An Heir of Confidence

Since the beginning of its highly successful 4-season run, Daddy the pit bull has been the droopy-jowled, steely-eyed canine face of Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan. With poise and polish he serves as Cesar's right-hand, and has provided crucial support as a role model for some of the Dog Psychology Center's toughest cases. Daddy's Heir Apparent is Junior, a 5-month old blue pit bull that both he and Cesar have been grooming for the past three months to help carry their message of balance and stable pack leadership into the next generation.

For being so young and relatively new to the Millans' pack, Junior has shown an impressive aptitude for Daddy's signature calm submissive composure. Because he was adopted as a highly impressionable 2-month-old puppy, and because his energy matched the Millans', it was easy to assimilate him into the rest of the pack at the DPC. He gets along especially well with pit bull Amy's puppies, born at the center.

"He's constantly growing," says Cesar, "and I think I can honestly say that he's growing in a perfect environment."

He lives with the Millans at their home and gets plenty of routine exercise, discipline, and affection as well as physical and psychological challenges. As a result of such close and careful attention, his social demeanor is very mellow, and his state of mind is calm and friendly, almost perfectly mirroring Daddy's own. Since Daddy gets along well with everybody, Junior gets along well with everybody. And if a dog is not the energy that Junior is accustomed to, Daddy has taught him to simply walk away.

"And that's just another way to be social. To me, a dog that learns to ignore anti-social behavior is a very social dog."

Those of you with keen eyes may recognize Junior from the 2007 CMI Christmas Card photos, in which he playfully tormented a forever patient and forgiving Daddy. Calm submissive training or no, Junior is still a rambunctious puppy who loves to horse around. He plays water games and dirt games with youthful abandon, and since pit bulls are more sight and sound oriented, there has been a special focus on activities that utilize Junior's nose, such as Find the Ball and other tracking games. He is training to be a very versatile dog - a universal player.

But does all this royal attention mean that Junior is immune to the issues that can slowly creep into the life of a dog?

"Every breed sooner or later starts listening to their genetics. Even though blue pit bulls were bred for show purposes and not for fighting, they still have that small side of them that wants to fight. Junior has tried to listen to that side of him, but because we are with him all the time, we can let him know that we don't agree with those behaviors, and then reinforce the behaviors that we approve of. When he sees that Daddy is not doing those things, he knows: 'that's not what we do.'"

When the time comes, Junior will step up as a representative of powerful breeds everywhere, from pit bulls to Rottweilers and Great Danes. He will not be a replacement, but a new face of calm submissive dogs at the DPC, showing the world that it isn't the breed alone, but the human behind the dog that determines behavior.