Cesar Millan with his coterie of canine friends (Picture: Alan Weissman)

‘I don’t punch dogs,’ says pint-sized pooch supremo Cesar Millan of his controversial approach to training ill-behaved canines.

‘When a dog wants to kill something, I’m talking about when they’re in a high level of excitement, I give them a touch to snap them out of it. If the dog is level zero to five, you can redirect them using food, toys, sound, but when a dog is in that level five to ten of an aggressive mind, they don’t listen. The touch is to snap them out of it. I don’t hit dogs.’

That’s not the view Alan Titchmarsh – of all people – took when Millan, 44, appeared on his daytime chat show 18 months ago.



For the first time ever, Titchmarsh deviated from his usual interview strategy – which runs the gamut from mild to wild sycophancy – and came over all Paxman.


‘You punched a dog in the throat!’ he exclaimed. To listen to Titchmarsh, you’d think twinkly eyed Millan was running a man- versus-dog fight club.

Was he surprised to receive such a negative reception, spurred on by a Twitter campaign from hardline dog-training aficionados to have him hoiked off the show before his bum even hit the sofa? Why does Millan elicit this sort of response?

‘In any profession, you have people who agree with you and people who don’t. It’s just human nature,’ he says, perfunctorily.

A scene from Cesar To The Rescue (Picture: NGC/ITV Studios Ltd)

Judging by his latest show, Cesar To The Rescue, it looks like his training policies haven’t changed much.

There are no throat jabs to be seen but when the dogs start sizing each other up, Millan does administer a swift ‘touch’ of his foot to their sides. I’m no dog expert, I don’t own one – who has the room? – but they didn’t seem that bothered. They give a look of mild surprise rather than rolling around yowling in agony.

And for every critic, there seems to be a fan. Titchmarsh is probably the only celeb Millan has failed to win over, as celebrity endorsements have been key in his rise to the top of the TV dog-training food chain. His shows are broadcast in 110 countries.

‘Just to have them say I worked with them was a big deal in America,’ he says, before listing clients including Will Smith, Vin Diesel, Nicolas Cage, Ridley Scott, Oprah Winfrey, and Jennifer Aniston.

If it wasn’t for his first celebrity client, Jada Pinkett, whom he met before she married Will Smith, it’s unlikely he’d have achieved his success at all. Born in Culiacán in Mexico, Millan worked on his grandfather’s farm, looking after the dogs used to round up the cattle, before he came to the US as an illegal immigrant when he was 21.

He says he survived on a dollar a day until he started getting odd jobs, eventually working in a dog-grooming parlour where he dazzled the owners with his talent for managing tricky pets. From there, he somehow ended up partying with Tupac Shakur, where he demonstrated his animal-handling skills.



‘Jada Pinkett was at the party, she said I should help her with her dogs and she paid for me to have English lessons,’ he says.

‘I couldn’t speak English at the time. People could see I could handle dogs but I wasn’t able to explain how I did it. That was one big break. Another was getting the right papers so I could work in the US legally.’

Cesar Millan with Daddy (Picture: Alan Weissman)

The profile-raising clients followed before he landed his first TV show 12 years ago – but it wasn’t all a walk in the park. ‘Hollywood is full of predators,’ he says. ‘If you don’t know contracts, they will own you. ‘I learned by trial and error, I lost a lot of money. There are two schools – the classroom and life. Life teaches you the strongest way.’

Critics say his methods are old-fashioned. His show could be accused of the same thing. It follows the formulaic reality-show path of contrived set-up (concerned friends supposedly tip off Millan about their pals’ wayward pooches), a bit of unconvincing emotional jeopardy (the first episode features a young girl fake-crying and a threat that her dog might be put down) before everything is resolved happily.

Millan’s patter seems a bit self-helpish too. Apparently, if you feel confident so will your dog.

But Millan doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. He wants to expand his 43-acre Dog Psychology Centre outside Los Angeles into a ‘city where we will all follow the same rules’.


‘Little dogs will have the same rules as big dogs, he says. ‘People think rottweilers need more discipline than little dogs – but it should be the same.

‘We have a herding area because there are dogs in the city who are sheep herders but don’t have anything to herd so they go after skateboarders.

‘We have bike and hiking trails for people to exercise their dogs. We have a pool – lots of dogs enjoy the water. I’m building a city for people to come and learn.’

Cesar To The Rescue starts on Nat Geo Wild tonight at 8pm.

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