Cesar Millan: Better Human, Better Dog

When I started my journey

and people started calling me the dog whisperer,

the only thing I wanted to do

is to teach people there is no such thing as a bad dog.

WOMAN (off screen): Oh, my gosh!

Give me the leash. She's safer with me.

Today, I'm still doing what I love,

but the world has changed.

Problem child.

Record dog adoptions have made many packs complete,

but now, more than ever, people and dogs...

still... need... help.

We can't live like this.

The problem is me. What do I do?

Mo' pooches, mo' problems, right?

He needs rehab, like, ASAP.

So many things you can fix already.

Shh.

Sorry. Sorry. Ignore the excitement.

WOMAN (off screen): I just don't want you to get bit.

Do you know who I am? Yes! (Laughing)

Together with my superhero pack,

our mission is to teach the world to honor the pack code:

honesty, integrity, and loyalty.

Once you get this, you're gonna have everything else.

And that's how we create better humans and better dogs,

one pack at a time.

Today, I've been called to the house of a young family

with a dog named Freddie that has a significant bite history.

He's bitten 10 people,

and I've just been told that this morning, he'd bitten one of my crew members.

- (Freddie barking) - PRODUCER (off screen): (bleep)

I'm officially on the list.

He just ran up and gave me a little check.

So I need to find out why the owner is allowing this behavior.

My name is Bethany.

I'm married to Ryan.

Freddie is a mini-poodle/Chihuahua/other.

Freddie was about 11 months when we got him.

We had decided to get a dog after we've been married about six months.

We'd been kinda just keeping an eye on the shelters,

and looking if there was any dogs that would be a good fit for us.

And then I... I happened to go over there and we made eye contact,

and I had this very weird, like, I just felt like I connected with him.

I just felt like... He looked at me and I felt like he was saying,

"Come on, lady," like, "You know that I do not belong here,

I'm supposed to go home with you."

So now here we are, four years later.

Freddie is a wonderful dog.

With just us, he's great.

He wants to cuddle. He wants to just be loved.

We can't say enough good things about this dog.

But one or two percent of the time,

he is just... He's like a different dog.

It's very Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll and Hyde. That's the one.

- (knock on door) - (Freddie barking)

When someone comes to the house,

just, kind of, transforms into this demon that just is lunging and making noises.

And he snaps at people, and he'll go after them.

He'll bite. He'll growl.

Freddie has always had a huge issue with crows.

When he sees them on a walk, he would just go nuts.

He has a blood feud with the neighbor dog.

It's very wild and scary.

And they just go absolutely crazy!

He has a very, very strong prey drive.

Freddie has... has bitten, like, actually bitten, maybe 10 people.

He's bit Ryan's dad and my niece, Cadence.

We don't ever know when a guest is safe in our house.

And that's very problematic.

Especially now that we have Charlie around.

We have an 11-month-old son.

And so, Freddie's been impeccable with him so far,

but we feel like it's only a matter of time

before that conflict happens.

It's okay, leave him alone.

I don't want him... Yeah, I don't want him near right now.

It's very scary, and it's a very, you know, bad situation.

We don't like having people over who have kids,

which is a huge problem, because most of our friends have kids.

And it has seriously impacted our social life,

'cause now, we don't wanna have anybody over

'cause it's too stressful.

My side of the family has been fairly vocal

about their concern, about Freddie,

about wanting us to think about our options,

and whether it makes sense to have Freddie still around Charlie.

I mean, our biggest worry is that Freddie bites Charlie,

and would be such a guilt that we let it happen.

And that, you know, we saw the warning signs

and we ignored it.

So, this is really our last-ditch effort, to be honest.

This is our last chance to figure out

if there is a way for us to safely still have this dog.

Yeah.

Hi. Hello.

- (Freddie barking) Hi. How are you?

- It's okay. It's okay. Okay.

All right.

Uh, the meeting has to be done here at the door.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, baby.

Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

But we have to take care of that. Thank you for coming.

The first thing I see is that Freddie is guard-y.

When the door opens, he charges forward, barking to warn me off.

Then when I move in,

he positioned himself between me and his pet parents to protect them.

So the... the, uh, alert and the guard.

He wants to maul anyone who comes inside, unfortunately.

So he's giving protection to his pack.

RYAN (off screen): Right.

So that way, new people come in, he's already saying, "I don't trust you."

That's why he's barking, moving towards the person.

Mm-hmm. It's natural, it's a dog, you wanna pet him,

and, you know, people don't know better.

That's not natural. That's a habit.

Hmm. Okay. Mmm.

Natural is you give distance.

Maybe that's why he has the hardest time with Charlie.

He's quick to go for him and look right at him,

- and try to engage him. - CESAR (off screen): Yeah.

I naturally keep a hand, like, out

to kind of form a barrier between the dog and the baby.

Just preventatively, he hasn't done something to warrant that,

but I just don't want there to be an opportunity.

I don't want there to be a chance for it,

so I just kinda naturally keep them apart.

Both sides of our families remain very, very concerned,

and have kind of said, "At what point are you gonna give up on this dog?

Are you gonna wait till something happens to Charlie?"

I can already sense how tense Bethany is,

talking about Charlie and Freddie.

I don't believe Freddie will intentionally hurt Charlie

because he's part of his pack.

But Freddie is uncontrollable when he is in guard mode

and could hurt the baby accidentally.

It's too dangerous to assess Freddie's bad behavior

when Charlie's around.

So the baby heads to bed while the rest of us go to the backyard.

I like that.

I like that... How he moves his little feet.

- He has good little feet. He has a real happy prance.

Yes. The happy-go-lucky part, we keep.

All right. Come on out.

Hi! Hey!

To help me assess and evaluate,

I brought in some people who are strangers to Freddie

so we can see how he reacts.

Hi. How are you? Hey! Hi!

There you go, this is good.

Tsch. Tsch.

He's chasing.

Tsch.

Tsch.

Many people will look at Freddie and say,

"Because his tail is wagging, he must be happy."

But dogs can also wag their tails when they're nervous, anxious,

or feel threatened.

In this case, Freddie's stalking behavior, coupled with the wagging tail,

tells me he's feeling threatened.

And now, I'm gonna show you the follow-through.

Not yet.

Watch. He's gonna settle.

He's going behind you.

Tsch.

Tsch.

There you go. All right.

So I'm blocking him because he went to her feet.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like a shark.

Yeah. Yeah.

Freddie went into guard mode once new people enter the space,

protecting Ryan and Bethany.

I first need to teach them how to interrupt this state

so the situation doesn't escalate into a bite.

So the touch is just to block the shark mode.

You're literally interrupting what the brain is doing.

You can do that with the leash.

But if you don't have anything, then you touch.

Most people only touch their dogs when they are giving affection.

Petting, belly rubs, scratching behind their ears.

But another way of showing your dog love is by using your touch to communicate.

Here, a light but quick touch is used to guide the dog.

It's never used to harm or cause pain.

The touch creates a direct line of communication

that says their current behavior is unwanted.

And we should make a sound too,

'cause you were making that tsch-tsch sound?

Yeah, the sound... I'm... I'm... Because eventually, I don't want to touch,

I just want to, tsch.

So then... then it's... The sound means the same.

"Snap out of it. Whatever you're touching, just snap out of it."

And so then the next step is to stay there until he settles.

RYAN (off screen): Got it.

You can't just stop him, and he just wanders.

That's what I call calm surrender.

Your dog is, to me, like a silent biter. All right?

So he doesn't really give, like, the classic warnings.

"You know, your dog is quiet," Bam! He does that!

Yeah. - RYAN (off screen): Yeah.

CESAR (off screen): So if you come close when he's quiet,