Dog Whisperer

Kelly and Hiram Lai always knew their picture-perfect life together would include a dog.

When Hiram and I met, there was never any question as to whether or not we wanted a dog.

We both knew that we did.

We were in the parking lot of a sporting goods store, and there were these adorable Lab puppies there.

I chose Holly, and here we go.

It was just, it was bad timing, I think, because she was pregnant.

And what it turned out to be was taking care of a baby, Griffin, and a baby, Holly.

Holly was a wonderful puppy.

We had a wonderful time with her.

Kelly and I, we do live a pretty active lifestyle.

We just had to work our schedule a little bit so that we had more time in the day,

getting up a little bit earlier, making sure Holly had the exercise.

So we were committed to her, for sure.

But even with Hiram and Kelly's commitment and love, Holly

took an unexpected turn when she was just five months old.

Just like that, she just started growling at me and just hovering over her bowl.

I went in to tell Holly easy, and that's when she turned and tried to bite me.

And that was the first time that it manifested, her food aggression.

Okay.

Good girl.

When Holly is eating, if anything, she's going to be eating.

Anybody comes near her, she will turn into an animal that doesn't even resemble a lab to me.

The hair on her back is completely straight.

Her tail is straight up in the air, and her teeth, she just is growling, and it's menacing.

She has bitten my husband, and she has gotten me a few times as well.

Killer Labrador right here.

Holly is more aggressive with me because we have gone a couple rounds.

Yeah, at this point, after we're done, we can't touch her because she's gonna, she's gonna bite us.

Back.

Back.

Back.

Holly, back.

Good girl.

We've been through three trainers.

Trainer number two came up with the idea for us to put the food on the ground.

Didn't work.

Same, same thing.

Okay.

In fact, what we do now is we feed her, and we just leave her, we just leave her to the food.

Yeah.

And when she's cooled off after a few minutes, we can go back outside and everything's back to normal.

Can you throw the ball for Holly?

Can you throw it?

Let's stay back.

She's great with the baby, even though she's very hyper and excited around other people.

But with the baby, she's always so sweet.

Yay!

.

Our biggest concern with Griffin being 18 months old is just having food in his hand.

We don't know how Holly's gonna respond to that.

The stress of having Holly with this problem.

It can't even be measured.

We can't even imagine that a dog so lovable turns into almost a wolf-like creature.

Holly didn't have a say to come to our house, so we gotta do everything we can.

We're down to the last wire now, if we can help Holly, and that's what we hope Cesar can do is help Holly.

.

Hi.

Nice to meet you.

How can I help you?

We have... Whoops.

Yeah.

That's sad.

We have a...

What's your name?

A terrible food aggressive Labrador.

Oh, wow.

Basically, any time the food is in our hands, in a cup, she's okay.

We can command her, we can tell her, get back, sit down.

But once we put it on the ground, she goes over the food, she gets pretty angry.

Wait.

Okay.

I've gotten bit before by being near her.

She's great in all other aspects.

It's really just the food.

We have an 18-month-old son.

.

It makes us pretty nervous just because we don't know how she's going to react.

So we just keep them totally separate.

Right.

Kelly's been bitten recently, too.

When it first started, her tail was between her legs.

Yes.

Now it's, like, straight up.

But now she's up.

Yeah.

But now she's straight up, like... That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it did begin telling you, I am unsure about how to be, right?

How to go from primal behavior to domestic behavior.

I really don't know how to do it.

Aggression is not the problem.

It's the outcome of a problem.

Aggression is a symptom.

Right.

That's not normal for her, you know, to distrust their humans when she's eating.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

There you go.

This is Argos' first assistance.

All right, so this, let's do the introduction.

Argos and Junior help Cesar evaluate Holly's reaction to other dogs.

Look at Junior, he's charging him already.

So I'm, I'm definitely gonna take advantage of that.

Exactly what they said about their dog, he's not very sure, he's actually submissive.

I wanna see the reaction, how he reacts to them here.

Very jumpy.

See, this is the way he's supposed to behave.

Now, I'm just getting a feedback from him.

What is, what is his, what is his, his reaction for it?

All right, so now, now you go, now you be, it begins the ritual of claiming.

Nobody, the Greyhound can't touch it, the Pit Bull can't touch it, the Labrador can't touch it.

This is a fine line right here of submission or bite.

See it?

Just a matter of waiting.

This is it.

I can feel it.

You probably can see it.

I can feel it.

There you go, finally.

So I got the imprint.

I got the imprint that I wanna, I wanna achieve.

It was really fast.

But now I have to play the game a little bit more realistic.

The pack is not gonna be here.

Now let's do it without the dogs.

See that eye contact?

That is, that is bad.

That's submission.

I'm gonna let it lick me because he's showing submission.

So I'm gonna move now and then I'm gonna take him away from the food.

Look, now he doesn't wanna touch the food because the food belongs to me.

But that's wrong.

The cameraman suggests Cesar give a release word for Holly to approach.

Okay, get the food.

Go become aggressive, Bindo.

Okay, come on.

Okay.

Then you confuse him.

Look, he's confused right there.

There you go.

This saying, okay, is really, it broke my heart to say okay because he's a robot,

a robot right now.

When a dog sits down and waits for the sound, that's not natural.

The way another dog say, okay, now you can come in, they relax.

And so the other dog understand by relaxation, not by excitement.

This dog is excited.

So the more excited activities you do, the worse it is for him.

It really confuses him.

So that's why a dog that is trained doesn't mean he's

balanced, and a dog that is balanced doesn't mean he's trained.

So I'd rather have a balanced dog than a trained dog because he's confused.

That's what I'm feeling bad about.

This guy right here.

Now we are asking him just to go to a natural state so I can give you food.

I'm going to reward your natural state.

Forget about your trained state.

See, this time was no need for the touch.

This time was just the approach.

When I was watching, you know, through the glass, I couldn't believe it.

I saw, you know, he was working with Holly, and she was great.

I mean, very little aggression, and I thought, holy cow.

We're going to bring Hiram.

I want him to be the first one.

I want to see him in action, obviously.

I want to see the reaction.

And then when I went outside, and when she saw me, it all kind of changed.

So here, this silence, it has two states, and that's where he becomes dangerous.

Right?

He's not calm.

Yeah.

Right?

You can see that he is, that's calm now.

Got it.

Okay.

Look at that.

See that?

So I can switch from one second to another second.

So let me have it.

So here.

Come on.

He's addressing it to you, because he knows I'm claiming it right here.

Right.

Yeah.

So that eye contact is bad.

That's why you get hurt.

And I can see her ears dropping, too.

Yeah.

That's usually right before she... That's right.

Does something.

Yeah.

He knows that the only energy that is not assertive is yours, because he sees that

my energy, even though it's closer to the food, which I don't want to eat, I want to eat.

He knows that I'm a better target to him, so what I did here right now is claim the food and claim you.

I got to claim myself, don't I?

Exactly.

Okay.

Because otherwise, you can't claim your son.

Right.

So if you touch your son with the energy that he's seeing you right now,

your son becomes a target.