Five Natural Dog Laws Archives

Dog Psychology

How To Figure Out A Dog’s Energy Level

The second of Cesar’s Five Natural Dog Laws is this: “Energy Is Everything.” It’s how dogs — and all animals — communicate with each other and how they read our intentions and respond to us. If you have dogs, you probably already know intuitively what their general energy level is; whether your dog is a hyper pup that needs to play all the time, or more of a couch potato that’s happy with a slow walk and then a nap. But how can you tell whether a new dog’s energy would be right? When people ask Cesar what breed of

October 12, 2019 No Comments

Dog Psychology

Natural Dog Law 2: To Dogs, Energy Is Everything

Because humans are intellectual beings, we communicate mostly with words. This makes it easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking that dogs also communicate with spoken language. While it may seem like our dogs understand specific words and associate them with specific actions, they’re mostly responding to the intent that we have associated with the word. If you tell your dog to sit without intention behind it, your dog won’t sit. Conversely, you can approach your dog with the intent to get her to sit and say the word ‘toaster’ or ‘lamp’ ‘ or nothing at all

September 4, 2019 No Comments

All About Dogs

Inside Your Dog’s Mind: What They Feel For You

It’s something we dog lovers have likely pondered any number of times when our pet looks at us with those wise, wide eyes: “I wonder what he’s thinking…” Two recent studies are moving us closer than ever to a definitive answer. In a UK study, two researchers at Goldsmiths College in London, Deborah Custance and Jennifer Mayer, set out to determine if dogs are capable of empathy — an ability to truly understand emotion. “I had talked to so many people who have dogs who say, ‘it’s like my dog is trying to comfort me,’” says Custance. Though she admits

August 28, 2019 No Comments

Cesar Millan works with a volunteer team after a disaster.

Animal, Species, Breed, Name

Rebuilding

Back in September, Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guadeloupe, and parts of the U.S. itself, killing hundreds if not thousands of people, doing billions of dollars in damage, and devastating the places it hit, particularly Puerto Rico. As of now, three months later, parts of the island are still without power, there are outbreaks of disease due to insects and standing water, and over two hundred thousand Puerto Ricans have fled to the U.S. (Remember, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.) Because of this, I’m in Puerto Rico now, where I’ve come

December 15, 2017 No Comments

A Dog's Senses Form His Reality

Counting The Hours

If you live in a place in the U.S. that does Daylight Saving Time, I hope you remembered to set your clock back yesterday. However, I hate to tell you that this doesn’t mean you suddenly got a whole extra hour. You just got back the hour that “disappeared” back in March. And, really, nothing actually changed except what your clock said. Every day still has 24 hours in it, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and everything goes on. Your dog may be a little confused by the change of schedule for a day

November 3, 2017 No Comments

Dog Deception

If I were to ask you what one of the most frustrating things people can do to you is, I’m pretty sure that your answers would probably mostly revolve around miscommunication — whether someone doesn’t explain clearly what they want or even goes so far as to lie outright. It’s easy to take that kind of thing personally even when it’s not, but it’s also easy to miss when we do it to others. And yet, it’s the kind of thing we do to our dogs constantly without knowing it. We mislead our dogs when we are not absolutely clear

July 27, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Millan

Bounce Back Like A Dog

One of humanity’s most powerful emotions is empathy. It’s a trait not shared by a lot of animals, although elephants, dolphins, whales, and chimpanzees seem to be capable of it. So are our dogs. However, being human and emotional, we take our empathy a step further and do something that animals do not: we feel pity for other living things, and we can feel pity for ourselves. Dogs don’t do this, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, particularly in the case of lacking self-pity, it can be a powerful lesson to all of us. If you’ve ever

July 21, 2017 No Comments

A Dog's Senses Form His Reality

Making Scents

If you had to do without one of your five main senses tomorrow, which one would you give up? I’m guessing that most people would put sight and hearing at the bottom of the list, and not having any sense of touch would just be strange. Lacking a sense of taste would also make eating pretty uninteresting. We actually have a lot more than just five senses, but only considering the classical five, this leaves the sense of smell as the one that a lot of people would give up if they had no choice. And I’m not just guessing

July 7, 2017 No Comments

Letting Go

Today is Mother’s Day in the U.S. It’s a commemoration that happens all over the world on different dates, although the vast majority of those happen in May, covering the entire month. In my home country of Mexico, the date is fixed on May 10. In my adopted country of the U.S., it’s always the second Sunday in May — which means that sometimes it’s the same day in both places, like it was in 2015 and will be in 2020. But there’s a more important lesson in the day than the when and why and, again, we can turn

May 12, 2017 No Comments

A Dog's Senses Form His Reality

Similar And Different

A dog and a human are very different species. Our last common ancestor probably lived about 60 million years ago, so while we have a biological connection it is a bit distant. However we do have a lot of shared traits through being warm-blooded mammals — we have hair, four limbs, two eyes, and give birth to live young. Now, I could say the same thing about gophers, hedgehogs, and a lot of other animals, but I don’t think anyone is going to immediately think that they’re just like us or vice versa. And yet, with dogs, a lot of

January 20, 2017 No Comments