How to Raise the Perfect Dog

by Cesar Millan

  Chris Komives with Eliza

  KOMIVES FAMILY SCHEDULE FOR ELIZA’S FIRST MONTHS

  5:30 a.m.: Wake up, walk Eliza, obedience/agility/other challenges in short intervals.

  6:15 a.m.: Return, feed Eliza, shower, and get ready for work.

  7:00 a.m.: Put Eliza in back hallway, go to work.

  7:30 a.m.—4:30 p.m.: At work—check on Eliza’s webcam. Twice a week, dog walker takes Eliza with pack around 12 noon for one hour.

  5:00 p.m.: Return home, walk Eliza, obedience/agility/other challenges in short intervals.

  6:00 p.m.: Feed Eliza.

  7:00 p.m.—9:00 p.m.: Eat dinner, keep Eliza on her “place,” groom Eliza (brushing, trim nails, clean ears, etc.).

  10:00 p.m.: Put Eliza in back hallway, go to bed.

  “I knew from my on-the-job training, so to speak, that the first six months are vital for establishing the routine with the puppy as well as the rules,” Chris recalls, “so I became very focused on raising and caring for her—unfortunately, to the detriment of my other relationships. I tend to have a somewhat obsessive personality anyway, and I channeled this into Eliza. After a month or so, Johanna requested we find something else to talk about besides the dog.”

  As the Komiveses learned, puppies require commitment, focus, and energy. If you are not prepared to care for a dog for the rest of its life, then please don’t fall for an adorable face and bring a puppy home on a whim. But the good news is, raising your dog from puppyhood is your best chance at creating the kind of intimate human-dog bond that we all dream about. Puppies are born without issues, and if they are raised by a good canine mother for the first eight weeks of their lives, they usually come to you unscathed by the quirks and neuroses that bother many an adult dog. Puppies come with a built-in leash attached, because they are programmed to follow. They also naturally seek stability and balance, and they are hungry to learn and absorb the rules, boundaries, and limitations of your family pack. Putting the right time and dedication into the first eight months of your puppy’s life offers you an incredible opportunity to nurture and influence the dog of your dreams—your faithful companion for a lifetime.

  WHERE TO FIND A PUPPY

  “How much is that doggie in the window?”

  Actually, the cost of that puppy—to animal welfare and to society—is far higher than simply the dollar amount on the price tag.

  There are three legitimate ways to go about adopting a puppy—from a shelter, from a breeder, or from a rescue organization. But many a softhearted dog lover has been lured by the winsome puppies in the windows and cages of the chain and independent pet stores that dot the streets of American cities and the aisles of our sprawling shopping malls. Most well-meaning animal lovers who purchase a dog from a pet shop or over the Internet or from a classified ad are unaware that those same puppies may be among the hundreds of thousands in America having been raised in horrendous, unsanitary, inhumane conditions in factory-like atmospheres known as puppy mills.

  “I’ve been inside a lot of puppy mills, from one end of the country to the other,” says my friend Chris DeRose, founder of Last Chance for Animals, a nonprofit activist group that works as a kind of “animal FBI,” gathering prosecutable evidence of systemic animal cruelty through detective work, whistle-blower information, and undercover operations. “And the one thing I can tell you is, puppy mills are ugly.” In most puppy mills, dogs live and die in their own excrement. Because they spend their early lives trapped inside wire cages, sometimes their feet get caught, and they lose paws and limbs to injuries and infections that are never treated. There is no regular veterinary care, and the dogs aren’t tested for genetic health problems, so chronic eye, ear, and digestive tract infections are common. Many puppy mills that exist in areas with extreme temperatures have no heating or air-conditioning, so the dogs routinely die from overexposure to heat or cold. The worst sufferers in puppy mills are the breeding pairs, the mothers in particular. They are forced to produce litter after litter, until they are physically used up. Then they are disposed of—often with unimaginable violence and cruelty.

  What’s often ignored in the puppy mill discussion is the significant role that a puppy mill background plays in the growing epidemic of serious behavior problems we see in America’s dogs. I’ve been called in to help dozens of dogs whose troubling behaviors I can pretty accurately trace back to their having been born under these oppressive conditions. That’s because dogs raised in puppy mills don’t have a natural style of life during the first weeks and months that are most crucial to their normal physical and mental development. They can’t learn how to be dogs, because their mothers don’t know how to be dogs. Recently, Chris DeRose took me inside my first puppy mill to help rescue and rehabilitate some of its saddest victims, the ones these so-called breeders were willing to relinquish to us (after all, these dogs were already so damaged, they would never make them any money). I saw dogs that were at such a high level of stress and anxiety, they didn’t know how to calm down—ever. I saw dogs trembling with shock, depressed dogs, sick dogs—even hopeless dogs. Anyone who has ever owned a normal, upbeat, joyful dog knows that hopelessness is a very aberrant quality for a dog—especially a puppy—to exhibit. It was a truly sobering and life-changing experience for me.

  Cesar with the Last Chance for Animals team and some rescued puppy-mill dogs.

  I am a big believer in the theory that the mental health and environmental stresses placed on a mother (of any species) play a role in the issues her offspring inherit. Imagine a female dog, like her mother and grandmother before her, raising litter after litter of puppies, never leaving the confines of a 4-foot-by-4-foot wire cage. Her puppies are going to come into the world stressed, and they’re going to get more and more anxious as the weeks go by and they absorb their mother’s unstable, depressed, or jittery energy. Once that puppy gets to the pet shop window, she may look adorable, but the deck is already stacked against her. Because of the inborn behavioral (not to mention physical) problems that will show up more as the puppy grows out of her cute stage, this dog is more than likely to end up abandoned at a shelter and possibly put to death. Why should the puppy mill owners (and pet shop owners) care? They’ve already pocketed their money.

  I was doing a seminar in Atlanta, Georgia, last year when a rescue group there presented me with a little female Yorkie with extreme anxiety, fear aggression, and a host of other behavioral problems. She was a puppy mill dog. This little girl was going to be put down unless someone stepped in. I ended up bringing her back to Los Angeles with me, and now she’s a member of my home-based family pack. In the beginning, even my normally very patient wife threw up her hands in frustration at her behavior. “Georgia Peaches,” as we named her, spent all her time hiding in corners and under and behind furniture, aggressively attacking anyone who got near her. She peed and pooped wherever she stood—even in her kennel. Puppy mill dogs have only one option—to pee where they sleep—something healthy dogs never do in nature. Eventually I was able to rehabilitate her so that she is no longer a behavior problem. She is still somewhat tentative, but she lives and plays happily with our other dogs and doesn’t show any of the signs of stress or aggression she did when she first arrived. She’s not human-aggressive anymore. But as far as housebreaking goes, she is still a work in progress. Growing up in a puppy mill kills off even the deepest instincts of many dogs.

  Many well-meaning people suspect that a pet store puppy may have been raised in a puppy mill but buy it anyway, honestly believing they are doing a good thing by “rescuing” an individual puppy. I can understand that line of thinking—most of us who love dogs cannot stand to see any dog, especially a puppy, go without a loving home. But according to Stephanie Shain of the Humane Association of the United States, “All these well-meaning people are doing is opening up another cage for yet another puppy mill dog to fill. It’s all about economics; it’s all about money. If people stop buying puppy mill puppies, the puppy mills stop making mon
ey.”

  The Humane Society is determined to put an end to the horror of puppy mills in our lifetime, but since puppy mills are still legal in most states, the only way to do that is to make this trade in canine flesh no longer profitable for its investors. If unpurchased, the puppy in the window of an unethical pet store will eventually end up at a shelter or rescue organization once she is past her “cute” expiration date. That’s the time to adopt, if you sincerely want to help and believe you are patient and experienced enough to handle the many behavioral and health problems that might come along with that dog. The puppy mill “breeders” don’t profit, the pet stores don’t profit, and you will be helping go one step further toward solving the problem of puppy mills and putting them out of business forever.

  HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT BREEDER

  It’s easy to avoid pet shop puppies or puppies being hocked on the Internet, but how do you tell a responsible breeder from a “backyard breeder” or a home-grown amateur? First of all, I want to say that there is nothing inherently unethical about bringing home a puppy from your neighbor’s backyard. Just know that you will probably have no guarantee at all that the puppy isn’t predisposed to chronic genetic health conditions or behavior problems. This is why, if you are an inexperienced dog owner or fear you can’t afford the possibility of long-term, expensive vet bills, I urge you not to go this route. Some backyard breeders may truly have the best intentions, but most will have little or no experience selecting for health and temperament, and they may not know anything at all about the lineage (including genetic health or behavior histories) of the puppies’ parents. Unfortunately, there are many other backyard breeders who don’t think about the dog’s welfare at all. They have little concern for the puppies they bring into the world, except to use them to make a little extra money.

  If you have decided you want to go the breeder route to purchase your new puppy, it’s in your best interest to find people like Brooke or the Fosters, with high standards and excellent reputations. As their examples have shown you, a great breeder will ask you a lot of questions. Some of them may even seem quite personal. Don’t be shocked if the breeder asks to come to visit your home to see firsthand where the dog would live and to make sure your yard is secure. This is how seriously responsible breeders take the placement of their dogs—they do not want to contribute in any way to the growing population of abandoned and unwanted dogs in the United States! A trustworthy breeder will also be only too happy to answer any and all questions you may have, about the breeder, his or her practices, the dog you are thinking of buying, and the complete histories of all litters, older dogs, and their bloodlines. Think twice about any breeder who does not freely share this kind of information with you, or acts as if you are taking up too much of his or her time.

  Purchasing a puppy from a responsible breeder will probably cost you a premium—from the high hundreds to thousands of dollars—but remember, you are not only paying for the puppy, you are paying for a buffer against costly veterinarian bills during your dog’s life, as well as a lifetime relationship with the person responsible for bringing the puppy into this world.

  So where do you find these dream breeders? Call the Humane Society of the United States or visit their website, www.HSUS.org. They provide their own thorough checklist of criteria for selecting a good breeder. The American Kennel Club’s website is also an excellent resource, www.akc.org. Remember, many breeders specialize in raising a certain kind of dog, even within their specific breed expertise. In searching for Eliza, Chris and Johanna Komives made sure they had the right category of breeder for the puppy they wanted. “We did choose our breeders based on their statement that they breed for temperament,” Chris told me. “The breed standard is for a happy self-confident temperament with less aggression than other terriers. Other breeders we inquired with were more concerned with the soft coat and its color than the demeanor of the dogs.”

  QUESTIONS ALL REPUTABLE BREEDERS SHOULD BE ABLE TO ANSWER

  How long have you been breeding dogs?

  How many litters do you have every year?

  Why did you select these particular parents and why did you plan this litter?

  What are the potential health problems of this breed and what have you done to prevent such problems in your line?

  Do you have proof of health tests for the parents?

  Are the parents on the premises? If not, why not? If yes, can I meet them?

  Were the parents in any kind of conformation or performance events (dog shows)?

  What steps have you taken to properly socialize the puppies?

  What are you feeding the puppies and why?

  Do the puppies have all of their shots?

  Have the puppies been dewormed?

  Do you require a signed contract of sale?

  Do you offer a health guarantee?

  ANY REPUTABLE BREEDER WILL …

  Never sell you a puppy that is less than eight weeks of age! Puppies absolutely need at least eight weeks of rearing by their canine mother before they are ready to be placed with human owners.

  Require you to sign a contract of sale. This contract will explain in detail the terms of the sale and what is expected of you as the new owner.

  Require you to have the puppy spayed or neutered before you can receive the registration papers and/or you will only be given a limited registration, which prohibits subsequent puppies from being registered with the AKC… unless you plan to breed the dog, or if specific arrangements are made otherwise.

  Offer a health guarantee of some kind. Some breeders will guarantee the health of the dog for life; others may guarantee the dog for a certain number of years. These health guarantees normally cover any genetic problem that prevents the dog from living a normal, healthy life.

  Offer to be available through the life of your dog to answer any questions you may have.

  Offer to help you find a new home for your dog should you ever find yourself in a situation where you can no longer keep it.5

  Another great option is for you to visit an official dog show. There you can meet a variety of breeders, get to know them, and see firsthand the dogs they have raised. Dog show aficionados tend to know one another, and breeders know other good breeders (they have to, in order to keep their bloodlines diverse), so even if you don’t find what you are looking for right there, you are sure to get a lot of good references. At a dog show or conformation event, you can also get a close-up experience of the adult dogs of the breed you are considering, and a better idea of whether or not it is the right breed for you.

  FINDING A RESCUE ORGANIZATION

  If you think you know the breed of puppy you are seeking but really want to give an abandoned dog a home, and if you don’t think you can swing the premium prices charged by a top-notch breeder, you have the option of contacting a breed-specific rescue organization, like the Southern California Labrador Retriever Rescue, our friends who brought us Blizzard, or like Daphneyland, a rescue organization for basset hounds that helped us out for the production of my video Your New Dog: The First Day and Beyond.

  Dogs arrive at rescue groups for a variety of reasons: sometimes they are dogs that were lost or abandoned; sometimes they are dogs that were returned to a shelter or kennel because of behavioral or health problems; and sometimes they are dogs whose owners had legitimate reasons for relinquishing them, such as a change in life circumstance or a death in the family. Reputable rescue groups are diligent about obtaining any needed veterinary care for their animals. They spay and neuter the dogs that arrive there, and often even go the extra mile by working to rehabilitate dogs with behavioral issues. A number of the cases I have handled have come to me from rescue establishments that were having trouble rehoming a dog with problems. My wife and I started the nonprofit Cesar and Ilusion Millan Foundation in part to give financial aid, training, education, and other support to these essential groups. Great rescue organizations are not in it for the money; they are nonprofit groups. Like great breeders
, the people who run them genuinely care about dogs and are actively doing something to help solve the problem of dog overpopulation. They are often staffed primarily by volunteers, and any fees they charge are usually marked as donations that go right back into the many costs involved in rescuing and caring for their animals.

  A reality check: puppies that come into rescue groups are usually snapped up as soon as they come in, but you can always get your name on a waiting list, so you can be contacted immediately when any new puppies arrive.

  Just as with finding the right breeder, you should be diligent in your choice of rescue organizations. The first thing you should do is check business records to confirm a rescue group’s nonprofit status and to make sure the group is not a front for a puppy mill, a backyard breeder, or simply people trying to make a little extra money from “animal hoarding,” a pathological behavior that can often be a danger to the public health. The Humane Society of the United States is the best clearinghouse for finding a reputable group in your area. Pet-finder and Pets911 are also excellent resources.

  A REPUTABLE RESCUE ORGANIZATION WILL …

  Have 501c3 (nonprofit) status, or be in the process of applying for it.