Fake It Till You Make It

Cesar's Way : The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems
by Cesar Millan, Melissa Jo Peltier

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What if you're not naturally a calm-assertive person? How do you react when a problem pops up? Are you panicky and excitable, or defensive and aggressive? Do you tend to handle problems as if they were a personal assault upon you? It's true that energy doesn't lie, but energy and power can be focused and controlled. Biofeedback, meditation, yoga, and other relaxation techniques are excellent for learning about how to better control the energy you project. Spending eight years in intensive judo training as a boy made controlling my mental energy second nature for me. If you're high-strung, anxious, or overly emotional - dead giveaways when animals are reading your energy - such techniques can make a big difference in how you relate to your pets. Learning to harness the power of the calm-assertive energy within you will also have a positive impact on your own mental health - and on your relationships with the humans in your lives. I guarantee it.

I often counsel my clients to use their imaginations and employ visualization techniques when they feel "stuck" in trying to project the right energy to their dogs. There are a lot of wonderful self-help, psychology, and philosophy books available to help you learn to harness the power of your mind to change your behavior. Some of the authors who have most influenced me are Dr. Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Phil McGraw. Acting techniques such as those pioneered by Konstantin Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg are also excellent tools for transforming the way you relate in the world.

In the first season of my National Geographic Channel show, Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, I came across a case that offered an excellent example of how we can use our powers of visualization to instantly transform our energy and our relationships with our dogs.

Sharon and her husband, Brendan, had rescued Julius, a sweet, lovable pit bull/Dalmatian mix, who, unfortunately, came to them afraid of his own shadow. Whenever they took him out for walks, he would tremble all over and walk with his tail between his legs, and would bolt for the safety of their house the moment he got a chance. When guests came over, he would freeze up and cower under the furniture. When I worked with the couple, I noticed that Sharon became extremely anxious and frightened whenever Julius acted afraid or pulled on his leash during walks. She was so worried about Julius that she would try to comfort him with words, and when he wasn't comforted, she would just throw her hands up in helplessness. It was clear to me that Julius was picking up on Sharon's fearful energy, which was greatly intensifying his own fear.

When Sharon told me she was an actress, however, I realized that she had a powerful tool at her disposal that she wasn't taking advantage of. The best actors learn to dig deep inside themselves, to use the power of thought, feeling, and imagination to transform themselves into different characters and to switch instantly from one emotional state to another. I asked Sharon to reach into the same "tool kit" she drew upon when she performed onstage or in a film and concentrate on a very simple acting exercise: to think of a character she identified as being calm and assertive. Because of her training, Sharon immediately understood what I was asking her to do. Without hesitation she answered, "Cleopatra." I then suggested that she "become" Cleopatra every time she walked Julius.

It was thrilling for me to watch her the first time she gave that acting exercise a try! While walking Julius, Sharon began to imagine that she actually was Cleopatra. Right before my eyes, her posture became straighter and her chest higher. She raised her head and gazed imperiously around her, as if she were the queen of all she surveyed. Thanks to the same acting abilities she'd spent a lifetime honing, suddenly she was aware of her power and her beauty, and she naturally expected everyone - especially her dog - to obey her every wish! Of course, Julius had never gone to acting class, but because he picked up on her energy shift, he had no choice but to become Sharon's "scene partner" in her Cleopatra fantasy. The change in that cowering pit bull/Dalmatian was immediate. Once he realized he was walking with a "queen," he instantly became more relaxed and less fearful. After all, what dog would be afraid with the allpowerful Cleopatra holding his leash?

Julius and his owners have worked hard and come a long way. It took many months of dedicated daily practice, but a year later, Julius is totally secure on their walks, and now even welcomes strangers into their home - all thanks to the power of calmassertive leadership, and with a little help from Cleopatra.

Calm-Submissive Energy

The proper energy for a follower in a dog pack is called calmsubmissive energy. This is the healthiest energy for your dog to project in his relationship with you. When people come to the Dog Psychology Center and watch my pack in action, they are often astounded at how mellow a group of forty to fifty dogs can be 90 percent of the time. That's because my pack is made up of calm-submissive, mentally balanced dogs.

The word submissive carries with it negative connotations, just as the word assertive does. Submissive doesn't mean pushover. It doesn't mean you have to make your dog into a zombie or a slave. It simply means relaxed and receptive. It's the energy of a group of well-behaved students in a classroom, or of a church congregation. When I give my dog-behavior seminars, I always thank my audience for being in a calm-submissive state - that is, open-minded and able to converse easily with one another. When I learned how to be calm-submissive to my wife, it improved my marriage 100 percent!

For dogs and humans to truly communicate, the dog must project a calm-submissive energy before a human can get him to obey her. (As dog owners, we don't ever want to be perceived as the submissive ones.) Even when a dog is doing search and rescue, he's not assertive - he's active-submissive. Though that search-and-rescue dog is meant to be out in front of the handler, scratching excitedly at piles of rubble, the handler will first sit the dog down and wait until he is in a submissive state of mind, and only then will give him the signal to begin the search. Dogs who work with handicapped people also must be the submissive ones in the relationship, even if their owners are blind or confined to wheelchairs. The animals are there to help people, not the other way around.

Copyright © 2006 by Cesar Millan. Excerpted by permission of Harmony, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Founder of the Dog Psychology Center in Los Angeles, Cesar Millan is the star of Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan on National Geographic Channel. In 2005, the National Humane Society Genesis Award Committee presented him with a Special Commendation for his work in rehabilitating sheltered animals. A native of Culican, Mexico, Cesar lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Ilusion, and two sons, Andre and Calvin.

Melissa Jo Peltier, an executive producer and writer of Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, has been honored for her film and television writing and directing with an Emmy and more than fifty other awards. She lives in Los Angeles and Nyack, New York.