Nathan E. Lewis

-a pet topic of nathan e. lewis.

(The most famous of all dog trainers, Cesar Millan, the dog trainer of Oprah Winfrey, and creator of the successful Dog Whisperer Show on the National Geographic Channel has been interviewed by Cathy Newman in the National Geographic, December 2006 issue. -excerpts follow!)

Cathy Newman: What is the biggest mistake we make with dogs?
Cesar Millan: We humanize dogs. We hold conversations with them as if they were people. We use dogs for our own emotional yearnings. A dog doesn’t know it lives in Beverly Hills or how mch we spend on it. In Mexico, Petco would never make the same amount of money. I use a 35-cent leash - a piece of cord. It’s all about us. Animals need to work for food and water. The ones who get food and water just because they are cute - those are my clients.

Cesar Millan: Americans have got it wrong. The dogma should be exercise, discipline, affection - not affection, affection, affection.
(Cesar was born in Culiacan, Mexico and smuggled across the border 16 years ago by a “coyote.” He now runs The Dog Psychology Center in south-central Los Angeles.)

Cathy Newman: How did your parents feel about your choice of profession?
Cesar Millan: They wanted me to become a professional. A doctor, lawyer, architect.

Cathy Newman: How does your father feel now that you’ve made it?
Cesar Millan: He still can’t understand why Americans pay me for walking their dogs.

Cathy Newman: And your mother?
Cesar Millan: She would love me if I cleaned toilets. And, by the way, I did that, too, when I first came here.

Cathy Newman: So, who is the better behaved animal - humans or dogs?
Cesar Millan: Oh, the dog.

Cathy Newman: Do dogs think and feel?
Cesar Millan: They feel - they are instinctual. They don’t think, otherwise they would sue us. “Your honor, I haven’t been walked for five years.”

Cathy Newman: Do you understand cats?
Cesar Millan: No.