Earning the Right to Be the Leader of the Pack

Among the idle brain games that get played at my table are these:

What figures in history would you invite to dinner? And what one law would change the country most?

The first is always changing: today, it’s Galileo, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Chief Joseph, Oscar Wilde, if he’d let anyone else get a bon mot in edgewise.

The second is always the same: requiring people to pass a test--not for income but for emotional aptitude--before having a child or a dog.

The child test will never happen. The dog test--well, I can still hope.

Every day I see people who acquire trophy dogs that go nicely with their SUVs.

I see people who can’t say no to their kids and get a puppy that is neglected when the novelty wears off and dumped at the pound when the family wants to go on vacation.

I see people who want “protection” and then stake a dog in the hot, boring backyard and give him no reason to protect anything but the clothesline.

I see people who want a macho accessory, a weapon on four legs, something fearsome and forbidding, and when it gets maimed or killed in a dogfight, they just get another one, like totaling one car and buying a new one.

I don’t see bad dogs--only dogs who mirror the character of those who have them.

how did cesar millan feel, i wonder, coming here from Mexico as a kid of 21, to a city where dogs get manicures and aura-readings and psychotherapy and horoscopes and past-life counseling . . . when all he wanted to do was teach people how to get along with their dogs, and the other way around?

Seven years later, I find out. He comes rollerblading down a street of rag warehouses in South-Central, wheeling into his property followed by a chewed-up pit bull he rescued and eight full-grown Rottweilers all loping along with him, as happy as puppies, as obedient as PFCs.

It isn’t magic, but it isn’t exactly training; training is the least and easiest of it, he says, unstrapping his skates as the dogs lap up water.

First comes “adaptation” in puppyhood, or “rehabilitation” for older or “difficult” dogs. “If kids don’t have the proper adaptation, you see them on Jerry Springer. They’re trained, but they’re not adapted. Same with dogs.”

That’s why Millan, who owns the Dog Psychology Center of L.A., does not call himself a dog trainer. “Everybody asks me for the basics. Well, I say, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t do basics.’ They don’t fulfill the dog’s needs halfway. ‘The basics’ is only domination--they only want to dominate the dog, not enjoy the dog. They treat the dog like a CD player, to turn on and off,” and that, he believes, “hurts the dog emotionally and psychologically.”

Tyson, Snoop, Cane and the other Rottweilers--a breed with a reputation for aggression, all belonging to different owners, some of them celebrities, but all companionable--follow Millan’s body language and lie down, panting. This is the part of the day--the vigorous runs on the beach or in the mountains or in the street--that makes them tractable and happy and ready to learn.

This began even before he had his first dog, Regalito. “This is something I got from my grandfather and my dad. You sleep around dogs, study them, understand how they communicate, fulfill their needs before you ask for what you want of them.”

Indeed, instructing owners is often harder than instructing their dogs.

Humans, who rely on sight and speech, expect dogs to respond to that. Wrong, wrong, wrong, says Millan. A dog learns from his nose even before his eyes open. “When a dog smells me for the first time, he knows how much I know and how much I love him. And he respects me immediately.”

Now don’t take this wrong, he says, but it works like this:

“Before you have a dog, understand the psychology and be ready to fulfill it. It’s like getting married: You go to a counselor or read that ‘Men Are From Mars’ book. In Mexico, the way men relate is to be nice in the beginning, but after the marriage it’s pure domination. They don’t take the woman out, they don’t take her to a dance. They just want her to stay home, cook, clean--that’s domination. That’s the mistake people make with dogs: It’s only about domination and obedience.”

If you can’t do better than that, “don’t have a dog. You’re just going to hurt yourself.”

Not to mention the dog.

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He doesn’t need his dog-pupils to prove his point; the lesson is right there on the streets.

There are the gangbangers he invites to bring their dogs by for free help, but “most of them just want a dog to fight better. I’m not gonna cooperate with that.”

And then there are the homeless, whose dogs roam with them and sleep with them and eat and drink with them--who, in reforging that most ancient bond between humans and canines, do by instinct precisely what people seek out to learn from Millan.

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Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com