Stop coddling your dog—he’s 99.9% wolf
By Kevin Ashton December 19, 2013
SANTA CLARITA, California—Cesar Millan crosses the road to meet me. Two pit bulls, a Chihuahua, and a Yorkshire terrier—named Junior, Taco, Alfie and Kaley Cuoko—follow. Off leash and at heel, the dogs are calm, almost languid. If Millan communicates with them, I do not notice.
For the past few minutes, I have been paying my respects to Millan’s pit bull, Daddy. He died in 2010 and his simple grave marker depicts a sleeping dog and the words, “Forever loved and missed,” set among the rocks of Millan’s training and rehabilitation clinic, dubbed the Dog Psychology Center. Millan sits in the spot where Daddy spent his final years, watching the wilderness of Santa Clarita’s hill country, an hour north of Los Angeles. He tears up when he talks about his dog. “This is a bed that I did for Daddy. He pretty much lived the rest of his years watching the llama and the horse. Nobody was allowed to be here except him. So we kept it this way. This is his place.”
2010 was a terrible year for Cesar Millan. Besides Daddy’s death, he went through a divorce and discovered he had no rights to the name, “Dog Whisperer,” the title of his television show on National Geographic Channel. He tried to kill himself by swallowing a bottle of Xanax. It was almost the end of an American dream for a man who grew up in Mexican drug country, and escaped when he was 21 by crawling through a tunnel in Tijuana with no money. He spoke no English and worked his way to Los Angeles by washing cars. He started a dog-walking business and scored a few celebrity clients. He landed a TV show, eventually becoming a celebrity himself as the world’s most famous dog behaviorist. He churned out books, videos, even a magazine.
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