there was something deep in Danny’s ego that made him need to believe he could control this powerful dog, even though he really didn’t have a clue how to do it. Danny was happily paddling down the river of denial, and even though I was able to give the couple some pointers before he, Heather, and Danger left the park, I was left with a sinking feeling. I couldn’t help but worry that they might be heading for a disaster—or a lawsuit.

Denial is a powerful force in human lives. For some of us, our dogs become projections of our own egos, and we see them the way we want to see ourselves. Until we see ourselves as we really are, however, we can’t help our dogs.

Babying Bandit

There haven’t been any cases on Dog Whisperer where I thought I couldn’t help the dog—but there have been a handful of cases where I believed I might not be able to help the owner. As we’ve seen, one of the hardest things for any human being to do is to admit his or her mistake and change. The case of Lori and Bandit was one I actually almost gave up on.

Lori had originally bought Bandit as a pet for her fourteen-year-old son, Tyler, so he could have his first experience of loving and bonding with a dog. Tyler had wanted a Chihuahua and picked Bandit out over the Internet because of the cute little mask-like pattern over his eyes, making him look kind of like Zorro, a little outlaw. But once Bandit arrived, mother and son soon discovered that instead of being from a licensed breeder as advertised, Bandit was actually the product of a puppy mill. Puppy mills (which the Humane Society of the United States has been battling ever since the early 1980s) are breeding facilities that pump out brood after brood of puppies “in bulk,” to be sold in pet stores or over the Internet. Because of frequent over-breeding and inbreeding, puppies from puppy mills often come into the dog population suffering from genetically transmitted diseases, which, if they continue to reproduce, they pass on to future generations. Bandit was one of those puppies, and soon after he arrived at Lori and Tyler’s home, he had to have intensive veterinary care that cost thousands of dollars.

During these first two weeks, Lori bonded with Bandit, but Tyler never had a chance to. Bandit starting attacking everyone but Lori—especially Tyler. Bandit bit Tyler on the finger, arm, leg, cheek, ear, and lip. He even narrowly missed Tyler’s eye. Bandit also turned his aggression on the outside world. He attacked Lori’s husband, in-laws, neighbors, and friends, making it impossible for her to invite people over to her home. This one-pound dog, said Lori, “makes grown men in their forties scared.” In turn, Tyler came to really dislike Bandit. “The only thing my son has learned from this dog is how not to trust dogs,” Lori said. “He’s learned anger and bitterness and jealousy. It’s really sad.”

The problem was, Lori was helping to create that nightmare, but she was not seeing it. She had started by feeling sorry for Bandit, and so her energy around him was always weak, and he had become the dominant one, her protector. She was the only one who could be around Bandit, because she never corrected him when he would attack people. Instead, she rewarded him with affection.

I sat down with Lori on the couch as she held Bandit on her lap. I wanted to observe her reaction when Bandit acted up, which he did right away, snarling and lunging at me. When I put up my arm simply to protect myself, he threw himself at it and madly started biting me. With no effort whatsoever (after all, Bandit barely weighed one pound soaking wet!), I nudged him away with the same elbow he was digging his teeth into. Bandit was totally shocked that someone he was actually biting wasn’t backing away from him! Confused and frustrated, he growled, squealed, and jumped off the sofa. Lori was clearly very upset. “He’s biting, I have to touch,” I explained to Lori. “I’m not kicking, I’m not hitting, I just touch.” “But he yelped!” Lori said, clearly in distress. “Okay,” I told her, “you want me to yelp so it’s even?” For Lori, it was okay for Bandit to bite or attack anyone, because in her mind, they were bigger than Bandit and could just move away. She didn’t see that every time she encouraged someone to move away when Bandit attacked, the dog was growing more and more powerful. Lori had created a monster—and she didn’t want to change herself in order to change the situation. She looked down at Bandit, wandering around the room, looking confused and avoiding eye contact with me. “Now he doesn’t know what to do!” she said. “But that’s good!” I replied. Bandit was now going to have to figure out other ways besides aggression to get what he wanted. But Lori started to cry. She couldn’t bear to see her dog unhappy, even for a moment.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said. Suddenly, everyone in the room went quiet. The Dog Whisperer crew was stunned. They had never heard me say anything like that before. I was a little shocked at myself, too. But in the past, it’s always been easier for me to give up on humans than on dogs. Without Lori stepping up to the plate, there was no way I could help either species. Lori had so invested all her nurturing instincts on this one little dog that she was even choosing him over her own son. This part of her behavior did not sit well with me. To say I love my dogs—all dogs—would be the understatement of the century. But I would never, ever choose any of them over my sons! I would never allow any animal or human to hurt my sons—even by accident—without stepping in and making a correction. Of course, Bandit didn’t premeditate what he was doing—he couldn’t be blamed for his actions. But he was being allowed and even encouraged (by Lori’s constant protecting and petting him) to continue the behavior. She was overprotecting Bandit, but she was allowing her own son to be hurt. This was unacceptable to me.

Our Eternal Babies

I am frequently called in to help people—both men and women—who cannot see their dogs as anything but eternal babies. Like Bandit, we make many of those dogs who could otherwise become happy, balanced animals, into the world’s worst spoiled brats. All throughout human history, the “cuteness” of dogs has been a big part of why we love them. The term neoteny is used to describe animals that maintain the physical appearance and behaviors of childhood, even after they are full grown. In many ways, dogs are neotenized wolves, since all their lives they retain the playfulness of wolf pups. Of all animals, humans are the most susceptible to neoteny in other animals, perhaps because we care for our own young for such a long time before they become independent. Ethologist James Serpell calls this “the cute response,” which allows the cutest, most youthful-looking animals to have a better chance at survival. In If You Tame Me, sociologist Leslie Irvine writes that in the shelter where she spent 360 hours monitoring the interactions of humans and animals, animals that looked younger and cuter had an easier time of finding homes than older-looking animals. I think a lot of people are trapped in the view that their dogs are their eternal babies. I’ve personally observed a pattern among my clients, both male and female, that when the nest begins to empty out—when children leave home or, as in Lori and Tyler’s case, become teenagers needing less direct caring from parents—owners often redirect their nurturing instincts onto a dog. Now this can definitely be good therapy for humans and often inspires us to take care of needy dogs in the first place. But even Chihuahuas don’t stay puppies forever. Think of it this way—if you always treat a full-grown human by fulfilling his every need like a baby, do you think you’ll be creating a human with good social behavior?

Lori had to put aside the belief that Bandit was her son or her baby. She didn’t have to get rid of it altogether, but she did have to put it in its place, get her priorities straight, and see things as they really were. She was absolutely not capable of simply telling Bandit no. She was actually afraid she would hurt his feelings. Since her own son, Tyler, was clearly growing up into a fine, well-mannered young man, I asked her if she’d raised Tyler like that. She told me that, of course not, with Tyler, she understood that sometimes she had to tell her son things he didn’t like to hear, because “It’s for his own good.” She simply could not make the same connection with Bandit. Either consciously or unconsciously, she was choosing Bandit over her own son.

After I told everyone that this case would not work because the owner would not let go, Lori informed me that she was very, very afraid. Bandit’s last vet had informed her that if Bandit jumped off something and hurt his leg, he’d have to be put down, and Lori admitted that she felt as if she had to handle him like glass. Once she acknowledged that fear, I thanked her for being honest with me, but I asked her if just for today, she could try to give it up. To just let go of it, hand it over. To my grateful surprise, she let out a sigh and said, “Okay. I give it up.” She really wanted to try. At least now I felt there was a chance.

Once she let go, Lori was an amazing student. She was able to feel the difference between the soft energy she had been communicating with and the calm-assertive energy she saw me displaying, and she began showing me that she could correct Bandit in a nonemotional way. Once Lori had practiced being Bandit’s pack leader and had seen him immediately respond, I brought Tyler into the mix. Tyler had built up a lot of resentment toward Bandit—after all, the dog had bitten him about a dozen times. I explained to Tyler that Bandit was not premeditating those bites. They were just reactions based on what position he felt he played in the household “pack.” Tyler took on my challenge of turning his resentment against Bandit into calm-assertive energy. In fact, he was happy to change. He wanted to love Bandit—after all, Bandit was supposed to be his dog.

This case that I was about to give up on ended up having the happiest ending imaginable. Today, a year later, Lori and Tyler say that things with Bandit have just continued to get better. On November 30, 2006, Lori gave birth to a new baby boy named John Jr. After the baby came home, Bandit only required one correction before he submitted to John Jr. as a new pack leader. Bandit is still great around Tyler, who now takes charge and disciplines Bandit himself. Lori no longer treats Bandit like a baby. He shows no more vicious behavior and when he tries to test the boundaries, Tyler can just say “Tssst!” to redirect his attention. Bandit loves going on walks and has learned a new appreciation for people. I am so proud of both Lori and Tyler. Lori, you are now the new poster girl for calm-assertive energy, and I’m glad that neither of us gave up!

Retraining Ourselves

We cannot create balance without self-knowledge, and we can’t achieve leadership without balance. And here is where our dogs are an amazing gift. They can teach us lessons about ourselves that we can’t even begin to learn on our own.

Humans often seek out extra drama in their lives to complicate things. A balanced animal knows that life provides enough drama already. If you are having difficulties with your dog, the first thing you need to do is take a good, honest look within. We humans have our blind spots, however, and sometimes you need an outside observer to help you pinpoint what quality it is in you that needs retraining. Are you, like Genoa’s owner, Lori, harboring a resentful emotion deep inside that your dog is picking up on? Are you, like Danger’s owner, Danny, projecting your own ego onto your dog—using him as a status symbol or representing the “tough guy” you want to be? Or, like Bandit’s owner, Lori, are you fulfilling a need within yourself that is preventing you from seeing that your well-meaning babying of your animal is hurting not only that animal, but your entire “pack”? These are difficult facts to admit, yet without exception, none of my clients who have changed their lives because of their dogs has regretted it. More often, it has made their lives considerably better—and not just when it came to their dogs!

But once you have recognized your own part in your dog’s dysfunction, how do you go about changing it? Especially if what you’re doing wrong is something subtle, like in the case of Genoa’s owners. The answer is that you need to learn how to cultivate calm-assertive energy. It’s the power deep within us that can make us not only the pack leaders of our dogs, but also, the pack leaders of our own destinies.

 SUCCESS STORY
Kina, Whitey, Max, and Barkley

For Christmas, I bought my husband Cesar’s Way. I’ve never known my husband Whitey to finish a book so quickly—a day and a half later, he was determined to “master the walk.” Mastering the walk entails being able to walk your dog on a leash while never allowing the dog to walk ahead of you or pull on the leash. If you’ve ever met Barkley, you’d know that this is a virtually impossible task. While Barkley is a loving, kind, sweet dog, he’s also the devil. Yes, Satan. He pulls so hard on a leash, it hurts. It hurts whomever is at the end of the leash, as well as his own throat, and sometimes he’d have a cough so bad after a walk that we’d feel guilty taking him again.

Whitey announced that we would be walking the dogs the next morning. Sure enough, as soon as we woke up, Whitey was getting the leashes ready and informing me of the rules. We must be calm before they were allowed to walk. We must leave the doorway before we allowed the dogs to. We must never allow the dogs to walk before us.

We must be crazy.

(Okay, the last one was not really a rule, but that’s what I thought when he explained all of the rules.)

And yet, he was right.

I have never, never been able to walk Max our Rottweiler on a leash with such ease. The dog practically asked me to guide him by the time we got home. And Barkley, while still a more difficult dog, had such a different demeanor that Whitey proclaimed him as “cured.”

We now start our day by walking the dogs. Before anything else—breakfast, coffee, making the bed—our dogs are on a leash, and we walk for at least two miles minimum. What an amazing change we’ve seen.

Today, Max and I did three miles through neighborhoods around the northwest side of the city. He was amazing. He sits at every curb, ignores other dogs, and walks right at my side. Even when a huge St. Bernard lunged at a fence only feet away from us, he didn’t react and just kept walking.

My Max is one of the best dogs I’ve ever known, now that I understand what’s going on in his mind. Dogs are pack animals, and being his “doggie mom” was doing neither of us any good. Now that I am his pack leader, he is so affectionate, so submissive, and one of the most gentle dogs I’ve ever known.

As for Barkley, he’s a very special dog, and incredibly headstrong. Previously, he would pull so hard on a leash that I was physically unable to walk him. He’d choke himself to the point where I thought it was cruel to walk him. We tried every leash imaginable: full-body harness, head lead, and traditional “roaming” leashes. Nothing worked. The change in him has been remarkable. He is not allowed to lead or pull on the leash, and any unwanted behavior is followed by having him sit until he’s in a calm-submissive state. Then the walk continues.

Barkley has so much energy, we aren’t able to walk him enough! So we decided to teach him how to walk on the treadmill. I never thought it would work, as he fought us every time we got him on it. However, it only took us three days, trying a few times each day, to get him trotting at a comfortable pace. After just two weeks, Barkley is now up to a mile a day on the treadmill, and is a much more relaxed and stable dog.

I’m so very, very proud of my boys.

Millan, Cesar, Peltier, Melissa Jo