I refer, of course, to the inimitable Cesar Millan. For those of you uninitiated this is the Dog Whisperer. The Dog Whisperer is on Sky3 at 6 most evenings and, for a dog owner, compulsive viewing. If you hear someone give their dog a little ‘sshhtt’ correction as they are out walking them then, chances are, the owner is a fan of Cesar’s.
Cesar’s basic premise is that a dogs behaviour is based around the energy it gives and receives from the pack leader. Thus if the pack leader exudes the correct calm assertive energy the dog should respond with calm submissive energy. In this way you end up with a balanced dog. The way to achieve this is to give your dog 3 things; exercise, discipline and affection, in that order.
Of course the owner has to be the pack leader for this balanced state to be maintained and this is generally where he has to do most of his work. People don’t do the right thing by their dog and the animal gets confused by the lack of leadership and isn’t sure whether to step into the breach or not. You have to watch the programme really.
The thing that I like about it is this idea that you can communicate with other beings on the planet by the energy you exude. Do you remember when you were at school and there was always a teacher or two who could walk into a room and everything would stop. We may have called it respect but ultimately these people are able to alter the mood of a group of kids just by their ‘demeanour’ or their ‘prescence’ . In the same way some teachers, no matter what censure they threatened, could do nothing to control a class of relatively well behaved but boistrous teenagers.
The thing is anyone can do it, they just don’t know they can and this is what the Dog Whisperer instills in people. He enables them to become the pack leader. As a result their behaviour with their pets changes but, more importantly, their attitude and their demeanour towards it changes.
Is this something we can learn to do with people? I think we probably do it already. Generally if you were in a situation where you felt yourself to be submissive, you would submit and if you felt dominant you would dominate and take control. Problems occur where this natural balance is upset. Sometimes people feel that their alpha-male position is one they must preserve at all times when, in a lot of situations, a bit of humility would go a very long way.
So what distorts this balance? Advertising is a big one, alcohol and drugs almost go without saying but I think that the further we move from God the more distorted a view we get of ourselves and our importance in the scheme of things. Don’t get me wrong, we are all as important as each other just not all the time and sometimes we need someone or something much bigger than us to remind us who the real pack leader is.