Cesar Millan - Live in Ottawa

Wednesday was a great nite for me and 3 of my doggie friends. We all loaded up and headed to our ScotiaBank Place (where our Senator's Hockey Team play). We were seated 21 rows from the front, so as best I could with Cesar's movement on the stage, I captured some of the moments.

Cesar came out during the 1st half in a #10 Sens jersey.

He was very animated, sometimes playing a dog, or even a very good cat. This scene he was describing was how we deal with our 'modern' dog when it comes to answering the door bell.

Cesar talked about the 180 days one has available from the time the pup comes home to work on specifics, rules and boundaries and being calm around food. Here he is trying to interact with 2 puppies. The lab puppy, oddly enough was calm and cool, not even going for the food. The Dash puppy, another story! He was a bouncy one, to where Cesar just ran out of time waiting for him to be calm before giving the food.

This next challenge was with two women whose dog goes nuts when dinner is being made and preparing the dog's food. He just bounces all over, won't sit still, nothing has worked.
Cesar instructs on how to present and hold the food bowl ... and in one go ... doesn't the dog sit calmly! It broke the audience up. Oh, but one must remember too, saying things like 'want your dinner', 'it's supper time!', doesn't cut it as this only excites the dog with your uppity voice and your own excitement.

Then he takes the time to instruct the owners. 1st attempt the bowl isn't even down and the dog is jumping up. It took a few attempts but they got it.

2nd 1/2 of the show the stage looks like a park setting. His next demonstration is with a young girl's dog who just pulls her everywhere. She has to wrap her lead around her waist to brace herself when out on walks.

1st off his collar is just a buckle collar, so he switches to one of his leashes so it can be kept high up on the dog's neck. I always appreciate it when he talks about how those of us that show dogs do just that ... how it makes the dog feel proud of themselves when the head is up. You also are able to control the head/mind of the dog rather than trying to control the whole body. I've talked about this in my dog classes for 15 yrs now.

After several walks across the stage, Cesar taking the lead at the beginning, and showing her how it could be done with just 2 fingers .. and she actually responded to the audience ... 'Really! he's only using two fingers!'. She was so surprised at how fast it happened and that her dog could be walked this way, in gosh less than 10 minutes (camera time shows about 15 mins during this session of pictures)

if you stay tight like this and posture over ... poor girl she handled all the changes well considering she was in front of over 5,000 people ... what stage fright will put into one's mind :)

body like this ... she gets it! and starts to relax

then she does it in motion ... what a lucky gal! received one-on-one training from Cesar and got to walk the stage with him, plus doing something other than worrying about her dog ... holding Cesar's hand.

In his discussion about low, medium, high energy dogs and how some dogs need a job to do, our Canadian Boarder Control was brought on stage to explain how they need high drive dogs as sniffer dogs. They did a demo where their Nova Scotia Duck Toller had to go looking for 3 areas where drugs had been placed. Here the dog is trying to locate the scent, which is actually up in the tree.

I think there are several main things we do wrong with our dogs today ... we put them out in a fenced backyard and expect them to play, exercise and do their business without us there to supervise, and then wonder why they bark, dig, fence run; we don't learn how to properly 'read' them -their body language, their tail wags, their barks; (the good breeders of dogs spend hours when raising their pups learning with each new litter how mother nature has programmed these creatures - we see so vividly the nose, eyes, ears principle he talks about - and is so why by the time they are 8 wks old we can evaluate them better, not just on their cuteness, but on who will fit the best with each client's lifestyle); and lastly, which I think in today's times, we don't take enough time, nor patience to work at getting the behaviour we want.

I wonder how many dogs woke up Thursday morning, seeing their world change for the better?