A sage for the canine set

Cesar Millan ran across the rain-soaked border into California under cover of darkness 17 years ago, having given his trust and his last $100 to a coyote who crouched in the brush with him for 13 hours until the coast was clear. He was 18 years old, spoke no English and knew no one in America. Now he has his own TV series.

When Millan made a silent vow to become the best dog trainer in the world, he didn’t exactly have in mind starring in a half-hour reality-cum-advice show that reaches into more than 50 million American homes. At the time, he was just a high-spirited 13-year-old living with his extended family on a ranch near Culiacan, Mexico, with a natural ability to command packs of dogs. He knew he was different, if only because he enjoyed being with animals more than people. His friends had no goals as clearly defined as Millan’s: to come to Hollywood and become a trainer for Rin Tin Tin and Lassie.

That was before Millan fell in love with an American girl who had faith in marriage counseling, before Oprah Winfrey, Phil McGraw, Deepak Chopra and Anthony Robbins became his role models, before he figured out how psychotherapy could be applied to canine management problems, and before he saw how gaga Americans can get over the 62 million to 68 million dogs that share their homes.

Now, “Dog Whisperer With Cesar Millan” airs on the National Geographic Channel three times a day, five days a week. The show debuted in mid-September and within two weeks was attracting 350% more viewers than the program that precedes it.

Janika Symon, a story analyst at Universal Studios who has cared for sick and traumatized dogs for more than a decade, met Millan six years ago, when his reputation had already spread among Los Angeles animal shelters and rescue groups. “I was very impressed,” she says. “He is an extraordinary fellow and does have insight into dogs that normal people don’t.... And there’s his inescapable sex appeal.”

With no end in sight to the American addiction to self-help, the time was ripe for another information-age guru, a Dr. Phil, if you will, for dogs and their ostensible masters. Although Animal Planet offers a number of shows about dogs, the cable network’s only breakout personality is a wacky Australian crocodile hunter. The field was open for a handsome authority with a distinct philosophy, simple solutions for doggie dysfunction and an Oprahesque gift for putting strangers at ease.

Every mother’s child is smart and beautiful, and everyone has the perfect dog. Except for this one little problem. Each episode of “Dog Whisperer” features two cases, pooch parents at wit’s end confessing to Millan that their child-substitutes are nervous, obsessive, possessive, hyper, hostile or violent. What’s a mother to do with a pup who’s obstreperous, unmanageable and incorrigible?

“She thinks she’s people,” a woman says of her demon terrier, providing what she thinks is a cute excuse for monstrous behavior.

“No, she doesn’t,” Cesar replies.

The dog whisperer understands the problem, all the problems that develop when people anthropomorphize their pets. Speaking slightly accented English without hesitation, he explains that dogs don’t think like humans. They’re ruled by instinct, not intellect.

Millan is sympathetic to the beleaguered people who seek his counsel, but he also understands the plight of pets that need to get a dog’s life, who are never taken on a decent walk yet bear heavy burdens as surrogates for absent families and nonexistent friends and lovers. The subtext of “Dog Whisperer” is that when it comes to our animals, we’re all women and men who love too much.

“A dog that receives only affection, affection, affection and doesn’t get exercise, rules, boundaries and limitations is unbalanced,” Millan says. “And an unbalanced dog is not a happy dog.”

Sitting in the dressed-up suburban living room of two well-meaning empty-nesters, facing a portrait of the couple hugging the Dalmatian that rules their home, he listens to their words while simultaneously analyzing their energy. The process is so nonverbal that Millan could almost be a dog, interpreting body language and sniffing for clues to character.

“I’m evaluating whether the owner’s energy is nervous, fearful, anxious or frustrated, because this is the energy the dog lives with,” he explains. “Dogs don’t know if you have a position in the human world. You can be Halle Berry or the president of the United States. It doesn’t matter to them. They just know the energy you share and the activities you do with them.”

At first, Millan is more interested in observing the couple than their problem child because he doesn’t train dogs. He rehabilitates animals and trains their owners, teaching the two-legged creatures how to be top dog. Much of what he knows about dogs he learned from observing how they behave in packs.

“We’re the only species that follows a spiritual leader,” he says. “Dogs don’t follow lovable leaders. They follow dominant and calm, assertive leaders. If you put Ghandi and Fidel Castro in front of a pack of dogs, they’ll follow Castro because of his energy. There is no knowledge behind instinct. Dogs don’t rationalize.”

Most people try to win a dog over with endearments. Initially, the dog whisperer is aloof. His first priority is letting a strange dog know that he isn’t a pushover. Once he has established his dominance and corrected any canine behavior that isn’t calm and submissive -- with a look, a sound, a jerk of a leash or a firm grip that simulates another dog’s bite -- obedience is rarely much of a challenge.

Whether he’s in front of a camera or not, Millan has the bearing of a leader. His gaze is direct, his posture commanding. He’s a superb mimic and can snarl, scratch, pant and yip with the best (or worst) of them as he assumes the demeanor of an excited or fearful dog. He is also easy to imitate. Once people understand that dogs bully wimps and obey leaders they respect, they adopt Millan’s relaxed manner and tension-free walk.

He doesn’t meet each episode’s supporting players until he shows up with a camera crew. Yet transformations are usually dramatic; when he takes over, bad habits disappear, neuroses vanish. “A lot of times it seems like a miracle,” he says. “It isn’t a miracle. It’s just that the dog lives in the moment and along comes someone with the energy and strategy required to make things happen.”

His brand of tough love is really so simple. He avoids condescension or blame while gently, unequivocally informing people that they’ve been selfish and insensitive to their dog’s needs. If Millan were less patient, less skilled, he might just blurt out, “Your dog barks like a maniac every time the doorbell rings. Did you ever think of saying, ‘No! Cut it out!’ ”

His methods are neither new nor revolutionary. Generations of American dogs have been trained following the advice of the monks of New Skete, a small religious order in upstate New York that raises German shepherds. In their thick volume, “How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend: The Classic Training Manual for Dog Owners,” the monks recommend that a human alpha leader be a disciplinarian. Millan has streamlined his similar message so effectively for TV that the concepts are easy to grasp. “In every show, there is a lightbulb moment,” says co-executive producer Jim Milio of MPH Entertainment. “People will say, ‘Oh, my God! I’m treating my dog like my kid.’ ”

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Where his career began

Contrary to popular belief, English is not a dog’s first language. So even before Millan mastered it, he could demonstrate that he had a way with semi-domesticated beasts. The first, and for a long time the only, English sentence he could say when he settled in San Diego was, “Do you have application for work?” He was hired by a grooming parlor. Still set on getting to Hollywood, he saved his money and moved north, then found work at a kennel and dog training school in Burbank.

A dog owner he met there gave Millan a car and a job washing his fleet of limousines. “I was a good car-wash guy,” he says. “I could clean 13 limousines a day. I had the drive. I didn’t care what I was doing, if I was a kennel guy or a guy washing cars, I wanted to be the best. While I was washing limousines, the owner let me train his friend’s dogs on my breaks. I started walking dogs too and working with Rottweilers.

“I had to do that because I couldn’t just be around people. I’m used to being around dogs. The pack teaches me every day. They know when I’m down. They keep me grounded.”

It wasn’t hard for Millan to acquire a pack of Rottweilers. One owner of the sometimes fierce breed would tell another about the Mexican guy adept at handling them. “No breed is mean,” Millan says. “Aggression is a blend of frustration and domination. It comes from a frustrated mind. I’d go to places like Runyon Canyon because I needed to provide my pack with migration time. People would see me with my pack and they’d think, if that guy can control 30 dogs, he can help me with mine.”

Actress Jada Pinkett Smith heard about Millan from a friend. When she and Will Smith became a couple a few years later, Millan took on Smith’s four male Rottweilers. He still works with the family’s dogs, boarding them when Smith or his wife is out of town for long periods.

“I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve recommended him to,” Pinkett Smith says. “They all think he’s incredible. I knew that the minute he was able to articulate what he does, he was going to fly. I’ve always known there was no way in the world he wasn’t going to accomplish what he wanted to. Cesar is a go-getter and a hard worker.”

Although Millan’s macho manner scored with Rottweilers, dominance wasn’t going over as well at home. He had met his wife, Illusion, when she was a 16-year-old junior in high school. They married two years later, and after the first of their two sons was born, she suggested they see a marriage counselor.

“He needed to learn that he couldn’t just be the leader in our relationship,” she says. “In this country, we share leadership in a marriage.”

Millan read “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” and had his own lightbulb moment. “When I was introduced to the concept that women need to be fulfilled differently from men, I thought about the difference between the way people and dogs think,” he says. He realized that dog psychology, not training, was his calling.

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A drop in crime

Cesar MILLAN’S Dog Psychology Center (dogpsychologycenter.com) moved into a warehouse on two acres in South Los Angeles that had been the frequent target of burglars and vandals. Once Millan strapped on his skates and patrolled the neighborhood with his pack of dogs, break-ins ceased.

Dogs with the most serious problems became temporary residents at the facility, where the pack exerted its influence. But even dogs Millan transformed in a few weeks would sometimes regress at home.

“Some people think their dogs are like an appliance,” he says. “They think I’ll fix it, then send it back and their owners just have to say one word and the dog will do what it’s supposed to do. It doesn’t work like that. Relationships don’t work like that and many people didn’t like that.”

Symon, the veteran rescuer, says Millan used to be more abrupt with clients than he is now on his show. “Cesar’s approach to dogs and their relationships with people is very challenging,” she says. “It requires effort and intention. You have to do it and do it and do it. You can’t fall into your old patterns and be an effective pack leader. You’ll fail. Cesar offers people the opportunity to work on themselves. Some don’t want that. They don’t want to hear that everything they’ve done is wrong.”

In many cases, seeing a happy, serene dog motivates people to follow Millan’s prescription. That can include going for vigorous, regular walks, strapping a backpack on an underemployed working dog, putting a high-energy hunter on a treadmill.

And then there was the 100-pound bouvier des Flandres that Millan took to sheepherding practice. If parents can schlep their kids to soccer games every weekend, was it unreasonable to expect this teenage dog’s owners to drive it from the Valley to a workout in a sheep corral in Long Beach?

“You find in life that some people will be your followers and other people don’t want to follow you,” Millan says.

“They will make a whole bunch of excuses to tell you that your concept doesn’t work. I loved when Dr. Phil said, ‘Not everyone’s going to like me.’ That reassured my beliefs. One day, I’m going to meet him and tell him that he really helped me with that little phrase. This is a guy who’s a psychologist. He has a degree and he knows Oprah.”

If “Dog Whisperer” is as big a hit as its supporters expect, Millan can go on to write books, endorse products, lead seminars. He still dreams of meeting Oprah, and he longs to work with her dogs. He thinks they’re really spoiled.