Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems
Cesar Millan, with Melissa Jo Peltier
2006, Harmony/Random House
300 pages, hardback
IF HIS choice of metaphors in the Acknowledgements to this book is perhaps open to soggy-trousered innuendo (comparing himself to a tree), the outcome of César Millán Favela’s career is not. This is one spectacularly successful Mexican who has literally thrown a bone to that poodle-pampering class of the US as the “dog whisperer” and whose approach at the now celebrated Dog Psychology Center in Los Angeles has brought him a lot more than just a pat on the head. But quips aside, Millán is a genuinely talented canine trainer who draws on a love of animals instilled in him by members of his family in his native Culiacán in Sinaloa. His career is all the more impressive for having entered the US as a young man with nothing, presumably, but a dog biscuit. His adopted home certainly needs his expertise, given that it is populated by so many aggressive creatures: on average in the US 18 people die each year from dog attacks and 1 million suffer serious bites. Cesar’s Way is an essential guide for anyone who does not understand their dog, which is probably 99 per cent of owners. It is also a great read, even if you can’t stand the damned beasts. – EC
