Dog star (From Living Northeast)

Dog star

2:01pm Thursday 25th February 2010 in

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TV’s Dog Whisperer is coming to the North-East to tell us all about his techniques. So you’d better just ‘Sit!’ and listen, says Viv Hardwick.

THE world’s most famous canine expert, Cesar Millan, arrives in the North-East this month with that intoxicating air of excitement over a debut tour… and just a whiff of controversy.

Asked about how he can reproduce on stage the wonderful TV moments where owners re-gain control of their pets, he says: “The animals will be relying on the humans who are around. I give my understanding and my energy and my relaxed way of being. So the dogs don’t focus on the lighting or anything, but the person who is going to provide guidance. It should be the owners really, but, for the most part, people don’t know how to control new situations. Sadly, a lot of people don’t know how to control their own homes.

“The dog already has a pattern of ‘my owner is not going to be able to help me because they don’t help me at home which is why I have to control home’. Then this dog meets the Dog Whisperer who knows how to connect with him and it goes into a more relaxed state of mind, which I call the calm submissive state.”

His Arena performances are aimed at giving people back the knowledge they’ve lost about coping with dogs.

“People have become more and more intelligent but show less common sense when it comes to dealing with life. I going to show people how to greet a dog and we’re going to show dogs in states of mind that are aggressive, fearful, hyper and insecure. We’ll be bringing their owners on stage as well,” says Millan.

“People watch on TV and say ‘I can’t believe he controlled that dog in two minutes’ because it looks unbelievable.

When you see this happen in front of 5,000 people and there’s no TV camera, it’s like a magician does a trick in front of you. That’s what I want people to take home with them.”

Millan has created the Dog Psychology Centre in South Los Angeles while filming six series of Dog Whisperer, which is watched in 80 countries. He’s also written a best-selling book, Cesar’s Way, and launched a monthly magazine of the same name.

Millan believes his “calm assertive state” has allowed him to create success in business as well as with dogs. But even this famous mindset and that wonderful hissing noise he makes to help him control four-footed friends didn’t work with the authorities, who wouldn’t allow Millan to bring some of his well-known dogs to the UK. “I have a lot of pitbulls and was trying to get permission to bring my pack over to the UK, but it’s not as easy as you’d think,” he says.

So is it true he actually owns between 40 and 50 dogs? “Well that’s actually how I became known. Before they called me the Dog Whisperer they called me the ‘Mexican guy who can walk a pack of dogs’. For me walking dogs was absolutely normal, though it was actually illegal to walk dogs off-leash in America. I came to American illegally, but I didn’t know that what I was doing was illegal. That obviously brought me to the attention of people. I was also walking dogs that society was afraid of – the rottweilers, German shepherds, pitbulls.

To me a dog is a dog, not a breed or a mutt.”

The married father-of-two finally became a legal US resident in 2000. “I always tell people that immigrants don’t take anyone’s space. We take an empty space. If American people won’t take that space, we’ll claim the gardening, we will walk your dog,” he says.

Among the many stars he’s worked with are Oprah Winfrey, Scarlett Johansson, Will Smith and Nicolas Cage. So how does he tell Hollywood’s most powerful people that they can’t handle a dog?

“Oprah is aware that her dog doesn’t know she owns half of the world, and she’s happy with that because dog ownership is the simple side of a person. So it’s easy for me to relate to a wealthy or famous person because I’m talking to the simple side of the human… my wife Iluson talks to the wealthy side when we charge,” he jokes.

■ Cesar Millan: Dog Trainer To The Stars, MetroRadio Arena, Newcastle, Saturday, March 13. Tickets: £39.50. VIP tickets for premium seats and a Q&A with Cesar Milan after the show are £99. Box office: 0844-493-6666 metroradionarena.co.uk