Cesar Millan: How to help your pup learn

Cesar Millan, the Emmy-nominated star of "Dog Whisperer" and best-selling author, decided to raise four puppies of different breeds — a pit bull (Junior), a Labrador retriever (Blizzard), an English bulldog (Mr. President) and a miniature schnauzer (Angel) — and share his experiences with readers to illustrate how using the core principles of dog psychology and raising puppies as naturally as possible will prevent problems and issues with your dog later in life. In this excerpt, Millan shares the basics of conditioning your pet.

Chapter six: Connecting, communicating and conditioning
How your dog learns
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. In the video, the mother squirrel is showing the baby squirrel what it looks like to jump to the top of the wall, teaching by example. The mother squirrel seems to have an endless supply of patience as she demonstrates her graceful moves over and over again. The baby squirrel finally gets up the gumption to try it a few times himself, but he makes it only partway before falling.

At this point, the concerned UCLA students watching this unfolding drama decide to get involved. They move a backpack up against the part of the wall that the squirrel is attempting to scale. At first, the squirrel flees the strange object, but after a few minutes, it returns and figures out that the backpack could make a good ladder. The squirrel climbs up the backpack, but the object isn’t quite high enough to leverage the baby animal to the top. Another student comes on the scene with a couple of large sandbags; stacked together, they are taller than the backpack. Again, the tiny rodent flees the scene. This time, his mother comes down and escorts him back to the wall for another try. She leaps up and waits just above the sandbags. Then, encouraging with silence and energy, she watches her baby climb up the sandbag, make a last heroic hurdle, and finally succeed in scaling that daunting concrete wall.

My first thought after watching that video was “What if that had been a mother dog and a puppy?” I have no doubt whatsoever that the same concerned students would have simply picked the puppy up and put her on the grass above the wall. They might even have comforted her, petting and cooing as they did so. Then they would’ve gone on their way, confident that they had “rescued” a helpless animal, while the puppy actually might have missed a learning experience that could one day save its life. The truth is, in most situations, animals — even juvenile animals — are anything but helpless. Animals are smart, resourceful, and all about survival. What we humans interpret as “rescuing” can actually be blocking a puppy from her natural process of learning and growing and mastering a new environment. In the UCLA squirrel video, the animal in question was saved from this fate because of its wildness. The students approached and dealt with a wild squirrel very differently than they would have a domestic puppy or kitten. And what they did with the squirrel turned out to be exactly the right thing to do! They helped the animal, not by rescuing it, but by working in partnership with it, giving it direction but not stepping in and solving its problem. A partnership between human and animal is exactly how we need to approach first connecting and communicating with, and finally, conditioning (or “training”) our puppies.

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Connecting: Relationship is everything
It was my original ambition in life to grow up and become the best dog trainer in the world, and I have trained many dogs in my life — to perform tricks, to answer to commands, as well as to work as security dogs. Soon after I arrived in America, however, I observed that traditional “training” — meaning sit, stay, come, heel, or answering to other commands— was not solving the problem of an epidemic of unstable dogs. What those dogs needed was for their owners to stop humanizing them, to reclaim a leadership role in their lives, and to fulfill all their primal needs — the needs of animal, dog, and breed, in that order.

But as you have already learned, a puppy’s mother starts “dog training” from the earliest days of her pups’ lives. Her training is not done with a high, squeaky, overexcited voice, commands, or bribery by treats; it is done in silence, using energy — a much more powerful tool of communication. “When I have a litter, they are learning from the moment they are born. They learn from their mother, their siblings, and from me handling them,” says my friend Martin Deeley, executive director of the International Association of Canine Professionals and an acclaimed breeder and trainer of gun dogs.

When an owner picks up a puppy for the first time, the pup is already beginning to learn from the owner. The ride home in the car is a lesson. The meeting of the family is a lesson. Dogs are learning twenty-four hours a day. Even when asked to relax and do nothing, they are learning to do this and be patient. Everything we do with a pup from the moment we get that pup is a learning experience.

So we actually start “dog training” the moment we get a pup, and in fact we should start teaching ourselves how to behave and how to establish all the good habits before we even get the pup.

A mother dog’s “training” is also done through connecting. She has a real relationship with her pups, expressed through constant calm assertive leadership. This is why I advise all puppy owners to think “connection,” then “communication,” before they think “training” or “conditioning.” Learn to converse with your dog the way another dog speaks to her — using energy, body language, and eye contact — before you ask her to master the intricacies of any human syntax. Your conversations will have much deeper meaning for your dog that way, and you will be sharing a true connection. Connection is the language of energy; it is the cornerstone of the lifelong bond between you and your dog. Connect and fulfill first, then move on to conditioning.

Cesar's fulfillment formula
Every dog and puppy needs . . .

1. Exercise — in the form of a minimum of two structured walks with a pack leader, twice a day

2. Discipline — clearly communicated and consistently enforced rules, boundaries, and limitations

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3. Affection — in the form of physical affection, praise, treats, and playtime

... and in that order! Though you may be adopting a puppy in order to give it love, the reality is that puppies need a lot more than love to keep them balanced. A good pack leader shows love by fulfilling the dog in all three areas — in the right order. This fulfillment formula works throughout the entire life of your dog.

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