MEET THE PUPPIES - Junior, Blizzard, Angel, and Mr. President

Junior

When I first imagined writing a book about raising the perfect dog, I wanted it to have a personal touch and a hands-on feeling. In my experience, it’s easier to teach using real-life examples. I have raised many dogs in my life, but I wanted to reacquaint myself with all the different stages of puppyhood while I was writing about them so that I would be totally in tune with the behaviors I was describing. To do this, I decided to raise four puppies of different breeds—a pit bull, a Labrador retriever, an English bulldog, and a miniature schnauzer—bringing them up in my home and with my pack using the principles of dog psychology. I want to illustrate to you, my readers, how raising puppies as naturally as possible will prevent problems and issues and will avoid the need for intervention in the future. My goal was not to rehabilitate dogs but to raise balanced dogs and show owners how to maintain the natural balance that Mother Nature has already given them. Therefore, I wanted to select dogs with a certain inborn energy level—what I call “medium-level energy,” which is the perfect energy level for even an inexperienced dog owner to deal with. We’ll talk more about selecting for energy in PERFECT MATCH - Choosing the Perfect Puppy, but keep this concept in the back of your mind as you join me in the adventure of meeting the puppies.

Read More

PERFECT MATCH - Choosing the Perfect Puppy

Georgia Peaches

Growing up on my grandfather’s farm in rural Sinaloa, Mexico, I lived among scruffy farm dogs, our loyal friends and coworkers in the fields and around the house. You wouldn’t call these dogs “pets” by American standards, in that their lives were spent near us but not as a part of us. They were our dogs, yet they lived in a world separate from our human lives, content and balanced in their own dog culture. I watched a lot of litters born among these dogs, and though the puppies were sweet and appealing, I never really experienced the extraordinary “cuteness” of puppies until I came to America and was exposed to the hundreds of breeds in this country: French bulldog puppies, with their flattened snouts and oversized brown eyes, or Lhasa apso or Westie or poodle puppies, all heartbreakingly adorable balls of fluff. When I saw some of these more attractive breeds as pups, I began to better understand why Americans tended to “baby” their dogs—something that is not a part of the culture in Mexico.

Read More

MOTHER KNOWS BEST - Learning from the Pros

Binky and her pups

My first instructors in the different stages of puppyhood were all professionals—professional canine mothers, that is. I’m proud to say that I learned about raising puppies from the very best—the female working dogs on my grandfather’s farm in Mexico. Mother Nature is all about balance, and it is always to nature that I turn whenever I want to explain about the correct way to bring up puppies. As human beings, we often look at the animal kingdom with a superior eye—after all, the Bible tells us we have dominion over the animals, right? Modern science is even more arrogant about our relationship to animals. The truth is, while human beings can create, design, and build all manner of clever systems, innovations, and shortcuts to try to improve on nature, there is one thing we can never better, and that is a natural animal mother raising her offspring in the wild. This is one case where the original blueprint is still—and always will be—the best. When my clients are having a hard time understanding what leadership truly means to a dog, I refer them back to the experts by asking them to observe the way a mother dog births, rears, and nurtures her young to be good, obedient followers and pack members. In many ways, everything we need to know about raising puppies is right there in front of us, in the miracle of a good mother dog and her offspring.

Read More

PUPPY COMES HOME - Easing the Transition from Litter to Family

Mr. President as a puppy

You’ve done your research, found the right breeder, rescue, or shelter, selected a puppy with the correct energy level, and are as certain as you can be that she will grow up to be your perfect canine companion for life. Now it’s time to bring her home. I always say, when you’re a pack leader, everything you do means something to your dog. Every action, every emotion, every signal you send—accidentally or intentionally—will be input into her computer and used to reevaluate who you are and what function you should play in her life. With puppies, all those tiny moments matter even more. Your puppy’s brain is still developing, and she is looking to you to model the behavior patterns she will follow from now on. Junior, Blizzard, Angel, and Mr. President all started out as calm-submissive, medium-energy, issue-free puppies. But even I—yes, I, the Dog Whisperer—could mess up their already perfect programming if I didn’t pay attention to every interaction I had with them from the first day forward, especially during those earliest weeks in which my puppies were making the transition from their first pack—their mom and littermates—to living with my pack—my human family and my other dogs.

Read More

YOUR HEALTHY PUPPY - Health Care Basicsm

 

Cesar stays relaxed while cleaning Mr. President’s jowls

This is a book about puppy behavior, not puppy biology, but when you bring any new dog home with you, you are automatically taking responsibility for every aspect of his health and welfare for the rest of his life. That is why preparation and prevention are so important. All it takes is one disease, accident, or injury to bring home the harsh reality of how very expensive caring for a sick animal can be. I’ve faced it myself many times over a lifetime of living with dogs—emergency veterinary bills can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Of course, once we fall in love with an animal, no amount of money is too much for us to spend to save his life or take away his pain. But we can lower the odds of having to go into debt or empty out our savings for the dog we love if we take certain precautions early on.

Read More

CONNECTING, COMMUNICATING, AND CONDITIONING - How Your Dog Learns

Tug-of-war between Junior and Mr. President

A mother squirrel and her baby spent all day on a walkway of the UCLA campus, repeating over and over the same apparently fruitless task—trying to get the baby squirrel to jump up and over an approximately four-foot-high wall. Such exercises in life learning are everyday occurrences in the animal world, but this particular incident was captured on videotape by some fascinated university student, who uploaded it onto YouTube, and it received an amazing 500,000 hits! When I saw the short piece, I was happy to learn that it was reaching so many people. To me, this simple amateur video illustrates exactly what I want my readers to take away from this book about how animals learn—and how we can help, not hinder, their natural processes.

Read More

THE SOCIAL PUPPY Getting Along with Both Dogs and Humans

Mr. President and Cesar socializing with the staff of Highland Park Animal Hospital

Just the other day, I popped into a small pet store to pick up some bully sticks for the puppies, when I ran smack into what was billed as a “puppy class,” intended for the purpose of socializing young dogs. There were eight or ten people there, and each of them had a puppy. There were a Siberian husky, a Chihuahua, a Lhasa apso, a golden retriever, a Jack Russell, and a few other puppies of breeds that I don’t recall. The owners were gathered around in a circle, and the puppies were just going wild in the middle. There was no guidance whatsoever. The puppies were all different ages, different levels of energy, and all over the map in terms of social skills. To put it simply, it was chaos. I watched the Chihuahua—isn’t it always the Chihuahua?—taking over the class, dominating and then attacking the Siberian husky puppy. It wasn’t play anymore, it was escalating into an actual fight. The teacher cried out in a teasing, high-pitched voice, “No, no no! We don’t do that in class!” Then, after the owner of the Chihuahua had pulled her puppy away, the teacher said, “Now let’s all give our dogs a cookie.” I wanted to cry out, “What for? What are you rewarding them for?”

Read More

PROBLEM-FREE PUPPIES - A sleeping Blizzard

A sleeping Blizzard

Juliana Weiss-Roessler, the writing and research director for my Internet newsletter and blog, conducted an online reader survey, asking our subscribers to list the most common and frustrating issues they have had with their puppies. Here are the results from the 1,342 top responses, along with my solutions for raising a problem-free puppy.

Read More

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT - Adolescent Challenges

Mr. President in a car kennel

When I first noticed that four-month-old Angel was already lifting his leg to pee and showing early signs of marking behavior, it felt to me like the canine equivalent of the time my nine-year-old son, Calvin, told me he thought it was about time he got himself a girlfriend. I felt that twinge so common to parents everywhere: the wistful realization that my children were growing up all too fast.

Read More

EPILOGUE - The Puppies Grow Up

Cesar with Junior and Daddy

Over the course of this book, I’ve had the joy of watching all the puppies featured here mature from clumsy childhood to gawky then almost graceful adolescence. All the dogs I have had the honor of raising educated me further about the nature of both their breeds and their species, adding new insight and depth to the work I do every day. Blizzard, Angel, and Mr. President each left me with such special gems of wisdom. And now, nearly a year after my “puppy project” began, these puppies continue to impart their wonderful gifts to the new humans in their lives.

Read More