Blog the Change: Thank You, Cesar Milan

Raise your hand if you hate Cesar Millan. I’ll bet that a number of my readers have raised their hands at least partially. Most of us in the pet blogging world are not a fan of his methods and love to point out that the supposed science behind his techniques is just plain false. We love to hate on Cesar and anyone who subscribes to his method of dog training.

This weekend, I was having a discussion with a friend who has been involved in dog rescue for close to twenty years. She and her husband have always had dogs in their lives and have volunteered at humane societies, fostered for different breed rescues, and just overall been a voice for animals. She was talking about one of her sister-in-laws, who years ago, long before the world had heard of Millan, had a dog with aggression issues. She tried every training method available to her at the time, and nothing worked. She had to put her dog down. When Cesar and his methods started becoming popular, the sister-in-law had one of those regret moments, as she realized that his methods very possibly could have saved her dog.

Here’s the thing about Millan that his television show makes it easy to forget- he made his name not by working with pampered house pets of the upper middle class and celebrities, but instead working with dogs who, if their behavior didn’t change, would die.

Stop and think about those stakes. It wasn’t the carpet at risk. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t be able to go to the dog park. It was the dogs’ very lives. If what he was doing did not work, the dog would die. How many of us are training with those kinds of stakes?

Whether we like his methods or not, he found a way to keep dogs alive, to make them adoptable and able to go live in homes where they were loved and pampered.

In addition, in a time when the world wanted to ban Pit Bulls, he was a voice for them. He was their advocate, and showed the world that these were loving, wonderful dogs. He was their first celebrity voice, and was proud to feature his Pits on his show.

I will never use Cesar Millan’s training methods. Not necessarily because I think they are terrible, but because they won’t work for me. I’m not a dominant enough personality to make it work. I could never be consistent with the method, and therefore it would fail- not because of the method itself, but because of me. And I honestly would not recommend his methods to pretty much anyone. But I don’t hate the man. And I will, always, be thankful to him, for savings dogs’ lives, and for being a voice, a loud voice, in support of a breed I love.

Most of us have unconditional love for our pets. No matter what they do, we love them, and our love for our individual dog often extends itself to all dogs, even ones we have never met, or just see in passing. We don’t feel that way about our fellow humans. We judge, we decide they are good or bad based on one or two things we know about them. Why? We know that dogs are more than just one or two bad behaviors. Why can’t we extend that to people as well?

I’m not asking anyone to start using Cesar’s training methods. In fact, I’m not really talking about Cesar at all, though he’s a nice polarizing figure to grab your attention. I am talking about the way we people in dog rescue treat other people, even those in dog rescue, who don’t do things the exact same way we would. Whether we agree with everything they do or not, if someone is not abusing animals, not neglecting them, if they are caring for them and trying to make their lives better, even if it’s not the way we would do it, why can’t we just be grateful that there is one more person out there fighting for the animals?

We can’t be the change for every animal out there. It’s just too big a world, too many animals needing our help. So instead of hating on others who don’t do things the way we want them done, can we all just take a minute and be thankful that there are others out there working to help the animals.

Cesar Millan, I will never use your training methods. I will never buy one of your books. But I do not, can not hate you. Instead, I want to take this moment to say thank you, thank you for being a voice for Pit Bulls, and thank you for working to save the lives of dogs. Even if I would do it differently, our end goals are the same, and isn’t that what matters?