Featured Archives | Page 4 of 87

All About Dogs

What Your Dog Does Best

People can have an amazing capacity to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, as the expression goes. The word for this ability is “empathy,” which is identifying with or even experiencing the thoughts, feelings, or attitudes of another person. Empathy is naturally much easier for us to feel for people we really care about — and it can be very difficult to have the same feelings for strangers, although we often rise to the occasion in times of disaster. Though, as usual, our dogs are way ahead of us when it comes to being empathetic, because it’s kind of what

October 13, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Milan

Chaos And Change

A week ago, there was another unfortunate mass-shooting that reminds us of the fragility of life. Now, it’s a myth that we’re the only species that kills its own. Nature is full of examples of that. The difference is that one animal will kill another of its kind for very specific survival reasons — food, territory, or competition over a mate. Humans will murder for those same reasons, but there are two more that are uniquely human motives. Humans will commit murder over ideas, and will sometimes do it to get something they want. I believe that these two motives

October 6, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Milan

Louder Than Words

“Are you ready?” It’s a simple enough sentence, isn’t it? But, on paper, it’s impossible to tell the intention. Is the speaker happy, angry, excited, impatient, or something else? It could be a hopeful question between two people who are about to walk down the aisle together, or a complaint from someone who’s tired of always being late because of their spouse. One human skill that many people are not the greatest at is listening. Yes, we may hear all of the words, but we don’t always hear the intention correctly. Fortunately, this is yet another area where our dogs

September 29, 2017 No Comments

How To Appreciate Your Dog

Today marks the start of National Dog Week 2017, an annual event that takes place the last week of September, and a time to remind ourselves how much dogs have added to our lives as companions and as teachers. There are many ways to celebrate, and you can find suggestions online — although, of course, many of those are more for the benefit of the humans than for our dogs. But if you’d like to celebrate the week properly, here are some things you can do that your dog will appreciate, because they’ll make her a better dog and you

September 22, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Milan

Calm And Consistent

There’s one thing that’s inevitable in Nature, and that’s change. There are simple and constant changes, like sunrise and sunset, and the turning of seasons. There are unpredictable and enormous changes, like hurricanes and forest fires. A physicist would tell you that change is the only way we can tell which way time is passing. Put an ice cube on the table and you’ll wind up with a puddle of water, but it never works the other way around. Now, since they’re instinctual, you’d think that dogs would be better at adapting to change than humans are — but that

September 15, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Milan

Letting It Be

When a dog is misbehaving, what’s the one common element, no matter what the problem is? Think about the misbehaviors: jumping on people, pulling on the walk, barking too much, peeing in the house, chewing things up, being aggressive, being fearful… They all sound like a lot of different issues, don’t they? After all, the same thing can’t possibly make one dog aggressive and the other fearful. A dog won’t bark for the same reason that it pulls on the walk. Right? Yes, and no. The behaviors are very different, but they are all signs of one particular thing being

September 8, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Milan

Unnatural Disaster

Natural disasters like the flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey can be devastating, but if there’s a silver lining to those rain clouds it’s seeing the great acts of compassion and selflessness that people are inspired to — for example, when a group of bakers were trapped in their shop for two days, they didn’t panic. Instead, they made pan dulce to give to people in need, using over two tons of flour. And, of course, rescue organizations have swung into action to help not only people affected by the flood, but their animals — including dogs, cats, horses, and cattle.

August 31, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Milan

A Single Baby Step

Here’s something I’m pretty sure almost everyone learned at one point but doesn’t remember doing: How to walk. It’s a pretty basic skill that we develop before our brains really start making memories, but as any of us who’s been around toddlers has seen, it doesn’t come without a lot of trial and error. Before you can learn to walk, you have to learn how to fall down. Developmental specialists say that it should take up to fifteen months for a child to learn to walk on their own. That’s over a year and it seems like a long time,

August 25, 2017 No Comments

Be the Pack Leader

Not Quite Sure…

I want you to remember a time when you went into a new situation or a strange place, and then think about how you felt. Maybe it was starting a new school or a new job, or visiting a city you’d never been to before. Maybe it was a first date — or a second date with someone you really liked. Now think about how you felt going into that situation. Chances are you were anxious, or maybe a little scared. Maybe you even tried to avoid that situation because of the way you felt. But why did you feel

August 18, 2017 No Comments

Audiobook/Audible

A New Fix For An Old Problem

I always like it whenever science backs up something that I’ve known for years, and that was why I was very excited this week to start up a new project with the audiobook company Audible. After a study with a hundred dogs, the findings suggest that leaving a virtual companion behind can help dogs remain calm and prevent separation anxiety. I’ve always known the power of the human voice as a calming influence, especially on our dogs — but that’s because, even as a little kid in Mexico in the 1970s, I had audiobooks around. Of course, those audiobooks didn’t

August 11, 2017 No Comments