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The 'Ump DOG OWNERS, EXCEPT CESAR MILLAN Has the Ayuntamiento passed a bylaw while I was not paying enough attention? Is it compulsory for a dog in a garden behind a high wall to bark its testicles off every one hundred metres, and must it do so twenty four hours a day? I am accustomed to the barking of the local dogs; the tiny, irritating little dog with the pathetic woof and occasional howl is normally drowned out by the monstrously aggressive pony a householder has chained to a pole a few doors further along the calle, but during August, with the deluge of every man and his dog from Madrid, the noise of the canine residents becomes irritating, and breaks my sleep pattern more than it needs to be broken in the sizzling, summer heat. I admit it, freely and openly, I do not like dogs, I could not eat a whole one, but if I ever go on holiday to Vietnam, in an act of revenge, I will give it a damn good try, and I find them about as endearing as a five year old child peeing into a communal pool while I am swimming by, open mouthed, gasping for air as I do the doggy paddle. Dog owners love their pets and treat them as members of their families. This being the case, I beg you; instil a little discipline into the little barkers. Near to my Mum’s house on La Siesta, a dog is left alone on a first floor balcony, and it barks, either for attention or in anger, at anything that moves under its perch, all day long while the owners are out. The constant noise is a nuisance, and it has made a very tranquil residential zone rather unpleasant for the residents, mainly pensioners, who live within a distance of one hundred metres. It is impossible to go for a walk in a residential neighbourhood without some brute hurling itself in rage and frustration and head butting the screened, metal gate when it hears you pass by its garden; the sudden thud and loud barking is enough to cause a heart attack, and I consider your dog’s growling to be an infringement of my human right to walk along the pavement in peace and quiet. (I might as well jump on the human rights’ bandwagon with everyone else, eh?!) Dogs like to smell each others’ bottoms, but must they try to smell mine and ’ump my leg as I walk past? One dog owner and handler has my total admiration and respect. Step forward, diminutive Cesar Millan, who has more power and control over dogs in his toenail than most owners have in their entire bodies. From a dangerously aggressive, salivating pitbull with ‘hard’ tattooed across its forehead, to a mischievous, miniature, fashionaccessory, handbag dog that would stick in the throat of a pitbull on the way down, Cesar is able to correct a dog’s bad behaviour without breaking sweat. He has a US telly series, which has been shown in Spain on ‘Quatro,’ and he is known as the ‘Dog Whisperer.’ You had better start watching Spanish telly, now that you have lost your Telemicro channels, and it will help you to learn a little conversational Spanish as you head out to enjoy the entertainment in the bars and restaurants for the first time in eight years, now that you can no longer opt for sitting in night after night watching ‘Coronation Neighbenders,’ with your feet resting on the back of your mutt for comfort. Millan’s series is out on DVD, and I would ask every dog owner on the Costa to buy the series, watch it, learn from it, and put Cesar’s techniques into practice, so that those smelly, scary, snarling, growling, drooling, leg ’umping, bum sniffing, sharp toothed fiends from hell you call your family pets, do not present a danger to the rest of us who fear them and find their behaviour obnoxious. I may not like dogs, but I love watching this series. Cesar Millan is a one man A Team in the canine world; whatever the problem with a dog, he sorts it, quickly. He visits dog owners who complain about the problems they have with their mutts, which may have lasted for years, and he sorts them; in minutes. He is the leader of the pack. Using his mantra of ‘exercise, discipline, affection,’ the man works miracles. No wonder the rich and famous in Hollywood send their dogs to his hotel when they are not at home to care for their canine companions. He understands dogs because he thinks like one, immediately eliminating the biggest mistake of dog owners. The average Scooby owner thinks of the family pooch as a human being, not a dog, and expects it to react in the way a human would react, but it does not. You may spray your tiny dog pink, tie a ribbon round its neck, stick it in designer clothes, and pop it in your designer handbag like Paris Hilton, but the only person you are fooling is yourself; your dog knows it is a dog, and given half a chance, it will rule the roost in your house if you let it. Cesar Millan is quick to point out that every pack has its leader, and your pet is just one of the pack members in your home; you, or your partner, should be top dog, and your mutt should be in no doubt about it. One couple rescued a hound which had been used and experimented upon in a laboratory. Despite the couple’s efforts to retrain the dog over a period of four years and show it affection, it remained a bundle of nerves. It would not even look at a human being, because it felt that eye contact would result in having electrodes attached to its privates once more. What would you do? A: Give it up as a lost cause, which had been suggested by a previous ‘expert’ called in to help? B: Shoot it, and put it out of its misery? C: Like Cesar, sit outside its cage for a while, avoid eye contact, and then crawl into the cage beside the poor mutt, still avoiding eye contact, until the dog felt a little more comfortable with his presence? In a few hours, he began to change the dog’s behaviour, and it slowly gained confidence. Just a few weeks’ later, the owners were able to take it for walkies like a normal dog. Cesar loves his dogs; he opens the tins of dog food and uses his hands to transfer the meat into dishes, because by doing so, he transfers his ‘scent’ onto the food. Can you imagine serving food to dozens of dogs at a time without a single one of them so much as barking? This man has power, ability, and an incredible gift and affinity with dogs. How I wish they would let Cesar Millan loose on the unruly kids of today, and maybe he could instil a little good old fashioned discipline and respect in them too. Oh, and finally, dear dog owners, pick up the damn poo! Michael McInally |