NEW YORK — Cesar Millan’s National Geographic series “Better Human Better Dog” is entering its fifth season.
Even more impressive is the man known as “The Dog Whisperer” is celebrating the 20th anniversary of his first television appearance.
“It’s always with the goal of educating humankind,” he said. “The title, I love it more than ever. When it was ‘The Dog Whisperer’ people think it was just one guy that has this magic, but I think we all have the magic.”
Millan takes on the toughest cases with canines and their owners who are often at their wit’s end.
“Sometimes it’s the family. Sometimes the family does not match the dog, and that’s why we do the matchmaking episodes,” he said. Millan says most people need a middle or back-of-the-pack dog.
This season, we meet a loveable boxer named Brunello who can’t seem to stop attacking bags. It turns out, there’s a lot more to the issue than even Brunello’s owner could imagine.
“When my instincts aren’t 100% certain I go for intelligence, I go for science. My friend Rick Garcia who is a vet, and I say, ‘Look, I don’t understand what’s going on with this dog, it looks like he can see, it looks like he can hear. But there’s something off about it,'” Millan said.
It turned out Brunello had a lot of medical complications that were causing him distress.
“Brunello was 90% blind and 80% deaf and on top of that, had a neurological problem so those are extra challenges besides the aggression. One thing is aggression, which I’ve done aggression my whole life, but I’ve never done a dog that had neurological problems, was blind, and deaf,” he said.
When it comes to the most common mistake dog owners make, Millan says that’s humanizing the dog.
“They expect the dog to rationalize. We are the only species that has a choice. And our choice we can choose to do the wrong things, and in the animal world they only choose to do the right thing,” Millan said. “When you humanize the dog unconsciously you are expecting the same from the dog to rationalize and make right
choices but no, there is no knowledge behind instinct, it’s all reaction. We don’t expect that from a cat, we don’t expect that from a horse.”
After all these years, Millan says he just wants to use his talents to make a difference in the world.
“The biggest influencer in the world is America and if America is doing it wrong, the whole world is doing it wrong,” Millan said. “And my motivation is that the whole world needs the same help and it unifies us because a dog is a dog no matter where you go in the world.”
Cesar Millan: Better Human Better Dog, Season 5, premieres on Friday, August 16 at 8/7c on National Geographic.
National Geographic is owned by Disney, the parent company of this station.
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