Travels with Casey

by Benoit Denizet-Lewis

  THOUGH RESIDENTIAL addiction treatment centers haven’t included dogs in therapy historically (many use horses instead), some high-end rehabs now allow patients to bring their dogs. Several other rehab centers and sober houses incorporate therapy dogs, or have resident dogs on site.

  A friend of mine, Joe Schrank, told me that the sober house he runs—Loft 107 in Brooklyn—would be much less effective without the presence of Churchill, an English Bulldog, and Lucy, a rescue Italian Mastiff.

  “When people get out of inpatient treatment and come to us, their lives are usually in shambles,” he said. “Everyone they know is angry or hurt, and rightfully so, because addiction is like a tornado through marriages and family systems. Some people are so off their map and shut down, the easy starting point for a relationship is with one of our dogs. The dogs aren’t angry with you, they’re not divorcing you or threatening to fire you, and they won’t hold your past against you.” Schrank says the dogs also give recovering addicts a sense that they’re “stepping back into the real world rather than being stuck in an institution.”

  There’s a third dog who makes appearances at Loft 107—a five-year-old black Lab named Mik. Mik’s job isn’t so much unconditional love as it is unconditional accountability, which might even be more important for addicts in early sobriety. The dog was originally trained for narcotics detection at a small police department in Texas, but he lost his job when the department cut its K9 program. Mik ended up with Joe, who has found the dog to be critical in keeping his seven-thousand-square-foot loft drug-free. Joe likes to say that though his dogs have different jobs, they’re all an “addict’s best friend.”

  That may be why so many recovering addicts choose to live with dogs. As Nic imparted to me on the beach, pets that need attention, feeding, and daily walks are a remarkable buffer against relapse. So, too, is the guilt many addicts feel if they drink or use drugs in front of their dogs.

  “I’m not sure why, but it’s almost worse to let down your dog than it is to let down a friend or family member,” a friend of mine who has struggled with drug and sex addiction told me. “The dog is like a mirror—and in his eyes you can see all the sadness and shame you’re feeling toward yourself.”

  Another good friend of mine is convinced that his two dogs know when he’s active in his drug addiction. He told me that the younger of the dogs, a Chihuahua/Pit Bull mix rescue, normally loves everybody but would try to chase his drug dealer out of their apartment. The older dog, a tall Chihuahua, would start whimpering when my friend brought out a bag of drugs.

  “Then, when I got out a needle, he would make a sound like he only made when he saw that sight—a kind of human cry in a canine throat,” he recalled. “It was eerie and heartbreaking. I ended up having to board them whenever I planned to use, because they became like little sheepdogs trying to herd my sober self away from my addict self.”

  I never got the sense that Casey was trying to herd me away from my addict self in the depth of my struggles, which only added to my belief that he didn’t particularly care about me. At my worst in my twenties, I would spend days holed up in my apartment in front of my computer. I used Internet chat rooms and the pursuit of sex as a kind of drug, and nothing—not my family, not my friends, and certainly not my dog—could compete with it.

  As my life deteriorated, I took Casey for fewer and shorter walks. I played with him less. I’m ashamed to say that on some days I didn’t play with him at all. But unlike my friends and family, Casey didn’t have anywhere else to go; he couldn’t get away. There is no Al-Anon for dogs. No one told him about the dangers of codependency. He was tied to me, stuck with me. Casey stayed with me back then not because I deserved the company. He stayed with me because he’s a dog. That’s what dogs do, sometimes to their peril. They stay.

  Did Casey realize just how depressed I was? There were times when I thought I saw some recognition in him of how small and miserable my life had become. He would look at me with what I was sure were the saddest eyes ever fastened to a dog. He would sigh a lot. But maybe, as my friend had suggested had happened in his case, the dog was serving as a mirror for my own shame.

  Here’s what I know for sure: Casey helped keep me sane and alive as I lost friendships and a relationship. Though I never tried to take my own life, I certainly thought about it. But the mechanics of dog ownership—walk, feed, repeat—gave me just enough structure and responsibility to feel needed. Besides, I wanted him to see me get better. I wanted Casey to see me do right by him.

  THE PROSPECT of Cesar Millan meeting my dogs terrified me. “I just know that Casey will be on his worst behavior,” I fretted to a friend by phone as I drove to Cesar’s Dog Psychology Center in the Santa Clarita hills. I was convinced that Cesar would find Casey boorish and poorly trained. I imagined Casey jumping up on Cesar to say hello, barging through doorways ahead of me (a big no-no, according to Cesar), or, worse yet, humping Cesar’s dogs. I worried less about Rezzy, but there was always the possibility that Cesar might discern some failure there on my part, too.

  This wouldn’t be my first time meeting the Dog Whisperer. A month before embarking on my journey, I’d interviewed Cesar in front of several hundred dog lovers as part of a New York Times Arts & Leisure Weekend. Though I’d watched dozens of episodes of his hit show, Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, I was unprepared for just how funny and charismatic he would be in front of an audience. Joined onstage by his Pit Bull, Junior, Cesar had a comic’s timing and an actor’s easy physicality. His imitation of the way many Americans walk their dogs—small dog pulling large human—had the crowd doubling over with laughter.

  During that interview, Cesar stressed that dogs need three things to be healthy and content: exercise, discipline, and affection, in that order. He told the crowd that dogs in Third World countries tend to be in better shape—physically and emotionally—than dogs here at home, which he believes we treat too often like little people.

  “Dogs seem to have everything in America,” Cesar said, except an understanding from us humans about what makes them truly content. “We want them to become like us, but it’s best for them not to become like us.”

  According to Cesar, who is famous for saying that he “rehabilitates dogs and trains people,” many canine behavioral problems stem from owners who deal with their pets on an emotional level, ignoring the dogs’ pack instincts. Cesar urges owners to be Alphas and to display calm-assertive control over their animals at all times, especially when going for walks.

  “Walking in front of your dog allows you to be seen as the pack leader,” Cesar wrote on CesarsWay.com. “Conversely, if your dog controls you on the walk, he’s the pack leader. You should be the first one out the door and the first one in.”

  Though Cesar had an adoring audience at the New York Times event, some dog trainers and behavioral experts—particularly those who adhere to a positive reinforcement philosophy—disagree with his methods. In a 2006 op-ed in The New York Times, writer Mark Derr spoke for many of Cesar’s critics when he argued that Cesar is a “one-man wrecking ball directed at 40 years of progress in understanding and shaping dog behavior and in developing nonpunitive, reward-based training programs.”

  The godfather of punitive dog training was probably William Koehler, author of the 1962 bestseller The Koehler Method of Dog Training. The book is packed with nuggets of training wisdom that would be considered wholly unacceptable today. For example, “hold [the dog] suspended until he has neither the strength nor inclination to renew the fight,” and “lowered he will probably stagger loop-legged for a few steps, vomit once or twice, and roll over on his side. But do not let it alarm you.”

  Koehler, who trained dogs for the military and Walt Disney Studios, combined his tough-love approach with a sardonic sense of humor. When describing how to teach a dog to heel, he suggested tying a fifteen-foot leash to the dog and opening the front gate. If the dog tried to run off, Koehler advocated sprinting in the opposite direction. “He’ll come with y
ou, if only to be near his head.”

  Opposition to the pack or dominance theory began to take shape in the early 1980s, under the guidance of trainers like Ian Dunbar and Karen Pryor. “There is nothing that says [punishment] has to be painful or fearful,” Dunbar said, “and it doesn’t have to be painful or fearful to work, so maybe it shouldn’t be.” Instead, Dunbar advocates the use of positive reinforcement, where only a dog’s above-average behavior is rewarded. With this method, “better responses get better rewards, and the best responses get the best rewards,” Dunbar explained. “Then, the learning is ever-learning. The dog is always improving.”

  In a 2006 piece for The Woofer Times, a newspaper for dog lovers in the San Francisco area, Jean Donaldson of the Academy for Dog Trainers called dog training a “divided profession.”

  “We are not like plumbers, orthodontists or termite exterminators who, if you put six in a room, will pretty much agree on how to do their jobs,” she wrote. “Dog training campus are more like Republicans and Democrats, all agreeing that the job needs to be done but wildly differing on how to do it.”

  In that way, the dog training wars are a lot like the parenting wars. Is firm, old-school discipline the best way to deal with a misbehaving dog—or child? Or is there a better, more modern way? Donaldson told writer Michael Schaffer that Milan’s popularity is, in some way, a backlash against modernity and political correctness.

  “It’s the urge to dominate at least something,” she said.

  CESAR’S DOG Psychology Center sits on forty-three acres surrounded by low mountains and desert palms. He calls it “Disneyland for dogs,” and when I got there it was easy to see why. Cesar’s pack—there were twenty-two dogs on the day of my visit—lounged around an enclosed gravel dog run, or went for a swim in the bright blue pool at the center of the property. (One of the dogs, a Lab named Holly, is the only animal that’s ever sent Cesar to the hospital. She bit his hand after he tried to move her food bowl.)

  When the Southern California sun gets too hot, Cesar’s dogs can hang out in the compound’s air-conditioned kennel. The corn-kernel-yellow building houses a single row of low, gated kennels against one of the indoor walls, each of which has a doggie door leading to an outdoor sleeping space.

  Despite the abundance of chain link fencing, which Cesar and his crew use to divide the pack, maintain order, and—most importantly—keep away coyotes, the property is homey and carefully decorated. Each of the outdoor planters is bordered by bright red rocks, which are painted the color of the Grand Canyon. Many contain some sort of ornament: a foot-high Jesus statuette, an imposing ostrich sculpture, or, my favorite, a metal water fountain made to look like a urinating dog. There are less artful, more necessary touches, too; signs remind visitors of the center’s three big no-no’s: “NO TOUCH, NO TALK, NO EYE CONTACT.”

  Canines aren’t the only species that call the Dog Psychology Center home. At the time of my visit, Cesar owned two large turtles, as well as a horse and a llama. He hoped to add an ostrich to his menagerie. I asked Cesar if his llama had behavioral problems. “In the beginning, he was trying to mount every man he saw,” he said. “I corrected the llama, and now I walk the horse, the llama, and the dogs together. It’s the most amazing thing.”

  We spoke in a small white trailer, which serves as his unofficial office, parked at one of the highest points on the property. Cesar wore a blue-collared shirt and a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, under which I could see some salt-and-pepper hair, one of the few traits that betray that he’s in his mid-forties. Though Cesar isn’t tall, he has crafted an intimidating physical presence. He has a sturdy torso, strong legs, and well-defined arms, and he walks purposefully with his chest puffed out. But there’s also refinement and delicateness to him. On the day of my visit, Cesar’s teeth were bright white, his mustache and goatee carefully cropped, and his skin tan and glowing.

  Though I had many questions to ask Cesar about Casey, I began by talking about my newest dog. “When should I start training Rezzy?” I wanted to know.

  “Don’t do it yet,” he suggested. “Her level of trust has to increase first. Keep it primal. The more chances you give her to walk off-leash in a safe place with you, do that for now.”

  Cesar then corrected me for having helped Rezzy up the trailer’s steps a few minutes earlier. “You carried her the whole way up practically,” he said. “In the long run, you’re not really helping her if you do that. It would be better if you helped her go halfway, and let her do the rest, because that’s how you can help her build self-esteem. At the same time, with a dog that’s this shy, if you build too much self-esteem, they can go into a dominant state. It’s a fine line.” (I couldn’t imagine Rezzy going “into a dominant state,” but later in my journey Cesar would be proven right.)

  I turned the conversation to Casey. Though he’s not aggressive, Casey has three behaviors—excessive barking, lunging at dogs when he’s on a leash, and humping dogs when he’s off a leash—that can get him into trouble (and embarrass me). I was most concerned about his lunging. Though he does it only when he wants to play, it can appear aggressive, especially when combined with a growl that sounds anything but friendly.

  “It’s the weirdest thing,” I said, “because the growl makes no sense when combined with what Casey actually does when he’s done lunging. He just wants to say hello and play.”

  “But other people don’t know that your dog is friendly, so a dog lunging at their dog can rightfully seem scary,” Cesar told me. “What the other dog sees is that Casey is next to you and then goes in front of you, and in the animal world that’s confusing because a follower never removes himself from a follower position. The only reason a follower would go in front is because he senses that no one is in charge of the situation.”

  “So what can I do to stop the behavior?” I asked.

  “What do you do when he’s already in that confused leader position?”

  “It’s a combination of pulling him back and trying to reassure the other person that he’s friendly and just wants to play,” I said.

  “It seems like you’re missing a moment where Casey’s about to lunge and growl, and you’re not giving him the reminder not to do it,” Cesar explained. “The human often misses that moment. That’s where you can prevent him from going in front. I don’t know what his signs are, but a dog might put his head down, or he might lift up a leg, or start pulling on the leash. You have to notice that and snap him out of it. That’s how you can use your proximity to him as a tool.”

  I told Cesar that I wished I could have Casey off-leash all the time, because the lunging and growling rarely happens when he’s walking freely next to me. “That means the leash is triggering the wrong reaction,” Cesar said. “By doing that on the leash he’s telling you, ‘I’m naturally a follower, but the leash confuses me and makes me a leader sometimes.’ Your job is to learn how to empower yourself to keep him in a follower state on the leash.” (Cesar often laments that many humans don’t know how to walk a dog. “I have clients who are Harvard graduates,” he told me at the New York Times event, “but they can’t walk a Chihuahua.”)

  A few minutes later, Cesar took Casey, Rezzy, and me to meet his pack. “Now, we get to see the truth about your dogs!” Cesar said with a smile.

  “They haven’t had a walk today yet, so they might be a little rambunctious,” I told Cesar, trying to prepare him—and probably me—for the worst.

  Cesar opened the fence to where his dogs were hanging out. Casey sauntered right in, while Rezzy stood back and watched.

  “She’s a little scared,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No, she’s not scared. Actually, that’s respect. She’s more in the normal state. Casey can get in trouble by being so cocky.”

  Casey promptly started humping Holly, the Lab who once bit Cesar. “He’s going to try to establish himself in this new pack,” Cesar said. Fortunately, Holly is only aggressive toward humans who dare to touch her food. “If he tries to reinfor
ce dominance with one of these guys”—he pointed to two of his bigger dogs, including a Mastiff/Lab mix named Joe—“it’s going to be a big, big problem.”

  On cue, Casey started humping Joe. Cesar grabbed Casey’s collar and pulled him off, but Casey wouldn’t take no for an answer. When Casey tried again, Cesar reached out reflexively and pushed Casey away with his fingertips—so quickly it looked like Cesar had zapped him with a tiny electric shock. (He hadn’t.) Casey barked at Cesar—a why are you ruining my fun? bark—but then backed off. Fortunately for Casey, Joe happened to be in what Cesar called a “calm-submissive state.” The dog also had diarrhea and seemed more intent on finding a place to poop.

  A few seconds later, Casey tried mounting another of Cesar’s dogs. Cesar pulled Casey off again and then cornered him for a few seconds until he calmed down. “He doesn’t know how to go into a total calm-submissive state,” Cesar said. “It’s like you put a pause on a tape, and then he goes right back.”

  “When he does this in a dog park, I pull him off and tell him, ‘No,’ ” I said.

  “But that’s just a temporary fix. You have to do the follow-through, where the brain becomes submissive, and then he associates the touch of the collar, or the ‘No,’ with that state of mind.”

  I’ve never been very good with humping follow-through. Part of the problem was that in Boston’s Franklin Park, where I walked Casey for years, many of the dog owners didn’t mind my dog’s clumsy attempts at dominance. They would laugh them off and act as though I was overreacting if I pulled Casey off and scolded him. I got so used to the lax attitude that I wasn’t prepared when someone—usually new to owning a dog—would shriek in horror at the sight of their pet being mounted by mine.

  A surprising number of dog owners assume that a humping dog wants sex with their dog, when in fact a humping dog is usually trying to establish dominance. At an RV park in Florida, one man—who was there with his very large male Mastiff—pulled Casey off his dog, shot me a dirty look, and said, “That’s illegal in this state, son.” Then there’s the Tennessee man I read about who relinquished his male Bulldog mix to a shelter because he found the dog “hunched over” another male dog—and assumed his pet was “gay.”