08-20-2006, 04:28 AM
Cesar Millan emphasizes over and over that walking your dog (not just talking it outside for 5 minutes to pee and poop, but a good-quality, half hour or longer walk every day) is extremely important in preventing unwanted behavior as well as in building a strong relationship. Of course it's also important to walk the dog correctly. Just letting the dog have the run of a yard isn't sufficient.
I've been trying to apply just a very, very small part of what he teaches when I walk my neighbor's dog. "Calm, assertive energy" and good walks really seem to work. My neighbor's wife recently introduced me to a friend of hers as the only person the dog likes apart from her husband. And as far as I can tell, this has happened primarily on the basis of taking decent walks with him and maintaining a calm energy.
I think you have to be very careful applying Millan's techniques, because he reads dog body language better than most people on the planet, and most of us are not going to be able to approach that level of insight without a lot of experience and practice.
We could really use someone like him in NYC, where so many good, salvageable dogs end up being dumped at shelters and killed because their owners have failed to handle them appropriately.
I've been trying to apply just a very, very small part of what he teaches when I walk my neighbor's dog. "Calm, assertive energy" and good walks really seem to work. My neighbor's wife recently introduced me to a friend of hers as the only person the dog likes apart from her husband. And as far as I can tell, this has happened primarily on the basis of taking decent walks with him and maintaining a calm energy.
I think you have to be very careful applying Millan's techniques, because he reads dog body language better than most people on the planet, and most of us are not going to be able to approach that level of insight without a lot of experience and practice.
We could really use someone like him in NYC, where so many good, salvageable dogs end up being dumped at shelters and killed because their owners have failed to handle them appropriately.