Raising a Dog & Mastering Calm Assertive Energy | Cesar Millan

I'm not saying that to give affection, I'm just saying give affection to patients and calmness and open mind. Because when you when you dog misbehave, you want them to go back there, go back to your good state of mind, right? You don't want the dog to do fight flight avoidance. Those are the bad state of mind. The good state of mind is patients come surrender or happy or lucky. Those are good state of mind. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Cesar Milan, better known as the dog whisperer and the preeminent dog trainer in the world. Today's episode is truly for everyone, not just dog owners. You're going to learn a lot about human psychology and behavior and it will help you better interact with other humans in every type of relationship. For instance, you will learn a simple tool that allows you to move through the world with a clear calm state of mind that will allow you to interact with others more effectively, to listen and act with more clarity and intention. And not incidentally, that clear calm state of mind is also what dogs respond to best and what makes them feel safe and healthy. Today we talk about the critical importance about understanding dog biology and psychology and the fact that they are pack animals and that we have to remove our human sense about these animals as our pets and of course they are our pets and they're extremely cute. They are family members, but understand the hardwired aspects of their brain and biology that allow us to be the best leaders for them. I have to warn you, a lot of what you hear today may sound counterintuitive at first until you understand the biology of dogs and the fact that they respond to people's energy and actions not words. I know they can listen to commands, they can learn words and commands, but they're responding to the energy and the actions associated with those commands. Only then can you be the most effective dog owner and by effective I mean making your dog as healthy and feeling safe as possible. I should point out that one of the reasons I'm so excited Caesar came on this podcast is that I had an amazingly positive experience with his methods years ago when I got my first puppy Costello who was a bulldog mastiff. I read his book Be The Pack Leader and the principles within that book were critical for developing an incredible relationship with Costello who lived 11 years. You could bring him into any environment, I would bring him to class, I would bring him into different people's homes. I could take him essentially anywhere he loved kids, he loved people and he was extremely well behaved, exceedingly lazy too, but exceedingly well behaved. And I credit that to the methods that I learned from Caesar's book. So if you have a dog or you're considering getting a dog or you want to better understand how to regulate your energy and behavior in all types of interactions with dogs, with cats and with other humans, today's episode will teach you those extremely valuable tools. And I'm extremely pleased to announce the newest member of the Huberman Lab podcast team, Strummer. He's also a bulldog mastiff, but he's similar to Costello in breed, but I should say not a pure English bulldog. So not a lot of snoring and the other stuff that go along with English bulldogs. I love the English bulldog breed, but when they're muddied with other breeds like this one, they breed a lot easier and he's just the sweetest thing. So you'll be seeing and perhaps hearing more from Strummer. I am applying all of Caesar's methods to training Strummer. He's a very calm, relaxed dog. He gets two walks a day and a bunch of other things you'll learn about during today's episode that will benefit you if you have or you're thinking about getting a dog. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Caesar Milan. Cesar Milan. Yes, sir. Welcome. I'm a huge fan. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I'm honored to hear that. But I will say your book. Be the pack leader. I read the hard copy to raise my first puppy. We never had a dog in my home growing up to raise costello, bulldog mix, stubborn dog. We went 11 years together, he and I, and that book and your other teachings were tremendously impactful for my relationship with him, but also in my work life, in my entire life. We're going to talk about some of the themes from that book and beyond today, but I just want to extend my gratitude as a true honor and pleasure to have you here. That's very kind. In modern parlance, they say, you're the man, you're the man. The pack leader. That's right. Many, many people want dogs, have dogs, these concepts of dogs that lead them to think they're a great dog owner, but a lot of dog behavioral issues, emotional issues. We know probably reflect something in the human as well. Not probably. So certainly. Yeah, because there is no knowledge behind instinct is a reaction. So you can never blame an animal for doing the wrong thing. You see it? So you can guarantee for a dog to do the right thing. And so how? That means the human has good energy and what's good energy? If you understand the power of silence, which that gives you patience, the power of calmness, which that gives you trust, and calmness is just just learning how to breathe. The power of confidence, that's knowledge, and the power of love went to give love because a lot of times people give love at the wrong time. So you end up nurturing the wrong behavior. Right? So that's what happened to my clients. And then the power of joy, that's the celebration. Right? We're going to FIFA right now. We're going to work up. Nobody celebrates unless they make a goal. You see what I'm saying? But they have to be patient, calm, confident, love what they're doing and celebrate afterward. See, they follow that formula. It's the silence, it's the comment before anybody is going to go to something so powerful such as winning, right, or being in a team, or being in a group. The energies of silence, calmness, confidence, love, joy is what makes them become a great team because that's what connects your spirit, your instinct, your heart and your mind. And the same way, we have to connect with the dog. It's not just emotional, it's not just intellectual, when people just want to train the dog. What you train is the mind. What you connect is the spirit, the instinct, and the heart. That's what you connect. And that's what I say, trust, respect, love, trust the spirit, respect, instinct, love with the heart, create what you're mind. For many people, especially in the United States, they're not familiar with feeling energy and exchanging energy with a dog. I'll give an example of when Costello, my previous bulldog, some probably bulldog master. Who knows what he was? Whatever he was. He was Costello. But I learned something very important from you. Before he's Costello, he's an animal, spirit, spirit, animal, speci, breed, name. So the last thing they are is the breed in the name. So when I rehabilitation dog, what I'm doing is bringing back the happy spirit, bringing back the healthy instinct, and bringing back the rules, boundaries, limitations, mind. Because that's what makes them well behave when they understand rules, boundaries, limitations, no matter what breed they are. So it really doesn't matter if you have a pit bull or a rot-white or a German shepherd or a Mexican and you're white and African-American. It really doesn't matter the race of the human, what matter is, is that person has a happy spirit, a healthy instinct, and a well-educated mind, right? So you want to be a good human, right, and you want to be part of the pack of the good humans. And those humans are good, right? Those are the humans they help other humans, or the creator, well-behaved dogs, because they're following in that path, you know, that is some people are born to the family. I'm part of the pack where it's better humans, better planet. But I know a lot of people who are not part of that path. So it's that. Yeah, certainly raising and living with Costello taught me a lot about how to sense people's energy. I had an amazing experience with him that I just wanted to share briefly that I realized now is probably the spirit component. But it was something that I tried on the base of what I read in your book. So I was walking him and he had sometimes he didn't want to walk in a particular direction. You know, so he was always walking my side a little bit behind me. I had that going from very early point. I practiced no touch, no speak in the first, you know, minutes of contact coming home and we can talk about why that's important. But at one point I decided based on what you put in your book to try something that seemed kind of wacky to me at the time, where I was just going to at some point during the walk it was a, we had a great stride, we're having a good time, he's smelling things, but we're moving on and I decided to just send him like approval energy like I'm just going to think it. And then I, and then feel it. I'm just going to send him some energy. I'm just walking down, just doing this. I did not change where I was looking, I did not change as far as I know, like the tension on the leash who knows and he just looks right up at me, and I was like, this is incredible. After a really good day of hiking or work, he used to come to the lab with me or something we were sitting or I was cooking or something, every once in a while, I would just while I'm doing something else, I would just send him like this positive energy and he would look over at me. It was wild. And I realized he's sensing things that are beyond my words. In fact, I don't know that he ever really listened to what I said terribly much. He could really feel what I was feeling. He was probably paying attention a lot more of the time than I was aware. But I also had the experience of when he was doing something I didn't like, I could send him disapproving. And he would stop. It was wild. We were, you know, meters away from each other and I could send him this energy. Now to you, this is probably like, yes, of course, but I think for me and I think for most people that have dogs or thinking about owning a dog, I think this is crazy, right? But I swear on my life that I could do this in a variety of circumstances while driving anything and he would react according to the energy that I was sending out. As a neuroscientist, I can make up some story. Okay, well, we have fish have electric sensing. I can make up a story in neurology neuroscience that would more or less hold together, but I want to know your impression of like, what is this and then hopefully that will take us into a discussion more about energy exchange between all sorts of beings. Well, you know, silence is very powerful, right? The power of prayer, my mom certainly is always connected. When I cross the border, I filled my mom, you know, I jumped the border and so jumping the border is a life and death thing, right? And then so you give yourself to God and then of course, you know, your mom is always thinking about you. So you feel this energy that is done by the prayer or by the silence. You are what you believe. And so if you believe you can connect and you communicate this way because you, you're going to be, I mean, at the fact that people are not aware of energy, we can feel that a person doesn't feel good. And we don't even know each other. You know, so imagine if we humans are sensitive to that, all animals never stop this way of being, right? The sensitivity of the animals, they don't go into the mind, they stay within the instinct, because that's how they stay safe, you know, and maintain the peace. And so what you did was exactly that. Don't talk. Don't talk with words. Talk with energy, body language, and intention. You know, how do you become the best doctrine in the world? Because that's all you think about. That's all you think about it, you know, even when you go to sleep, even when you're not talking about it, that's so you create the love of attraction, you create the love of creation. The most difficult law is the love of maintenance, right? Because it's easy to attract, it's easy to create. It was hardest to maintain, right? And that's why patience is so important or silence is so important, because this one is infinite. It's an infinite energy. So if you feel that, imagine how powerful you become. And then just to be right here where you are claiming your space, calm, that gives you another power, because that gives the animals the capability to trust. And then your intention, right? What is it that you want with our words? I just don't want you to pee over there. I just don't want you to go after that dog. I just want you to stop doing what you're doing, because think about when cats communicate with a dog, it's a completely different species, but can a cat control a dog, the same way you did, same silence calm confident. So that's why a cat can control a rodwiler in a pit bull, right? When people feel it's a very dangerous breed. At the moment you think something is dangerous, you give your power away, right? At the moment you bring silence calmness confidence, you regain your power back. And that's the first line of communication before sound. But most people focus on, I want to train my dog, I want my dog to listen to commands. No, no, no, no, you want your dog to listen to your silence, to your calmness, to what's in your mind with us, ain't a word. That's exactly it right there. That was the relationship with Costello improved in order of magnitude when I understood that, that I could talk to him all day or say whatever it had a very little potency compared to how I would show up. And then it also taught me a lot of course about how to arrive home, how to walk it into it. You know, I bring him to class. I taught it, you know, 400 person class, he would walk in. It was very interesting. Everyone, you know, dog dogs, most professors wouldn't bring their dogs to class. And he knew it was all there, typical Costello. You know, he would just kind of walk to the front of the classroom. He'd wait a few minutes, not look at anybody. And then he would decide, he's just like glare at all. He could light up a room. But I understood that I wouldn't let him be like the too much of a celebrity around. He would start misbehaving. I had to remind him like, you know, we have a structure in an order area. And I do think that people would benefit so much from getting in touch with this capacity that they have to sense their own energy and the energy of other people regardless of if they have a dog. Well, you know, Americans go to India to be quiet. Right. And then to practice not eating, which they call fasting. Right. And then to stretch. That's practically it. It's silence, you know, learn how to breathe and then stretch. It gives you a little bit, you know, agility into it. And you learn to control hunger, which in a total country, that's what we learn. Right. We learn to control hunger. We learn to be quiet. We learn to become. We learn, you know, whatever we know, we do really good at it. We become really good farmers, really good animal people, right. And family people, you know, God people. And so we have a good structure, good discipline and such a basic, simple stuff. And that's what gives us the the apprehend of a walk a dog off leash. When I started walking dogs in America, I didn't know it was illegal to walk dogs off leash. I was walking 40, 60 dogs at a time. Right. And I was doing an off leash because that's all I knew. You see it? And so that that that energy of silence, confidence is what now I now that I understand what I did is what led me to this event, you know, for people to see me from England with to South Central. It's a Mexican guy that walks a pack of dogs from England with to South Central off leash. That's when the LA Times came and and did a piece of me because they didn't they couldn't understand, you know, this concept of walking a dog off leash, this dog shaman or something. And a dog being the land of the free. Because you know, dogs in America have rights, but there doesn't mean they can walk off leash. You see that the dog has to be on a leash. And humans have to learn to transmit that energy through the leash because there's a lot of dogs that react on the leash when their dog should be the most well-behaved, then a dog gets off the leash. You see it, but the leash in the animal world is transrespect love. The the leash in the animal world is that human understanding, you know, silence, confidence, confidence, love, joy. And that's pack leader direction protection, right? That's the only way you can say I'm a pack leader, right? Because you are that energy. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium magnesium and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. 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So if you'd like to try element, you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology and our health. Now, in addition to sunlight, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast, red light near infrared and infrared light have been specifically shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health. These include faster muscle recovery, improved skin health, wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improvements in vision. Nowadays, there are a lot of red light devices out there. But what sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use the specific wavelengths of red light, near infrared and infrared light, in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, usually for about 10 to 20 minutes per session, and I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you would like to try Juve, they're offering up to $400 off select products for listeners of this podcast. To learn more, visit Juve, spell J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman. Again, that's J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman. I'm in a dilemma, whether to go down the concepts of what is happening in third world countries, not just today, but always in terms of how people sense energy and use energy versus what we do here. But I think I'm also keen on the fact that many people listening don't know how to walk their dog. I'll ask a very simple question first. Should the dog always be next to you or behind you? Is there ever an instance where the dog should walk out in front of you? And as I say, We both realize many people walk with their dog in front of them. So could you tell us about the concept of where the dog is relative to? But think about it. Look at it this way. So people can Adopt the concept quicker because if you learn how to walk a dog It would eliminate 90% of the problems The other 10% will be rules by the limitations, right? That's it So when a dog is a pup, he follows his parents Right, and then he plays then he explore but the first activity he learns is to follow Follow play explore. So playing explore becomes like a reward activities That's the Chuck E G's time, right? And so the follow is the one they learn, you know, the rules, boundaries, limitations, they learn To to stay focused and not get distracted So naturally dogs They need to learn to follow when they go in front of you They are in the mind of a player explore but at the same time if you do this every day The dog learned that he has to lead you to places. Is that stressful for the dog? If a dog is middle of the pack and back of the pack. Yes, if a dog is front of the pack. No You see it and so it's very important and all four people have a further pack dog. They need a lot of knowledge And so most dogs are perfect Middles or back the back should be the easiest one but when people don't do the right thing with the bag he becomes fearful The middle of the pack should be the one for the families because it is naturally happy. Go lucky But if you do too much excitement that become hyper You see it and this is a crossbreeds Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a bulldog or uh, you know, a dosh litter in front of the pack made of the pack back of the pack But it's more back of the packs been born like followers Then it's only one per litter of a litter of the pack. So that's what they call in the in the breeders world pick up the litter See it so now in a litter of german chepers only one it can be a police officers The other one is pet quality or they call them the run of the litter Back of the pack sensitive middle of the pack happy go lucky is the HR of the fam of the pack is the middle of the pack right And then the front of the pack is the one that gives direction protection ideally for a family or for a typical domestic situation I think the United States, but elsewhere is because this is going everywhere and this this episode will go everywhere Middle or back of the middle middle yeah a family who has never raised a dog together. Yeah middle How can you assess the litter when you see them so that you pick a middle of the pack dog? Yeah, if that's what's appropriate Sounds like that's the that's the goal the front is gonna be very easy to uh to uh to uh to assess because he's gonna be the biggest one He's gonna be the one is moving the sisters and the brothers away from the mom Right he's already gonna practice dominance and then the middle is is is is the second to get to the mother and the back of the pack. They're always wait You see they're more shy naturally. They're just sensitive What if you don't have access to the interaction with the mother having gone to pick up puppies a few times Sometimes you just see the puppies the mom's in another room Should you ask to watch the interaction and if you and if you can't How can you assess if you're just working if you are in a situation the breeder knows because that's what they put ribbons You know color ribbons so they so they know okay. This is middle. These are back even though they don't call them that way They just call them round of the back round the litter, you know Uh pet quality of front of the pack and the front of the pack is just the obvious one Right and so when uh Just go inside you know where where where the puppies are and there's no mother and nothing just take quiet And every time you present something new you're going to see the more confident coming to And the more happy go lucky coming to and the back of the pack. It doesn't get close Anything new it just can be a pillow and that's the first time they experience a pillow in the front of the pack will go And the middle of the pack will go and play it's hard wired. Yeah, it's there. That's why you can guarantee good behavior Right because now you's okay. I want to middle the pack what a colleague. I want to middle the pack on retriever I want to middle the pack pitbull you can have it You say because that's going to guarantee you exactly what you want It's going to be easier for you to tell them what to do because it was born naturally a follower Versus if you get a front of the pack whatever breed Chihuahua. I don't care what it is Hey, they're born You know with with the disposition of giving direction protection So wherever human wants to live with them needs to have more knowledge Right, so that's me running a pack of dogs and having different animals the animals know that I have a big energy They don't know I have 43 acres. They just know I have a land and that you're in charge of it Yeah, and all the ups and downs that I went through and I have been sick the wars that I got through Right the divorces and all the less stuff and I went through and and and I and I find my silence my calmness my comfort My love my job right back They know my energy is big Right, so so that I can have a front of the pack But I don't have one I have middles and back even you even me Yeah, because it will it will require so much I will need to find him a job You see what I'm saying like like a border patrol something like that looking for looking for the bad guys Like that would be a job. It's just one officer and one dog. He doesn't need the pack Fascinating I'm sure like many people listening. I'm trying to figure out what's Costello front of the bag. I think he was Is a enormous dog. I mean Even within his litter and when I went to go pick up while I had met him as a three-week old puppy He was the one budding all the other ones out eating from their food bowls. Mm-hmm. He was They claimed yeah, he didn't yelp didn't yap at all He just ate everything took everything pede where he wanted you did everything So there was a it was a difficult thing raising him this new one strummer who's four and a half months He's definitely middle maybe even back of the pack, but he was second out When he was born and they said oh, you know, he's gonna be the pick of the litter They said it, but he definitely not he would you know quickly it was clear that he kind of kept a little bit distance He is very sensitive. Okay, that's good much sweeter Yeah, sensitive. Yeah, much more playful as men And that's the bar that I have to work with because they enchant us, you know, like I noticed with strummer He didn't he just figured out you know that if he gets into play mode it lights me up And then I have to remember to stay in my in my place my proper place Yeah, because I'm trying to teach him here. This is the order of things It's very important because I want to be able to bring him anywhere leave him in a room alone with little kids and trust completely that He's not gonna accidentally do something for people that want to learn to sense their own energy use their energy field Should they also be asking if they are front middle or back of pack the human? Yeah, in the human world This is something it's a little bit of a sensitive topic, right? Every guy wants to say yeah, I'm gonna alpha not to be everyone thinks that way. I like to think in different circumstances people can move up or down the The human hierarchy. I mean I work with a lot of scientists and I can tell you in many environments that they don't come across as Alpha's but you put them in a laboratory or a lecture environment and I mean they own their space because that's their expertise so it can move around but can you Explain what it is to observe oneself really think honestly about oneself and Where one Really lies in this let's let's call it what it is. Yeah, it's a it's a hierarchy But that makes it sound like one is better. It just is what it is you're either in front middle or back a pack human That's the there's special magic, right? We've been back of the pack. It means the master com surrender So we have to learn to master council render. That's our more sensitive state of mind, right? This so when I'm assessing and evaluating a dog I go into my council render state. So I go in the back of the back Right when it's time for me to give direction and protection I go to the front of the pack when I achieve whatever I need to achieve I go into the middle of the pack You see it so the human can can can can take advantage of this position of this or this state of mind Right the dog the back of the pack dog Is gonna is gonna tell you listen. I'm here to master com surrender. It doesn't mean I don't do happy or like But he could never do com confident back a pack can't do from the pack never now. We're talking humans and dogs now If we're really transparent Well, it's just to have that fine line between what the human can do, right? But it versus what the dog can't Right, so it's important to understand you know that a dog is born with a position Right and the human can go from whatever position he was born to different positions, right? It's a lot like you say it's a lot of scientists people Who are who're very brilliant on this side, but when it comes to a dog a dog takes over Oh, yeah, or even just at a coffee shop, you know, they sort of they become a smaller version of themselves Not because they're weak. It's just it's not their domain of expertise and they feel weak in that environment correct Or they turn on one energy more than the other one and so a lot of these people turn on more the affection energy Right and affection or love energy in the animal world is not a strong energy Yeah, tell me more about that because I practiced on your Recommendation no look and no touch and no speak when I got home most difficult thing for people to do I think you know They get home and the dog's like super happy see them tail as well and they're excited And I I'm like I'm gonna ignore my dog. This feels like abuse right, you know But I'd come in do my thing. It's and then after some period of time I'm like hey and what I realized is Every time after that I'd come home and he was calm He was excited to see me but he was calm never jumping up and touching me never jumping up and touching anyone else But if someone came over and they were super excited, you're almost would confuse him. Yeah, like this is not how people enter the correct space most people, I think, have a very hard time not greeting a dog with men and women squealing. That's right, that's great. And it makes the dogs anxious. It causes problems in the relationship. - Yeah, right? - Absolutely. - But I think most people don't realize that. - Well, that's exactly you said it. I don't want to ignore my dog. And I don't want to tell my dog that I don't love him 'cause then the interpretation of the dog missed me. But every time you leave an animal behind walls, the animal is going to go excited or anxious, right? So not always what you're greeting is a happy dog. Most of the time what you're greeting is an excited, anxious dog that is confused, right? So it's very important, when people see these dogs greeting another dog, there is no excitement. There is respect, you know? And they wait until the front of the pack allows them to come in. They can't just come in into their empty space. So it's a ritual. So it's three rituals that are very important for people to master with no touch, no touch, no eye contact. One is the meeting. Every time you meet a dog, always remind them about safe peace, no size ears, trust, respect first. And then as they walk, the dog right next to you, violent you, quiet, and then when you feed. So those three activities are very meaningful to dogs, but all starts with the meeting, with the greeting. So every time you reunite, you have to remind your dog that you are a source of safe peace, of trust, respect, of no size ears. You have to tell them that. I said no size ears for us, because I think most people, because we're humans, especially in the US and, you know, in Northern Europe or wherever, like England, it's speaking size. Yeah, there are people who are just speaking constantly, like, ah, ah, ah, you know, this is not the best way for it to communicate with a dog, who you are and what you're about and what the trust relationship. So a great excitement, right? It creates a dog to learn to greet people with excitement. So if you greet your dog with excitement, you are the source to other humans. So he's going to greet all the humans excited. He's going to jump on people. Not everybody wants a dog that doesn't belong to them to jump on them. So, but because, you know, let's say you do that, your dog has learned to welcome humans excited. You see it? So when a dog is born, he born with the nose open. 15 days later, the open the eyes. 21 days later, the open the ears. This is scientifically, right? This is in all the encyclopedias. So that means the dog met his parents through the nose, then the eyes, then the ears. You see it? But when people wants to do ears eyes, nose, they want to create a human. They want the dog to understand the way you and I understand. Hey, how do I know it? But we can control that excitement, right? We should, some people. Yeah, right. But, so it's a different ritual for us. You know, we believe in parties. We believe in parades for a horse to go to New York. It's a very excited place. It takes conditioning because no horse will ever volunteer go into New York. See, it has to be conditioned, right? 'Cause you're bringing him to a very excited environment with his instincts, say, flight. Exciting. There have been these problems. Sorry, I don't know if you saw a couple of the carriages in Central Park took off, someone was killed recently. There's a whole debate going on now, whether or not this is good or bad for these horses. But it's just clear, regardless of where it one sits on the debate that you can't take the instinct out of the animal, there are triggers that will send them over an edge. Oh, you have to make sure that you, you know, you keep eye on how is the spirit of the horse, is the instinct of the horse healthy, you know, as a spirit happy. You know, 'cause when they just go into the habit of working, working, working, working, even a police dog can crash, you see what I mean? Even a, even a police dog can bite a police officer 'cause it's overworked. - There's a few friends from the special operations community, they work with these dogs that jump out of planes, parachute, you do. - The bell's on. - Yeah, the mountain was. And several of those guys have told me that with those dogs, you cannot ever, ever let up your guard as the leader. In fact, a few guys who got a little soft with them, just a tiny bit, like one anecdote was, they decided to invite the dog into watch a movie with them one night when they're on deployment or maybe they were training, I don't know. And he let the dog get a little too close to him during the movie, the next day he got bit. And it's like they're constantly trying to move up, move up the hierarchy. He's like, it sucks 'cause you, you fall in love with these animals, but you have to constantly keep the relationship in its proper place or they'll not turn on you, but they'll try and take your position. - They don't try, that's the thing with animals. They don't try, they just do, right? There is no knowledge behind instincts or reactions. So at the moment, your energy goes down, bam. - Amazing, at the moment. So they're keep eye on your energy, you know? And but at the same time, you know, this kind of dogs are always in a high level of excitement. Keep 'em that way. - Yeah, they're vigilant. - They're keep 'em like that. They don't know how to turn it off. - So to create a great home family dog, or even if somebody lives alone, it's no look, no touch, no speak in the first couple of minutes of contact. - Yeah. - And so the dog becomes peaceful and calm and open mind. So surrender means the mind is open, right? So once the mind opens up, you can teach whatever you want, such as waiting, such as being calm. What if somebody has an anxious dog right now, they haven't been doing this, and the dog is pawing at them and running around, should the person just stay completely in that calm space moving about and ignoring them, touching them, or should they be physically, like, you know, get off me tightly? - Well, this also has to do with how much exercise, physically exercise the dog has received, right? How long is his walk? 'Cause most people walk 20, 30 minutes, that's not enough and the dog end up in the house for 23 and a half hours. - In my opinion, it's borders on abuse. It's really incredibly hard on an animal. That's the same thing. - This is the same because I love my dog. And my first question is, how long do you walk him? What is your recommendation? I realize it varies by breed and by age. - Yeah, and by level of energy, 'cause some are couch potatoes, low level energy, some middle and some high, right? And so it depends on the energy of the dog. So not because the dog is a back of the pack, doesn't mean they don't have high level energy, okay? 'Cause they're sled dogs. There's a lot of guys that go on the back. It's only one in the front if you notice, right? And even in the back of the pack dogs, because they create a pack from middle back, right? And that's what they stay in that mode. And so even the back of the pack, they have to have the same level of stamina as the one in the front. So not because it's a back of the pack is couch potato. So then you have to understand the levels of energy that they're born with, low, medium, high. Yeah, so a lot of times people say, oh, bulldogs are couch potatoes. Now, you can have a bulldog that is absolutely athletic. Absolutely athletic. And has that stamina to go. And obviously you have to help them with the breeding part. Yeah, 'cause they just go into, you know, no limits. So you have to help them. You know what I'm saying? Stromer has a lot of energy compared to Costella. So two minimum 30 minute walks per day as much as a couple hours twice a day. Wait a backpack on, right? Obviously the dog is a little older because, you know, the backpack adds that extra half hour. 'Cause now the dog is carrying something. So a weighted backpack. Yes. And how should one assess like percentage of body weight of the dog? Beginning, you can just put a backpack 'cause they're psychologically, you know, they don't want to wear anything, you know. Nothing that we put on them, they want to wear it. You know, Alisha, cholera, muzzle, boots. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. So psychologically, that drains them, right? 'Cause they got to get used to it. So you walk into the dog, come surrender to it, and then you take it off. And then the mind will become very drained. Once the dog is used to it, and then you start putting weight. You can start with five pounds. Remember, everything you add, something, you challenge the mind. And the goal is simply for the mind to surrender. You see it? And then the body, the body is gonna become calm because it's wasting energy. So your job literally every day with a dog is to empty the tank. Empty the tank, you know, 'cause a tired dog is never gonna give you problems. Ever. The ever, how? He doesn't have the energy to give you problems, right? And then on top of that, you create rules, bonds, limitations, such as just put food right here, but you can't touch it. So the mind has to be disciplined not to touch it. And the mind has to learn instead of doing this, to do this. And that requires that self-discipline. If you tell the dog, don't touch it, or don't touch the human, don't touch the food, don't touch the cat, they go into a calm, surrender state and they wait. You know, the first thing that I taught Strummers was to suppress action. Just as a general theme. He learned it right away. At eight weeks it took about a day, maybe even half a day, 'cause I had learned the hard way with Costello. It was much more stubborn. I could set food down as an eight week old puppy because we went through the training process. He's not touching it until he looks at me. I can walk around the room. I can do whatever I want. He's tracking. And then when I say, okay, then he's gonna eat. I will just mention there's an inhibition from the forebrain down to the brain regions that control impulses. And that's what we call top down inhibition, which is neuro-science speak for what you're describing practically. And I feel like it carries over to other circumstances more easily, but I can put food in front of him now and leave the room. I don't do this for extended periods, but I come back, he's not gonna touch it. - Yep. - And then he starts to eat. Now it's a little bit more difficult with things that, like trying to teach him to not be mouthy on, I have a rule, no skin in dog's mouth. is just like it's all. or none make it simple because when it's really cute when they're a puppy that's teething a little sharp and then you can kind of but I just have a it's a thick black line right and my girlfriend knows this too like she's like nobody wants to play it's like no skin goes in his mouth then he because that's a simple rule yep and if he does happens to you know go for skin I'll do the little yelp thing he understands right away yeah so if people hear this they're gonna be like this is terrible right you're putting food in front of them and he wants to eat and you're not letting him but could you elaborate why this is so important to the dogs happiness and well-being because I believe it is and I could see that in Costello I see it in strummer there's a trust there's a calmness there's an availability to go more places but many people they just like he's hungry she's hungry they missed me you know they didn't know what they were doing or they feel guilty because they didn't walk the dog the old place a big roll and racing dogs well then let's stay on the walk for a moment what is so critical about the structured walk I've been doing two hours a day or so of a structured walk since he was little and people say that's too much for a puppy and I feel like he's been great with two one hour walks it's because they forget instincts right they forget instinct that a dog instinctually is going to follow his parents to find food and water right yes they do it after two months of age because otherwise they will stay within the den right but from from two to four they follow you know they follow and somebody's always taking care you can see it in the African wild dog there's always somebody that supervises the litter but they allow them to follow right and then they they they go to a certain stance because they're growing but as soon as the dog gets into six months of age that guy wants to walk more than 30 minutes guarantee he doesn't want to stay in one place too long so all these people with their dogs home all day or somebody will say well the dog has the yard running around the yard it's not the same right being able to run around a yard with the yard it becomes like the zoo right is an animal in the zoo with a yard but that's not natural that's just practical for the human right and the human feels like okay I have a backyard that's what the dog does exercise but the dog is going in circles so exercise for a bird is going for a fish for you know a bird have to fly a fish have to swim and a dog has to walk it's just the nature of each is a species right so the walk is the most important activity in my eyes right look at the homeless people with their dogs why they can walk a dog off leash you were the first person I ever heard say that homeless people are the best dog owners and the humans who are blind the human who are blind dog is right next to them homeless people dog in the back right so what are they doing right what the dog is following them right if they're in a follower state and so the dog the dog the leads with the blind is it's not allowed to get distracted because he's the purpose is to guide the blind and the dog the leads with the homeless he's not allowed to go in front consciously unconsciously the dog stays in the back nine out of 10 homeless people have a pitbull and the dog is well behaved off leash right see a lot of them in my neighborhood this is Los Angeles incredible incredible right but in Mexico every single dog in a total country every single dog is off leash so that's in America the American dream for a lot of people is to have a dog walk off leash because people pay a trainer to train the dog to be off leash with this is the nature of a you see it doesn't doesn't make any sense you know once you hear it is you just have to help them by practicing the ritual of not touching a dog no eye contact let the dog become surrender in front of you make sure during the walk is also in the same state of mind and before you feed him do this for at least three weeks right so you get into this habit right then when you greet when you walk and when you feed so then this dog is going to have this beautiful silence comes surrender and this is the dog you bring into dog parks or dog beaches and then your job is to make sure that you the dog that you dog is going to play with has the same energy as your dog you have to be selective just like with kids right I don't really my dog to dog parks I use to I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor AG1 AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens I discovered AG1 way back in 2012 long before I ever had a podcast and I've been taking it every day since the reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take it every day is because 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there's if we don't follow this we're damaging the opportunities for strumber we're we're actually hurting his psychological well-being yeah and the only hard part with him is he doesn't necessarily like to wake up early but sometimes have to walk him early so it takes a little bit of extra encouragement mm-hmm the day always starts with a walk then discipline training and then food yeah and then some affection yeah but it's not hours of like cuddling on the couch training it's like a you know I mean I love him I would love to pick him up and and bring treat him like a little baby right much more often than I do right but I just see the incredible results that come from this exercise discipline and then affection which is leaving a natural life as love right is going we we want them to live as natural as possible and and and so that's love and in my eyes like exercise discipline discipline it's not punishment because that's a word then in the animal the dog people when they hear the word discipline on the dog they put it as punishment yeah the thing is a teacher hitting them yeah like you're punishing the dog and no you just making sure the dog follows the rules by limitations you the dog follows a structure you know and that's what we call discipline right and and that's how we achieve becoming well-behaved or achieving success because we have to be disciplined right and so a lot of times what I what I end up helping people is understanding the word so so the blog doesn't block the word doesn't block them from doing the right thing right which is your job as a as a as a pet parent because now the title pet parent right is it's direction protection then love yeah but most dog people want to do affection affection affection and when it should be exercise discipline affection body my heart I think the the walking part is so key obviously and I'll just say it um you tell me if you agree or disagree if you want but um I think most people are just lazy they don't want to walk and if they walk they don't want to do it without talking on their phone or looking at their phone and the dog consents if your energy is on the walk or the energy is someplace else or you connect though you disconnect it hmm but you're in a flexible leash what I farm is on and you're in the farm which are the worst yeah yeah yeah so it's it's it's the moment where you are connected to mother nature and through the dog right and people now you know they see God is dog backwards all right so you're connected to spirit and you connected to earth but you can be connected to technology and the phone is the same thing is the phone is for connection communication relationship so does the dog connection communication relationship to God to earth to you and so then you create that triangle and then the dog is. inside that bubble. You know, oh, this human is really respecting God, this human is really respecting earth, this human is really respecting the moment. So you create this vibe, right? And the dog is in a follower state, so he's going to imitate the energy that you're in, right? And so what is prayer, an imitation of everybody doing the same energy? So fascinating that your relationship to dogs has opened up this understanding of human behavior, but not just how we behave, but how we relate to the entire world, like the energetics as keeps coming up in our discussion. I feel I have other practical questions, but I want to touch on something that you mentioned before we started recording, which is that in a third world country, people are aware of death very early on. And so the connection to the spiritual comes first and all the rest follows. The complete inversion of somebody, like me, who was born in Northern California, it's like Silicon Valley, they can call it that then. And you learn everything through the logical structures and science and my dad's a scientist. But even if one loves poetry and music and things like that, which I do, the order is sort of like bricks on the ground first. But there's no concept of death actually until your grandparent dies or animal dies or something. Tell me about this relationship to death and how it structures the psyche and the energy of people in third world countries, because it's a direct outgrowth of everything we're talking about. The thing is going to be extremely useful to people in regardless of where they live in the world. I think that's the first step, you know, to learn not to be afraid of death, right? That's the first step, because in America, they don't want nothing to die, but it's just what it is, right? For life and death. So that's when in the Mexican culture, we have the El de A los Muertos, the day of the death. So we learn to be okay with it. We learn to accept it because in Mexico, or a total country, death is everywhere. You can see it everywhere. I'm from the north of Mexico, Sinaloa, and you see people with the chup heads and you know, you go to school and people are dead. So what do you end up doing in this moment? You end up believing that God will protect you. That's your spirituality, right? And just like, I don't want a person to break into my house, you get a dog, and so that the mother nature to protect you. So for us, when we grew up that way, we've seen death everywhere. We learn to surrender to this higher power, right? And we are what you believe, you know? So it's really good in our experience to be able to surrender to death, but at the same time, we also surrender that somebody is going to give us direction, protection, love. The same thing is the back leader, right? And we just surrender to that, right? And as well, we surrender to earth, give us food and taking care of earth, because it's a it's a combination of spirituality and instincts in a third world country. So it's almost like people in third world countries place sort of, they see the reality of death early, and they place themselves in a sort of hierarchy. They look upward oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes these are religious people, right? Yeah. My father's from Argentina is a Catholic country and is Latinos for, for by design, we, we are taught to spirit first, and then second is mother nature, right? Yeah, it's number three. Now that's the, it's like an order, and then you have to go to work, right? So job is number three, and then you have to love the family, and then love is at the, at the end, right? But it's God first, earth second, which, and then this family will work. Well, here in the United States, it's, we're raised very differently, right? Yes, and it's also this idea that stuff is the portal to happiness, having lay his phone, having access to all the, yeah, a lot of shoes, shoes bags. I grew up with one pair of shoes. You know, well, I'm better shoes. And so we grew up with very, well, nothing, but then so what, how do we stay happy, right? How do we stay happy? So it becomes like a belief system, right? And so that belief system has helped a lot of people that I know they're to stay happy. It's just a happy people with nothing, which is key, right? You first have to be, learn to be happy, healthy, loving, smart, with nothing. Then when you have something, and then you're already happy, healthy, loving, smart, it just adds into your accomplishments, but animals don't understand money, fame, power, animals understand natural, simple, profound. So that's the part that I grew up in. Natural, simple, profound. Natural is your instinct. Simple as to love, profound as your spirit, natural, simple, profound. So even if you're not smart, right, you can still be natural, simple, profound, and have an amazing relationship with animals. Incredible, right? Even if you're not, you don't know how to read, you don't know how to write, you don't know where Europe is, but you can still have an amazing relationship with God and with mother nature and with your family, right? And therefore, if you're good to those three, you're good to you. He's to joke because I'd bring Costello to my lab with me, I'll allow about 15 people I'd walk in with him and he'd go around and he like walking to the lab, he'd see all the students and people working. He used to bring his toy around to each of them, sitting at their desk or trying to get them to play. He was part of the lab and people really, I like to think they loved him. They told me anyway. But I used to look at him some time and they think he doesn't care that I'm the professor. He doesn't care. That's the best part about this relationship. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. Even if we go home at night, sometimes I would sleep in the lab back then. He doesn't care. He just wants us to be together. He wants his walks. He likes to be on things and I just realized he just kind of wants to be around the joy of family, a laboratory. He just wants to be part of this and it really helped me to just remove the concept that he even knew what roles were or jobs were. It was just this place we went. I think dogs are a wonderful way to look at the world differently and realize both how different we are as a species, but also all these things that we've created. These are just human creations and their important jobs are important obviously. But to not project that onto him but also is very useful to not project that onto people in the world. I'm not going to point at any specific colleagues, but I knew people who are very prominent in their field and the way they go into the world was almost like disappointed because people weren't feeding them the adoration that they thought they deserved. But no one cares because they're in their own experience. I just mentioned this because in your book and these teachings that we've been talking about today, they taught me a lot about the human energetics. We're not dogs, so we can't just transfer that in. But it taught me that most of the time when we think we're operating from a place of knowledge and roles and all this stuff, there's something that's been constructed by humans like a uniform show of this person's in charge. They have all the stuff that reveals their conscience, the degrees on the wall. You take that stuff away and it's a very different kind of interaction. Who's this person? What are they about? What moves them forward or back? Are they a good person or a bad person? Are they scared? I think it's very helpful if people learn to tap into this a little bit. You know when I go to people's home, the human tells you the story and the dog tells you the truth. Just by looking at it, the dog immediately tells you this is the energy we feel, this is the philosophy we practice, and this is the actions we do. Immediately, the dog always, he's the most honest member of your house. They don't know how to lie. They don't know how to do what we humans do. They don't just just don't. I listen to the human because I need to understand, okay, where is this human stuck? Then through that conversation, I go, okay, what about it? If we think of, don't think of spirit, think about silence. You like silence? Okay, silence is part of the spiritual world. What about calmness? Calmness? I think I'm calm. Okay, let's breathe. Then I change the instinctual world just by just breathing. Then I start giving the information so the intellectual world is more simple. It's more clear with the nose, eyes, ears, rolls, my limitations. I'm just giving this simple information. So your mind knows how to execute. Then when do I love, hold on, just just wait, wait. Then when the dog goes, now that's when you love because I want to teach people to love silence, to love calmness, to love an open mind because people have learned to love an excited dog, an anxious dog, a dog that there was a victim, right? So if you rescue a dog and then the dog was in a bad situation, that person goes and rescue a dog because he feels bad. And then the same person starts telling everybody in the family what happened to that dog. So now the whole entire family feels bad for the dog. So when they describe the dog, they describe the past. So they learn to love the past because they feel sorry for this dog. So the dog now is fearful, controlling the house, you know, hasn't listened to the humans. At the moment, I grab the same dog and I bring it to the ranch and I give him silence, calmness and be part of the back, that dog's changes. They live in the moment. So really what happened to the past to a dog a month ago, a year ago, is relevant. It's relevant. What's relevant is how do you treat him now? Right? And the only thing they need to become good is, is safe peace environment. A trust respect human with exercise discipline or exercise mental stimulation activities. Then the love comes at the end. Safe peace, love, trust respect, love, exercise discipline, affection. See, love is number three. It's a reward. Right? It's a reward. How do you stay happy? Well, and then you are grateful. How do you stay healthy? You learn how to breathe and do exercise. How do you stay smart? Well, you learn, you achieve, and you give it away. Oh, you learn to turn your mind off. And then, so when do I practice love? Well, practice love once you master your spirit, your instinct, and your mind. Then love that thing about you. Right? Love those three things about you. Your silence, your faith, your calmness, your trust to you, and then your confidence, your mind. Love that. Kindog smell, stress. Yeah. Feel stress, it smells. But remember, it's the feeling of the energy that you have inside your electricity. Right? You're not functioning normal. Then that same energy is going to create a chemistry. Right? Then you're going to sweat. And I mean, it's just going to go into the nose eyes ears. But first, without the nose eyes ears, just the animal in them is going to sense, when an earthquake is about to come, they sense it way before it trembles. You see it? So that energy of Mother Nature is shifting at a such a low level of sensitivity, then we see, then we hear things. Humans are so obsessed with dog, quote-unquote, intelligence that looks like our intelligence. Like if I see another video of like how many words a dog can learn, or you know, dogs doing tricks or walking on their hind legs, none of that impresses me. I also like cephalopods, octopuses have a couple of them actually and I'm fascinated by them. And people think they're an extremely intelligent and they maybe, but I'm interested in their intelligence. You can find a video of a guy who taught an octopus to play a piano. But if you look at the training process, it was just shaping. That video, I'll go on record saying, totally unimpressive to me. It tells you far more about the trainer's willingness to painstakingly shape an animal than it does about octopuses at all. I mean, I'm not saying an ant or a plant could have learned to play the piano, but what he did could be done with a horse if it just had big keys. So there's nothing interesting about this, but humans we seem obsessed with transferring our, let's keep it to first world, because that seems aligned here. Our first world understanding of what intelligence and knowledge is and skill is and putting that on to other species. And it, it's crazy. It's crazy. It doesn't reveal anything except our own short-sightedness and stubbornness about being unwilling to think about these other ways of communication and moving through the world. That's self-oriented first versus pack-oriented. What is what the pack needs versus what is what you want? That is more like when the human just wants a baby, for example, and they get a dog. Humanizing a dog is a good for the dog, no? It's not good. It's good for the human. It's good for the human fantasy and fulfillment, emotional fulfillment or whatever thing they have in their mind. But it's a good for the dog to be a human. Why would he want to be a human? Why did I try trying to do the same thing with a cat? Because what they say is a cat. So you can't humanize a cat. See what I'm saying? So the cat sends the human a hell. Because the cat only comes whenever he wants to come. So you can't influence anybody who doesn't want to be with you. The dog, you have to teach them to live without you. He has to learn to keep you distant because he's a pack-oriented. You can influence a dog much quicker than you influence a cat. You can't influence anybody who doesn't want to follow you. How do you feel about cats? I love cats. I love all animals. I was going to invite you to a wrench because we have all the species and we can assess and evaluate your dog better with the chickens and the dogs and different species so we can see the prey drive. You are going to be able to see, do you have a dog with prey drive and how do we block it? You have a dog with prey drive and you just leave it open. I'd love to bring strimmer up there. It's a good place because your dog gets to interact not just with dogs, but with other species that trigger that prey drive. Very, very important. Because what makes your dog social is that he learns to accept others. I don't want a dog that has a protective drive or I'm not interested in that. I just want to dog that accepts everybody. And that's a dog that is going to give you zero lawsuits, zero liability because he accepts everybody. I know people in California in particular whose dogs charged other people or lawsuits. Even if they didn't buy it, that's a whole thing. It can be a loss of apps. It can be a dog that was not meant for protection, but because he doesn't have rules by the limitations, he doesn't walk in every day. The dog is bored, confused, frustrated, and then he releases that because he's a predator, a dog by nature is a predator. They're going to move forward to release energy. You see it? But you want them to move forward with the right state of mind. Or when you tell the dog to move forward, that's just discipline. But people don't have that kind of understanding and the dog end up doing whatever they want. So the dog end up putting people in a lawsuit, which another place where the dog doesn't know, you get in the zoo about it. So he's not going to, oh my god, we're going to lose money. The dog is not going to understand that concept. As humans, we project so much on to other species, other people. In the backdrop of everything we're talking about, I'm hoping that people are seeing the ways in which they can show up in circumstances with more calmness, especially if it's not reflexive. Before every episode, I pray. I do. I ask for certain things. I try to open up certain things so I realize not all of this is under our control. That's my belief and trying to write certain things in. So it's not reflexive. I do it as it, you call it a discipline. I'm happy to do it. But I think people assume that you're either calm or you're an anxious person. People assume that their dog is either calm or anxious. This is a terrible misconception. I think we can become calmer regardless of where we are in our natural levels of anxiety. But animals do not will never choose anxiety or be a live and anxious life. We're the only species that follow on stable leaders, right? So to be the pack leader in the animal world, you have to be the most patient, the most calm, the most confident, the most loving, the more joyful, everything has to be at 100%. Then you can be a pack leader, right? And your job is to resolve problems. So the least thing you can do is to bring problems, anxiety, fear, insecurities, all of that stuff is something that you bring back home. You don't want that. So before people hit the door coming home, they should do a check-in with each other. This is a little prayer too. God, just let me be silent, calm, confident, love, and joy to my dog. That's it. I want to practice. No, don't you just talk, no, I contact and just help my dog to calm down. And then I'm going to give him affection. I'm not saying that to give affection. I'm just saying give affection to patients and calmness and open mind, right? Because when your dog misbehaved, you want him to go back there, go back to your good state of mind, right? You don't want the dog to do fight, fight, avoidance. The good state of mind is patients come surrender or happy, go lucky. I think here I'm projecting a lot and assuming a lot, but I think a lot of people deep down, I think they probably like that their dog is so quote unquote happy to see them at the end of the day. I'm excited. Because I think many people feel devoid of real love and connection and the idea that they're for baby. I really don't like this term. They're not babies. Yes, they have fur, but like I think out of respect for animals, we have to remember that they're animals first. When I heard first heard you say like they're, you know, they're spirit animal. Yeah. You know, species species and then breed and then the name. It was so helpful for me because I don't want to get into it here because it's not directly relevant, but in science, I've worked with humans, worked with animals and I stopped working with animals because it was really hard on my soul. Yeah, I understand biomedical. I understand when there's a whole other discussion, but even just the way that people would start to talk about animals, like we work on them, not with them. And this is a complicated issue we could get into sometime, but I started to realize that we start using words to either dehumanize or humanize animals. And both are terrible. So when I heard you give this description of, you know, spirit animal, etc. I was like, he's saying don't humanize these animals because it makes them feel unsafe. Yeah. And all confused or confused. Yeah. And here's later, I realized, again, with all due respect to biomedical research, and then you need to make discoveries. I do think there's too much animal research that's unnecessary. These kinds of things. Some is essential, but maybe, etc. But I realized there were dehumanizing animals. And I thought, oh my goodness, because I had this incredible contradiction in my mind. It was a real soul dilemma. Like I love Costello. I, I, it was like he was a family member, and I was willing to do all this work on myself and with him, but in my profession, I was observing things where I thought this is not okay. And I stopped and work with humans, even saying I work on humans. You hear signs as they say, it's a terrible, terrible. And I think words matter to humans, and because they shape how we behave is correct. And so I'm noticing a theme throughout today where you have words and simple ways for people to remember. No look, no touch, no speak, right? Exercise, discipline, then affection, etc. That's telling people, people stuff in people language. But the level that you're really interested in and you're trying to convey is the animal experience and then the spiritual experience. I'm not trying to psychoanalyze you here, but I, this is the structure that I hear emerging I think will be very useful to people because we're going high level, low level all the time. So if people could start to think about themselves in this way and think about their animals. Why not? I think a lot of people are going to say, oh no, I come home and I want to be loved by my fur babies and I want them to, and I miss you and I want to do face time with you and like, you know, and I think people, genuinely, however, want their animal to feel safe. They want their animal to feel secure. Number one. And when I think about real love, it's about safety and security first. So for someone that has, like the other day I was in the hospital visiting a friend and the woman behind the counter, we were talking and she said, she said, I have two friends. She's, I said, well, you work long shifts. She goes, yeah, they're home alone. I come home. They're pooping and pee. I feel so guilty. And my first thought was you should know those dogs, but she's in love with the dogs. Right. I thought, well, okay, so I passed along a little bit of what I learned. She said, and she just said, flat out, I can't do it. I can't do it. There's no way I could come home and they're going crazy and I'm excited to see me that I couldn't just pick them up and they just hold them, but it's making them anxious. She's nurturing them. Yeah. The same nerves. They're just helping humans to be healthy. She's helping her dogs to be unhealthy. It's so counter, that was exactly what you were going through, you know. Working with humans versus working on humans, right? So she's helping other species, right? But the species that she's in love with, she is not. But that's because the story she is accepting in her head. She's agreeing with that, right? There's, I have so much guilt that I can't stop it, right? Because that's what she's trying to do to numb her guilt. When I was growing up, most people didn't have dogs in our neighborhood. There were a few dogs. Now everyone's got a dog. It's like having a phone. Everyone's got a dog. This doesn't seem like a good thing. It's a great thing for me because I love to teach people, you know, about energy, philosophy and actions. I want people to have a trans-respect love, the most incredible relationship with a dog. Because, you know, a dog really makes you a good human if you do things right. And then once you practice that, you can just give it to other humans because it makes it tangible. It's energy really work. Yeah. What about if I have a good philosophy that that really works? Yeah, it works. What about if my actions are good? It really works. Yeah. Now you combine the three and watch what your dog does, right? And then you go and do the same thing with other humans, right? So you create this beautiful trans-respect love with humans or connection communication relationship. You go and create safe peace and love environments. Horse people are really good about safety, right? So the priority in the horse world is not love. The priority is saved. So a horse person is going to teach a child. Don't scream. Not touch, not talk right contact, right? So the kid will learn that with a horse, you have to be quiet, calm and wait until the horse give you the signal. And the same person will go and teach the kid with dogs as if you compare them, right? But because in the horse world, safety is number one, how do you keep a horse calm? And then the horse comes, how do they walk a horse? The horse is right next to the human, never in front, right? So people can, you can see a little kid walking a horse, you see it? And the horse is behind the kid, not in front of the kid. But first is the meeting. And then the third thing is feeding the horse. If the horse is too excited, don't put the hay yet. According to the horse comes down, then the hay goes down, the meaning, the walk and the feeding. Incredible. And they're big. So we have this natural respect for them that people don't necessarily have for a dog. But a dog obviously can bite, you know? But why not have that respect for someone that we say, you know, men, a dog and men best friend? Yeah. The dog has the best titles of all the animals on earth, right? The dog. But when it comes to the actions, we don't honor the dog because we want the dog to be a human. We don't respect the dog because we want the dog to be a human. When you honor and respect somebody, you honor who they are. You respect who they are. You learn about how they are. And that's what you love. See it? You love who they are. You don't love what you think. And you don't try and project that there's somebody else. I think some people, making assumptions here, but some people will hear some of what we're talking about today. Oh, well, that's how I should become the pack leader with people. I should never let anyone walk through a door before me or say, like, but the point you're trying to make is that human to human is different than animal to human. You don't just transfer the same thing, some things transfer, but other things don't. Yeah. I've worked with non-human primates before. Okay. It's interesting. A lot of people go to the zoo. I'm not a big fan of putting large carnivores in primates and zoos. I'm not. I want to be clear. But I have issues with that. But people will smile at the monkey or they'll go like, you know, for a macaque monkey, bearing teeth is aggression. So a friend of mine, she's an animal behaviorist and she said, oh, no, if you want to do an affiliative behavior with a monkey, you lip smack, which sounds kind of cute and funny. And people go, oh, but you could tell somebody that a hundred times and they'll still go, like, it's like we want to project our own understanding of what we think is going on. And even in the presence of knowledge, your dog is going to feel more safe and secure and happy if you come in, no look, no touch, no speak. Yeah. There's something about the human brain where we just want to project, no, but I want my experience. And it's an incredibly selfish thing. It was really the realization for me. It's very selfish of me to come home and want a certain kind of interaction with my pet, Costello, but to put the interaction in the terms that work for me. And I said, you know, this is the first time I owned a dog. Everyone in my life for the longest time, they're like, you're never, I was talking about it since I was a kid. You're never going to get a dog. I waited until I had the finances until I had a home. I waited. I'm very proud of the fact that I waited. I desperately wanted an animal for so long since I was a little kid at fish and things like that. And the dog, I knew at the time when I got him that it was the right time. But I had to be very careful because I wanted it to go so well that I found myself projecting it. What if he doesn't attack? And there was all this stuff and then I read your book and I realized, I want this to go really well. I have to get out of my understanding of what I need on my terms and start thinking about what he needs and I need in his language. And it was like this light bulb went off. I'm just, you know, this is really a statement of gratitude that hopefully we'll be informative for people because we, the human brain just says like, no, I want to be loved and so I'm going to do this thing that's actually harming the thing that I say is my fur baby. Like no one would ever hurt their fur babies, but they're doing it by projecting human stuff. Anyway, I'm telling you what you already know, but I think it's just something that I really want to underscore because people here affection last, like this is just like, you know, guys being like, I'm alpha, no, it's the complete opposite of it. It's about respecting the animal. Yeah. It's about safe peace, trust, respect. Once you have those two pillars, then you bring the love because that's what you want to love. You want to love the trust and respect. Not because you love people, you trust them. Not because you love people, you respect them. So love is his own energy, his own, you know, identity, but you want to love trust. You want to love respect. That's what you want to love. You want to love a place that you feel safe and peace. That's the land part. Right? And then the relation, trust respect, then, you know, the way you experience the world, body, mind, heart. Right? So at least those three things, just do it that way, you know, just put love at the end. It won't hurt you. It will only make you wiser, right? It will only make you more patient, more, more, more, more calm. And you will see the outcome. The reason why I said not touch, not talk, no eye contact is because if you want to touch a back of the pack dog, he's going to run away. If you give eye contact to a front of the pack dog, it's exactly what the monkey is, it means fight. When you're looking at somebody, I want to touch him, right? And then when you talk to a, to a middle of the pack, you're going to get him very excited. So if you practice not touching or talking to eye contact to any position of the pack, what you're going to allow is nose, eyes, ears to come to you. You see it? The love of attraction, the dog is going to come to your smell and then he's going to assess in evaluate. Can I trust? Can I respect? Do I feel safe? Are you a peaceful human? That's what you want into. know by you, that you can be trusted, that you can be respected, that you can be a safe source, a peaceful source. Then once the dog is okay, yeah, you have that. Then the dog is going to seat right next to you. It's going to do this or it's just going to relax. As soon as he gives you that, that's when you give love. So it's nothing wrong if you wait a little bit, right? It's nothing wrong. You just, you just following the steps. You are the one who's being disciplined. You say, "To be a good leader, you have to be a good follower." So you have to understand the power of Consolender. You have to understand the power of patience. If you don't understand it, you're going to be a terrible leader. So I'm not telling people, be a pack leader just because you, you're the dog owner. No, no, no, no, no. I'm telling you what it requires to be a pack leader. The highest level of patience, the highest level of confidence, highest level of confidence, and then knowing when to give love and knowing when to celebrate. Love, joy, is a celebration energy. This one is direction protection. What do we want for all of our pack leaders like politicians? We want to have an America that feels safe peace. We want to have a Mexico that feels safe peace. We want to have Argentina that feels safe peace. We want to have a Colombia that feels safe peace. We want to have a Venezuela that feels safe peace. Otherwise, we can't feel the love. We want to have somebody that we trust and respect so we can love them, right? That's what we want. It's our instinct to want this as our spirit to want this. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor function function provides over 160 advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health. 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This seems to be the thing we select for, not the traits you're describing. My theory says to why that's so, but I think we can all look around and see how that's going. You can learn a lot for animals, right? I think all leaders should show us themselves with a pack of dogs so we can assess and evaluate their energy well. Because they say the philosophy we want to hear. They always talk great about the intellectual part people want to hear. But then the energy, and then the actions, that's what we end up seeing at the end. Look at Mexico. We always, "Oh, a woman president, as Mexico is going to be, well taking care, same, no safe, no peace, no trust, no respect. It's the same as a continuation of the same philosophy, but they're all say great things." You see what I mean? I don't like to dogs. I say, "Listen, I'm going to bring you back, your silence, your calmness, your surrender. That's my contribution to you, because your humans made you fight flight avoidance." I don't say nothing to the dog. I just feel it, and I do it. I skip the saying because they don't care about what I say. They care about what I feel and what I do. The human cares about what you say. So you can just brain watch the human, all you want, lie to the human, and the human will vote. We're the only species that found stable leaders. There is no species that will vote for somebody that has unstable energy to begin with. They can care less what they're saying. I watch that series on Netflix Chimp Empire. It's fascinating. It's very hierarchical troops. The alpha occasionally will feel like he's losing some control over his troop. He'll go on these displays where he starts breaking trees and peeding his chest. They look a lot more like humans. Humans look a lot more like them. But I saw an interview with Jane Goodall. I've seen this where they said, "What is your favorite thing about them?" She says, "No dogs are my favorite species." You can really trust them. The chimps are like human. They're way too much like us. They lie. They cheat. If you watch Chimp Empire brace yourself when they decide they're going to ostracize a member of their group, they make them suffer an extended punishment. It's brutal. And that's the primate brain. Sadly, humans were supposed to move beyond that. That's our role. I'm making the assumption that some people either have a dog or they're thinking about getting one. Correct. Preparing oneself for every interaction sounds like the thing to do until it becomes reflexive. It also, it's a lot of work. Like you describe a brief prayer at the door, setting intention. I think that's awesome. Waking up in the morning. I will say hello to Stromer. I take care of myself first. Move about. If he has to use the bathroom or something, I'd let him out right away. But he waits and then he gets up and we do our thing. But the temptation to walk over there and just he's you know, he's sleepy. He's a bulldog. He's calm and to just grow like because I love him. My heart fills when I walk in the room with him. Yeah. I think this is the thing that a lot of people are challenged with. But they're like, so for me, temporarily breaking down my notion of cuteness was very important. He doesn't understand cute. Right. He has no concept of cute. He only understands what he understands. I'm the one projecting. Oh, but he's like, I want to cuddle him and I'm gonna play with him. I confess this is easier for me to do now that I've done it with one dog before. It's much harder for my girlfriend to do. She's like, she gets pulled in. Yeah. We joke. You caved to love. We joke. You know, it's like we caved our own feelings of love. But it can damage the safety and the and the the general pack order. And then people think of pack order sounds like not love. Could you elaborate a little bit on why and so important to stay in the frame of we're really asking humans to think more like dogs, but to behave in a way that is somewhere in between. 80% of my clients are women. 80%. When I go to, you know, their home because I like to assess and evaluate the dynamics inside the house. The dog is in the front. Why if it's number two? Kids are number three. Husband is in the back. Back on the pack. This is in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. United States. So why the dog is in the front? She puts them there. Why? Because she only practice affection. And why the husband is in the back? Because she practice rules, boundaries, limitations with him. You see it? So look, look. So she is capable to practice leadership, but she practices it with the wrong member in the house. The dog needs the leadership, right? Because why did they call me? Because now the dog doesn't. The kids can walk them. You know, the the friends kids can come to the house. The dog steals food. Right? Or the dog barks at the neighbors. Right? They don't have the ideal life that they chose. Or they thought they were going to have by having this labradoral. It should be the easiest one because those two breeds are practically, you know, the epitome of like most dussled breeds. I know. Right? I tell the labradoral people like try raising a bulldog mastiff, right? Yeah. From eight weeks on. You learn a lot about yourself. It's a different strength. Yeah. Right? So this breed should be easier because it's designed to be easier. But because they only practice affection first, only affection, the dog end up going in front of the pack. So this is what happens when people want to practice affection first, or when they prioritize affection to the dog, but to the rest of the pack, it's very clear for me that she practice rules by limitations to the husband. He has to do whatever she said. But the dog doesn't do whatever she says. So that we have to change. You know, we have to help people to understand. It's not that love is bad. It's just, where are you giving love to? I'm so happy you're raising this. I think some people say, well, she has to treat the husband basically like a child because he's playing video games. I'm making the assumption here that we don't know what the dynamics are between the husband and the wife. Right. And I have a lot of married couple friends where it seems very balanced. I don't know what happens when I'm not there, obviously. But I know somewhere, yes, indeed. Like there's some infantilization of the male, but he does that to himself too. Okay. He's behaving like a kid. Right. Or I also have seen very balanced. And I've seen where it's a bit more of kind of the structure I grew up in at least for the early part of my life. Maybe it's because my father's from South America, but until my parents split, it was like my dad was the dad, and then it was my mom, and then, you know, and then there was a kid and sadly we didn't have a dog, right? But things are very different nowadays. Right. And so I'm trying to remove any assumptions that the dynamic between the husband and wife are that way solely because of one or the other. It's there's an agreement there. That's correct. There's always an agreement. Yeah. The agreement is the he surrender. Yeah. That's the agreement. At one point, you don't want five flight avoidance. So the guy end up surrendering, but the dog didn't. The dog took over. And you also don't want so domineering that she's in flight flight surrender. Correct. You don't want that. That exists too. And that's bad also. Yeah. My relationship now with a woman is I have a good instinctual relationship, right? Because my masculine energy is the the one who gives direction protection. When before I used to follow this concept of happy wife happy life. How can I make her happy? She has to make herself happy. So I end up surrendering to everything she wanted. And so this concept of, you know, happy wife happy life didn't work for me. Right. But and so I just went back and too, okay, I'm just going to be confident and attract the woman that wants to be consurrender to this area, which is the instinctual area. Spiritually, we're the same. Emotionally, we're the same. Financially, you know, we're the same. But instinctually, that's the part that I I couldn't. I couldn't just not be masculine, right? Or calm confident. I just couldn't. I just couldn't. And that's it works beautiful now. Oh, it sounds like you hit the bull's eye. Yeah. There. Actually, I've since we're talking about human relationships, I have a friend. He is very happy, very successful marriage in the real sense that you walk into their home. You like that. They have some, they have a couple of kids. One of them has some special needs, but that they're managing that well. The home is very balanced. They seem very, very happy. And he was giving advice to some other guys. And he said, you know, among the women that would be like partners, good partners for you, you have to make a decision about how much you want somebody who's going to give you instructions versus leave you alone versus wants, you know, some direction. It was a very edgy thing to say, you know, at the time now, you can have these kinds of conversations. Yeah. Finally. Yeah. And it was very interesting. There were three other guys at the table, none of whom are married, including me. And we each had different answers to that question. One said, yeah, I want somebody that I can like really be in, like kind of wants to be led. Right. Not subservient, you know, obviously respect and kindness, but the other one, he said, I want someone who's like really going to like keep me in line. I was like, I was very shocked. I was like, this is incredible. But he was being, he was being honest. He wants someone who's basically going to like keep him out of his child like nature. Okay. When the child like nature wasn't going to help. Right. Keep the structure of the home. I think it's a very important thing. This notion of, we don't have good words for this to keep us off of the barbed wire. Like we hear dominance, hierarchy. And it sounds like control. It sounds like subservience. Yeah. It gets into notions of like all sorts of things. But this is a fundamental aspect to the human spirit. Just these things for a part. Like I said, we can both love God at the same level. We can love love at the same level. And we can all develop our intelligence at the same level. But when it comes to instincts, that's the only area in my life that I know that my calm confidence is going to lead my pack. Right. Because that's what I do with dogs. I walk a pack of dogs. So they're all got to go and to a counselor under state. And so in my house, I wanted the same thing because I want her to feel safe peace. I want her to try to respect. I want her to love that about me. But I have to be that man that has a high level of patience, high level of calmness, high level of confidence, high level of love. I need to earn that position. I don't just want it. I erred it. But I need to have a woman that understands, you know, that that's what I'm looking for. Right. Yeah. Well, instinctually, not in the mind, not in the highs or as temporary. No, no, no, no, this is permanently, you know, your instincts. And I will provide safe peace. I will be a peaceful man, a safe man to be with, a trustworthy man, a respectful man, a loving man. Right. Smart man. I will always work on having good energy and only found on good philosophy and only doing good actions because I want that position. Did you take some time before your current relationship after your divorce to sort of feel into this and think about how you were going to be that or is this something that you decided to evolve in the real life that I was picking the wrong woman. Right. I couldn't understand why I can pick a dog and making the perfect dog. I can pick a perfect dog for you. Like, I couldn't pick the perfect woman for me. I just want the one for me. Right. What I think is perfect for me. And so I had a trouble because I had the wrong philosophy inside my head. You know, what a man should do or what a man woman should do. It was the wrong philosophy period. Right. Once I changed the philosophy and then I went, okay, I just, I need to find a woman with this spirit, with this instinct, with this heart and with this mind. So I was more like clear. Right. Okay. Now I know what I'm looking for. Right. And she's a back leader, but not in the house. She's a pack leader. She has three restaurants. She has a lot of money. Right. But she earned it. She did it on her own. Right. And that was, that was it. She came and said, I just want to give you my comms surrender. I said, that's all I want from a woman, you know, to have a beautiful relationship. So she knew that she wanted to be in the role that she currently is. Yeah. Also, like there was a knowledge of self going into it. Yeah. Because when she, you know, she's doing her business, she has to be a pack leader. They get tired of being pack leaders. Right. They just just get tired of like, I don't want to give direction and protection 24/7, even at home. So at home, she just wanted somebody to give her safe peace, trust respect, comms surrender. That's, she needed to connect to her instincts. Right. It's important because, you know, she connects to, to God. So she's comms surrender to God. Right. So she's comms surrender to the business. She's, but she needed to be comms surrender to a man. But it has to be the right man. So I was, I was the right man at that time. Right. Because I, I earned the position. You know, I didn't just, my cheese was you run earning the position. You're just a man. No, no, no, no. When you're a good pack leader, you earn the position. You know who you are. You value who you are. And that's, and that's what you love, self knowledge, self values, self love. So I did my, my rehabilitation for me, because, you know, even though my grandparents and, and my father taught me well about animals, they didn't tell me well about women. And they said, you make money and you get whatever you want. That was it. Yeah, that's an incomplete. How do I assess and evaluate this? That's the right woman. How do I do? How do I do? How do I make sure I do good connection communication? Relationships. Everything I teach with a dog. How do I, how can I achieve it with my saying species? Right. But it was, I didn't receive information. Right. I just, I, I would just given a project. And I accomplished it. I became money fame power. And I just went and grabbed whatever was available. Well, I can certainly say, um, my, well, just be direct. Yeah. I mean, I think my parents split because of a power struggle about roles and power. Um, and my father's from a lot in country, my mother's not, but irrespective of that. Yeah. It didn't matter. I used to think that was the reason, but it was now, fortunately, they both remarried. Mm-hmm. They've been remarried for a very long time. Very happily. Yeah. And my sister and I always say, like, they're like with their perfect fit. Yeah. It just like works. Yeah. Because of exactly what you're describing these, these dynamics. Yeah. I mean, I think I didn't say it, but I saw online at some point. Someone said, you know, the way you destroy a country is to get the men and women to hate each other. And we see that a lot now. Mm-hmm. I like to think maybe things are improving a little bit, but so much of what we see because of anger at leaders, frustration with, you know, social dynamics and belief about what people can and can't become. All of this stuff has led to this place of a ton of distrust, but the power structure is all messed up. Yeah. They fight flight avoid each other. Right. But they say they love each other. And they still, because there's an instinct there, they still desire each other. Right. I mean, men and women are still seeking to be together, but you hear the, they're, you know, all the guys are like kids and you hear the all the women are, you know, they want something that they, you know, can't be achieved in this common thing. And, you know, and I'm confused. Yeah. A lot of confusion. And, of course, I know some very happy couples that where they've worked it out. But the roles in those couples seem very, it's like they're being themselves and it just works. Yeah, yeah. I just don't want to think about it. I just want to feel it, right? I just want my spirit, my instinct, and my heart. And I know what I got to do anyway around 56. I know what I got to do. But I just don't want to have a five flight avoidance at home, right? I just don't want to have that ever, ever, ever, ever, right? So it's, it's very clear to me, you know, that what I'm looking for is exactly what everybody looks for in a relationship human dog, safe, peace, love, transrespect, love, body, mind, heart, exercise, discipline, affection, follow, play, explore. Everybody wants the same thing. They just do it with a different species. I want to be able to do it with a different species in my own species, you know? And I'm the happiest I ever been. You breathe and exude happiness. I have to say it's real. It's tangible. It's amazing because I was already happy with my goal in life, right? My dream was to become the best dog trainer in the world. And I became the dog whisperer. So I train humans. I don't train dogs, right? So this dream was bigger than what I thought. But then I have a good relationship with a woman, which I was fascinating to me at that time. Why I have five flight avoidance. Why I don't have come to run their happy go lucky come confident. Why don't I'm not saying my woman is not come confident towards me. If I'm wrong, and then yeah, she can, you know, give direction protection. But if I'm not, it's no need. All right. So that makes me a very consistent man with my, with my role. That's it. I keep my peace. I keep my, my, my patients, my calmness, my comfort, my love much every single day of my life. I, I don't miss one day. If I don't feel good, you see it? I internally, I'm a hundred. Because with people, it only takes once to be on the receiving end of an outburst to just, there's always that little asterisk going forward. I share with you the, um, the deep desire. And fortunately, I have it now to not have fighter flight at home. From a dog either, or from a dog either. Always care exactly. So I'm guessing that the homie grew up and had a fair amount of fighter flight. Otherwise, maybe that was very, very machismo. You know, my parents still marry. But that's all, you know, it was, it was this way of, oh, that's it. You know, so it was definitely a more like sadness, right? Because my mom was not allowed to do her own self. You know, and so that's obviously not healthy for, for the dream of, of a woman, right? So she has to, you know, have just be a mom and stay at home. And it was, it was hard for her. You know, um, yeah. But that's, that's all I saw. You know, uh, yeah, when, when my dad will, um, discipline will discipline with anger. And when my mom would discipline with discipline with guilt, you know, and, and that was it, but it worked a little bit. Then I come to America and there's, ah, it's, it's a completely different way of looking at things, right? You can work on your energy. You can work on your philosophy. You can work on your actions. And then you can become just as good as you are with a dog. Because I have an incredible relationship with dogs, right? And I'm incredible relationship with God because he definitely allowed me to become what I dream about, right? And I came and did it in a different country. I have to learn a different language, right? And then I went all over the world. That was God, right? Me following the spirit and in the instinct. Now I can tell you how I did it. But in the beginning, when I jumped the border, it was all spiritual. When it was all instinctual, it was all passion. It was not the mind doing it. It was just my spirit and my instinct and my heart, just following this dream, right? And adapting. I have to learn this. I have to do this. But then at the same time, I saw a lot of great things in America, you know, like you can be you. Oh, yeah, you can be you. That's great. This is a good philosophy, the story. So that's a great philosophy, right? And then your actions, okay, just walk shoulders up, head high, breathe, walk. And that's practice, body language, you know, also exudes what you're thinking and what you're feeling. And because I'm with dogs all day, I just keep that energy 24/7. It's beautiful. The, as a practical tangent, the thing about just shoulders back and walk, I think it's funny to see when people try this. They're like, like, I'm going to be the pack leader. That doesn't work. I'll tell you, it really doesn't work with a bulldog master. Yeah. It can't fake. If you get frustrated with them, they feel it and they pull back. It's wild. They just can feel it. Like if you're frustrated, let's go. It's like, no, I'll sometimes give a little bit of a stern. I have one little command that I occasionally use. I keep its potency. But if Costello or in this case, drummer is really being stubborn just for stubborn sake, I'll do it. And that's it. That's all it takes. But if I do that more than three times on a walk, it loses its potency. Correct. It's just my way of saying, like, no, it's just a no. But I don't say no. And if I read it, yeah. And if I were to, and I'm realizing, as I say this, that little, it's probably more of a reminder to myself. Yeah. As much as it's a reminder to happen to both. Yeah. I'm just kind of trying to create this thing. Like, no, I leave this walk where you need this walk. I need this walk. We're doing this walk. And he just, yeah, he goes. Now, it's a little bit tougher when my girlfriend walks and he tests her more. So if we talk about that, when a dog is in a very respectful, one person obeys the boundaries. But then to other people, they're acting out, how should that be remedied? If the three of us walk together, for instance, he'll do whatever she wants. With me, he does whatever I decide. Okay. But sometimes with her, she'll say, he was great. No, he was really difficult. How does one facilitate that? I think the first thing women have to realize is how much they are in their emotions and how much they think about things. Right? So the fact that we go into the silence and the calmness and just we follow through is that's the spirit, the instinct and the mind. And that's what's walking the dog. But in my experience, women go into the emotional vibration. And then there's a Castelo. Let's go. And they begin to have an intellectual conversation. So the dog knows that that human is only using half of who they are, which is the heart and the mind. Right? And so it's very important for women to remember that spirit is a powerful thing. And say, how are you going to practice silence? And it's instinct is a powerful thing. How I'm going to practice instinct breath, your calm inside. Right? And you just want to go from point A to point B, very simple, very practical. You're not negotiating. You're not looking at anything else. You're not distracted. You're just going, you know, for the task. And then the dog just follows that silence, the calmness and the confidence is when the human doesn't use that vibration that a dog has an option to get distracted, to do other things, to go away from the routine or from the structure from whatever you want to, you want to do. But at the same time, the same woman can write a horse. In order to write a horse, she had to be quiet, calm, confident. Oh, yeah. My my first girlfriend was a, she had horses at home. Yeah. They had a stable below their home. They actually weren't that wealthy, but their dad actually had like a, not even a junior high school education, he came over from Greece, he became a taxi driver. And he was going to give his daughters this life and they had this horse. And it was incredible to see her because she was very, very quiet person, actually, very artistic. Yeah. And but with her horse, and he was a wild one, he was gilded late. And so it was a whole thing. And but her in the presence of that horse, like she just understood, because he was dangerous. He was actually a dangerous animal. And I totally different side of her came out. And so the first time I realized, I was like, I mean, I was a teenager, right? But I was like, well, like she has this immense power. That's not like the kind of power that we think of. Of course, women have power, you know, all this, but it was a completely different landscape. And I was like, whoa, I mean, first of all, I can't do that. Right. I had to learn to be around him. But just the, the level of calm and confidence to clean a horse, like, you know, a horse can kill you. Yeah. Right. But if you walk around going, oh my gosh, this horse can kill me. It does not go well. But exactly. You know, so what we have to remember is is the human part before the gender. Right. So just go back to your human. Can a man and a woman write a horse? Yeah. Why? Because they're using the same energy and the same philosophy and the same actions. So it's because it's a man or a woman. No, no, it's because they're using the same energy. So it's a human thing. Right. Not a gender thing. Right. So I invite, you know, my, my female clients to don't forget, you also have this calm, confident inside of you that you dog needs. Right. Craves. And especially in Europe, because most of the time people call me because the dog is in a fight state. Right. So most of my cases are aggression. And so in your case, you have no choice. You have to lead the pack. And the only way you can lead the pack is with calm confidence. You love the pack with love and joy. So you already know how to do that. Right. You have to get, you have to tap into what people call mass ill and energy. right? So, you know, can a woman write a horse? Yes, she has to be in this energy to do it. You see it? She has to. So she just have to learn to recognize, okay, I'm not changing me. I'm just using everything about me, right? It's like a man can a man use the feminine side? Yes, you can. Of course, you have it, right? As you love joy and your masculine is your calm confident. Silence is for everybody. It's your patience, right? So, silence is before calm confidence or love joy. And this is what they call feminine and this is what they call masculine, right? So, however you want to call it, just be the whole human. Use your spirit, use your instinct, use your heart, use your mind, trust respect, love, and then do whatever your mind wants to do. It has nothing to do with women or men. But if we divide and we see each other's different, they say, "No, it's because of my woman I have to be emotional." Yes, you can be emotional at the right time, just like a man can be emotional at the right time. Nobody's saying that to be loving. What we're saying is how to use this energy for good, where you reward good behavior on humans and good behavior on dogs with the energy of love, right? If the energy of love can change bad, it will be no bad man in the world, right? Because moms normally give you love, but love doesn't change the bad energy. It's the calm confidence that change the bad energy. The idea that society is broken, humans are broken. I mean, there are a lot of problems in the world right now. Purposefully, by the way. Tell me more. If we get the wrong information, we're going to be no connection communication relationships, so how can we become powerful? Because when we unite, and then we become powerful, the pack unite. But if the pack is separated, the pack fights, flight, and avoid each other. So purposely, we get the wrong information. That's what my goal is to give people the right information. If you have low money, middle-class rich, that really doesn't matter. We should all know the same thing about dogs. We should all know the same thing about God. We should all know the same thing about earth. All of us has nothing to do with what position and the baguette economically speaking. So what does that world looks like? Well, that world looks like like all humans around the world. Regardless of the economical position, they're all going to have an amazing relationship with dogs. How? Because they all have the same information. That's it. I love that. I feel like we're drifting further and further away from ourselves as a species. What I'm hearing is that looking at our interactions with this other species, dogs and looking at our practicing our ability to get outside ourselves and tap into other aspects of ourselves. The need for calm confidence when we just want to be loving. That's really about wanting to be loved. The person coming home is not that the dog needs their love. They can hear, "Oh, you know, actually the dog needs calm confidence." But I translate it as, "No, this person just feels so tired at the end of the day." What they need is something that just adores them. The whole process of raising Costello was one of reading your book, really. This is why you're here. I mean, because I saw and experienced so much value from your teaching and then realizing that if I really want to get what I want, yeah, it means building the relationship means not doing this thing in the moment. I'm thinking about the whole relationship. Safety first. It's this kind of counterintuitive thing of needing to go against self in the moment to create the sort of picture where you get so much more and everybody wins. There is a version of everybody, including the dog's wins. Everybody wins. But it requires a level self-discipline awareness, calmness, breathing that I think many people, and certainly in that time, I felt like just so much constant pressure to do, do, do. So there's a certain amount of slowing down and self-awareness that's required for everything that you're describing. What is your practice for that on a daily basis? I mean, you're a master now. You're a virtuoso at this. But for the, I would say, there's unskilled, skilled master in virtuosity. You're up. Back on the background of the background. But so for somebody who's trying to move from unskilled to skilled in the domain of like slowing down, thinking about what the priority in this interaction is, getting all that working while life is happening in real time. Well, what's happening? And I was coming through the phone and this and that, schedules. How do you recommend, young or old, that people start to cultivate this awareness and this? I think the quicker we become aware, what is life about? Right? Because we all going to die. And so what is life about? And life is about life, right? Life has to be happy, to be healthy, to be loving, and to be smart. That's life. And then it's time. How do you structure? How do you manage time? Right? And then it's memories. That's all you take. Once you realize those three things, I think you're going to be able to focus and experience life the way animals do. Because they're very grateful of life, the structure time very wisely. And then by the time they die, they only take good memories. That's all you take, good memories. And so the quicker we surrender to that concept, the quicker we are going to focus on what's valuable. And things that we can definitely practice, that this concept of love. And so that to me is be grateful of life every day, be thankful of life every day, learn with your mind to learn, to achieve, give it away. It's very important to be at service and make other humans, or animals achieve what you just achieve. And of course, the energy of love to love those three things about it, right? Your spirit, your instinct and your mind. Learn to love that about you. Because that's who you are. So who sees a Milan? See a Milan is a spirit. He's an instinct. He's a heart and he's a mind, right? So then man, I value that so much. And that once I value that, it's easy to love what you value. You see it? It's easy to love what you value. And so once you realize this natural, simple, profound self, you want to give it away. I give it away to dogs. And because I do that, I get to rehabilitate dogs. The people unconsciously have confused. See, because dogs in America, you know, dogs in toward country are skinny, but they don't have psychological problems. Dogs in America are chunky and I get to have a TV show. So dogs in America should be the happiest, healthiest, loving, smartest dog on earth, because that dogs in America have rights. You understand that concept, but why would a guy from Mexico comes to America and National Geographic gives him a TV show? Because America created five flight avoidance unconsciously, even though America loves dogs more than any other country I've ever seen in my life. Dogs have birthday parties in America. Dogs have Christmas presents in America. Dogs get married in America. Dogs get married. Yeah. That's, you know, taking the humanization to another level, but that's just shows you, you know, the creativity of human. But now because the dog has all this money, fame and power, the dog is happy. My goal is for people to understand that, you know, happiness and health and having a good heart and having a good creative mind, it shouldn't take too much. It's just about being grateful, right? It's just about being thankful. It's about loving those two things and then make sure that you mind, learn, achieve, give it away or learn to turn it off. So don't use your mind to think bad things. What's your process for turning off your mind? This is a very common challenge for people. I think the easiest way for people to experience because they have to see it, right? You can tell people, but if they don't see it inside, they're never going to see understand what you mean. So what I help people with is I put them in the cold plunge, right? And once they go through the five flight avoidance, they want to see and they get to the calm surrender, what are you thinking? I'm thinking nothing. That's exactly what what a clear mind looks like, right? So through that cold plunge experience, the human gets to understand breath, patience, you know, confidence and not to think anything because you're doing this with your spirit and your instinct and your heart. This is your mind just have to wait for the three minutes. That's it, without anticipation. So it's just nothing there, right? And then of course the cold doesn't let you think, right? But the only thing you can do is breathe, right? Wait. And so then once they see it, okay, that is the meaning of not having nothing in your mind, right? So I make him experience it versus if I just tell them they can't picture it as somebody who's a real believer as you probably know in deliberate cold exposure. I mean, I think it's it's people, it's zero cost. I mean, you use a cold shower. Yeah. You know, it saves on the water bill. So it's isn't like having to run out and buy something. What it tells me because the cold plunge immediately, reliably releases adrenaline. Yeah. Which then wakes up the brain as well. Does your instinct shuts down the four brain? The very is fascinating that you're saying this because the four brain is strategy, etc. But in the first 20 or 30 seconds of deliberate cold exposure, the prefrontal cortex, which controls all the top down inhibition of impulse is it's not shut off, but it is greatly diminished. You can't strategize. well, you're just thinking out, you know. So you're saying people need to get past the point where they're trying to suppress impulse, but they need to experience adrenaline. That's right. Got it. Yeah. That's right. And they get to peace. Yeah. Yep. And that's the energy to bring to your interaction with your dog. Yeah. And ideally to your spouse and your kids too. Everywhere. Everywhere. So a human after a cold planch brings that energy. You don't have to talk. Everybody knows your energy feels really good. All because you went to Mother Nature. Right. That was Mother Nature. Cold. Right. It's water. Cold. That's Mother Nature. Right. So imagine you bring that energy to you to to to meeting a dog to walk in with a dog to feed in a dog. That's it. That's all I want people to experience because everybody wants to they want to do that. Right. Oh, they want to do it. I'm not aware how I feel. I just want to give affection. You see it? So that that is good for the human. Not necessarily good for everybody else because that human spread in that energy. So my goal is for people to spread, you know, silence, calmness, confidence, love, joy because that's exactly how you feel after a cold planch. Exactly in three minutes. You get into that state. You have to learn to love, you know, the process of I'm going to fight flight avoidance, but I'm not going to listen to that part of me. I'm going to listen to my calm surrender. I'm going to listen to my calm confidence. And then once I finish, I'm going to listen to my happy galaki. And that's all you want. That's it. Those three state of mind are super powerful. You know, I've thought a lot about deliberate cold exposure adrenaline and or epinephrine. You get this long arc of dopamine that lasts hours and hours and hours afterwards. And then by critics, we'll say, well, it's just dopamine in the body, not in the brain. Actually, new finding show it's dopamine in your brain and body. Long arc very few things produce this thing of long lasting dopamine. Drugs will spike in dry. Well, good relationship with a dog is long lasting dopamine. You know, a well balanced dog is a long lasting whatever you want. You know, I hope you want the four worlds. Your spirit, your instinct, your heart and your mind, all of them by walking. Just walk with the dog for a long period of time. Then you do your play explorer. That's the best medicine any human can can get. It's the the amount of peace that I still get from my relationship with Costello. I mean, he's past now, but he's still. Yeah, I believe in his spirit is, I mean, out spirit. It makes me well up. You know, not a sadness. It's like I can feel the love of the relationship. Right. You know, I had to ask and on my list and I'm going to ask this is the right time, I believe. So as Costello got to 11 years old, it's pretty old for a bulldog. He had a some sort of spinal stroke. He couldn't walk. He was falling over. I was like distraught. How can I get this fix? And at some point I realized, you know, when people say like they'll let you know, yes, I had a feeling and then a thought and it went something like this. I made a contract with him to take care of him. Yeah. And in the contract of being a really good dog owner, but like mostly in the contract of the relationship, I owed him a a peaceful exit, hated going to the vet. So I got someone to come to the house and do this thing. Most people they hate the concept of death, especially in family members or a dog. And I think it would have been useful to me to understand the day I got him that someday this is going to end. Yeah. And I think like this thing about honoring death as a real thing is so important because that last two weeks was a real struggle between me and myself. My desire to just keep it going and I realized I was being selfish. It was about me. And of course, I gave him the best passage I could. And people in my life who knew me and knew my relationship to him, they said, I actually can't believe you did it. I'm surprised you were able to. But the moment I realized like this is the final line in being in the contract of being a really good dog owner, I was like, of course, I have to do this. Yeah. So no one likes this topic. But given where you're from, what is your relationship to the concept of death as it relates to dogs? And the question is very specific here. Do people say they know they'll let you know? Yeah. The question I want to know is, is it okay to show your dog sadness or does it make the dog that's dying more anxious? With my kids, because I have two kids and you know, obviously we have a pack of dogs and they have experienced dogs passing. We always make a celebration. I always bring them to their favorite place. So I definitely bring more of the energy of happiness. And I ask my kids, if you want to cry or whatever, just do it away from them. Otherwise, you hold them. Right. So I don't I want them to go back. That's why it's so good to think to believe in God because they're going back to the source. So they're way better with him. They're with, you know, a hearing. I did my homework right too. Also, so I feel really good that I gave the best life for that particular dog, right? And so when it's time to go, they tell you, they tell you that, you know, as many many signs, but at the same time, you know, when is the day is everybody happy? Everybody's happy. We're going to dance. We're going to celebrate. We're going to, you know, it's a ritual. You can make a sad ritual or you can make a happy ritual. You see, it's time for them to depart. It's a time to go. So when I die, I want everybody to be happy. I don't want no sadness. I listen. My life is beyond what I thought, right? So I give that same life to a dog. Same is, I'm very dedicated human. Seven days a week, even if I don't feel good, it doesn't matter. I go and walk that pack. I'm very committed, right? I saw about honors, about respect. It's just my way of showing my heart. And then my mind, I don't have one day that I, I did wrong by them. So when it's time for them to go, it's time for them to go, but we're going to make happy about it because they're going back to God. That's how I see it. And, you know, as you said, as you're talking about, the spirit never dies. You know, spirit never dies. And it's an opening for me to help another soul and another soul. Because that's why I'm here, right? I'm here on earth to my time can be used wisely to keep helping. And that's what I find, you know, my inspiration, motivation. That's it. Beautiful. Not what I expected, and I'm so pleasantly surprised that it challenges me to even say it because he's still so new, but when strumber dies, the last 24 hours of his life will be a celebration with him. Yeah, celebration. All right. Yeah. There's copy spirit, you know, saying love, dance, you know, just happiness. Because they, once you start going like this, they don't, they, they get worried, you know, and then the spirit lingers. And you don't want it. You just want it to go, you know, and for them to give you direction, protection. This, you know, I have a big pack on heaven. You definitely have a big pack waiting for you. When I go home, yeah, I'm going to have the beetle. How many dogs have I saved my life? So, yeah, I'm going home. I love it. You know, earth is a beautiful home, but it's temporary. Yeah. Well, I believe this too. Yeah, I've talked a bit about my faith has now is not the time, but I'm, you know, my audience knows I'm very, very much in, in agreement that, you know, this is, this is an amazing phase of us. Yeah. But it's not the only phase. And so if people are feeling sad, like, you know, the number of people I know who turn to their dog for emotional support, yes, around a loss of a loved one or a breakup or loss of a judge is the world, whatever. Yeah. What is your stance on that? It's bad because they're passing that energy dog doesn't know what happened. Yeah. But I mean, obviously they're going to help you absorb the energy, but after you did that, just take him to the beach so you can let go to the energy. Same thing when you bring a dog to a hospital, right, in the therapy dogs, they go to hospitals, you know, kids with cancer, the press people, blah, blah, blah, that dog absorbs that energy. Okay. Just like you will and absorb people's energy. Your job is to go and let it go. So every time you give bad energy, you know, help people or help dogs to get rid of that energy that is not healthy for them. Yeah. You realize it, you know, it's available. But again, you can also go and take a cop lunch before you hug the dog. And that way you kill that energy, you know, kill bad energy. Just kill it and only give good energy to your family. Give good energy to your home. It's discipline. It's easier to go and throw that negative energy that you just grab. It's easier. But then you spread that whole thing everywhere. Oh, man. I saw in so many laboratories where the boss, you know, brilliant scientists, thinking about one in particular, and they would do this like what I would call trickle-down anxiety. They'd be stressing. They'd walk through the left, stressing out. Graduates school is already hard. Yeah. Especially in the, if I may, in the sciences. Yeah. Very, very hard, very competitive. Postdoc is even more uncertain. Like you don't, you don't get a degree at the end. You're investing five years of your life, you know, and to walk around the boss, walking around like making people anxious. Yeah. Terrible. The other thing that was terrible was walking around making people feel overly confident. People would do that too. So everything you're saying, it's like you could see it in these very hierarchical human relationships. But I think with dogs, we're so, what I'm just going to say, I feel like we are so selfish as a species. Like that these animals are here for us and just for us to give me [BLANK_AUDIO] when I get home to console me when I'm sad, to give me all the things I want, that I would be blind to the basic needs of that animal. It really is, it's as selfish, in my opinion, as saying, oh, these are animals that we work on, that just serve our purposes to advance our careers or scientific understanding. And again, there's a place for that, but we have to be incredibly nuanced about where that's appropriate and where it's inappropriate. It's a selfishness. - The selfish part and the unselfish part. So what I'm saying is don't forget to be at service before somebody's at service to you. So the spirit instinct, love to be at service. And then the love and the mind loves to be served. So this is your selfish part of it and this is your unselfish part of it. You see it? So you're here to serve God and you're here to serve Earth. All right, so don't forget that, to be at service 'cause they skip it. So once you go directly to the heart and the mind, this is what I want. I want my dog to love me at that. Okay, fine, you just skip spirit and instinct, right? 'Cause a spirit will never bring bad energy to the heart. And instinct will never bring bad energy to the mind. - You see? - So if you remember that you are four things and this is what you want to give to your dog, to yourself, to your house, to your family, and then you're gonna be focusing on making sure that you snap out of it whatever, like you do it on yourself, snap out of it, right? And then you go bring patients, calmness, comfort, love, and then you go hug the dog. So you also have to learn to snap yourself out of it from whatever energy you went and attract. It's like stepping on poop. You gotta remove your shoe before you walk into the house. Otherwise you bring that scent. So energy is the same way. It's like poop on your feet. Bad energy is the same. You're gonna spray it all over the house. - Absolutely. - Your plans are gonna die. Your dogs are gonna be like, okay, this energy is not good. So we, right, and then your family will get it. So you're gonna enter into this dark energy. - These days on social media, there's so much, I'm realizing about the low level stuff. Like you should never hug a dog. You should hug a dog. You should never pick up your dog off the ground. It's okay to pick up. Your dog should never be in your bed. Your dog should be in your bed. You see all these contradictions. You see the same thing in the health space. Like you should co-punch. You shouldn't co-punch. You should sauna. You should, and it comes down to a basic fact, which is that it's not about the practice. It's the principle behind it, the spirit behind it, the energy behind it. So I was tempted to ask you like, is it bad to pick up the dog? Actually, Stromer loves being held. - Right. - You still hate it. He's basically happiest just being carried around. But I know I don't carry around too much, but it's funny, he just drapes. He's so happy that way. He wishes he could go through the world that way, frankly. It's not about carry or no carry. It's about what is your energy? Why are you doing this? Is it for you? Is it for them? - Correct. - Okay. And if the dog feels, because you can ask a groomer or a vet, they have to carry that dog. But they can't carry a five-flight avoidance. - Right. - They can only carry a happy, go lucky one or a calm, surrender one. Those are, so it's nothing wrong hugging a dog. It's nothing wrong putting a dog on the bed. It's nothing wrong. It's what state of mind the dog was in when you did this. It's more important, right? Because what if a dog is in a flight state and you wanna carry him? He's gonna feel trapped. And then the dog is gonna bite or is gonna pee or is gonna scream, right? So you could prevent that just by not focusing on what you wanted to do. It's the dog that you want to do that in a calm, surrender state, right? Can the dogs stay on the bed? It's not the wrong, you know, sharing your house with the dog is, think about invading versus inviting. Okay, so when the dog goes on his own, he's invading. When the dog is waiting and then you tell him to come over and you tell him where to go, that's being invited. So that mind is gonna become surrender. The other one is gonna get territorial. You know how many times I have rehabilitated dog who claimed people's bed where the husband can't come near. Oh my goodness. The bed because the wife and the dog were already there. I done a rehabilitation where the husband slipped in the living room for three years because she wanted the dogs to stay on the bed. And when every time the guy came into the bedroom, the dogs were well after him. I'm sure everyone is thinking, what did he do wrong? This is, you know, we're living in this time now where there's this projection of, like, well, he must have done something wrong. I don't, I can also imagine the situation you just described where no one did anything wrong except give the dog too much power. Correct. That there's actually, let's assume there's no problem between the couple. Correct. She would like the husband in the bed perhaps, but the, but the dog is somehow picking up on something. Yeah, no, no, she said it clearly to me, I just don't want him on the bed. The husband, okay. So there, the dog is basically taking advantage of the old and so on. Well, listen, let's say you guys want to spend 20 minutes on the bed, let me show you how to do it. And so that's what I thought the dog just to wait. Wow, right. But she needed to make sure that she agrees with agreement commitment followed through it. Nothing can happen without agreement. So she needs to be in 100% agreement. Otherwise the dog will not do it. They really consents. Yeah, any kind of small fraction of resistance. You're energy goes down. They're going to take over. You're energy goes up. They're going to move away, right? Your energy have to be bigger for you to create a follow. If your energy goes down, you follow them. Simple as that. Simple as that. You just have to remember energy, right? And then if you want to lead, this is the animals. You can lead humans lying to them all day long. But with animals, you can't. You have to bring the perfect energy, the right energy, and energy that belongs to all of us, right? Your patient energy, your calm energy, your confident energy, your love energy. We all have that inside of us, right? God gave us all the same thing. That's up to you. But do you go from the back of the pack to the front of the pack? That's up to you, right? But you have patience, confidence, confidence, love, joy, because that's how you go into the your with life, right? So with animals, it's a perfect way to maintain this within yourself, right? It's like a gym going to the gym every day, right? That is just the gym, it's mother nature, the beach, the streets, whatever. You're just walking around with dogs in a natural, simple, profound way. That's it. And then you've got to work. So imagine if people develop this pitiful habit, okay, I'm going to do what Caesar says, you know, silence, confidence, love, joy for 30, 40 minutes. And then I'm going to feel the silence, the confidence, then I've got to work, right? And when I come back, I'm not talking to talk to my contacts, and then I go back in her. And then I can do the greeting. And then I go out for another walk, right? And then you can do the play and explore. No bad behavior would happen in your house with that simple formula, love it. I hope that people start to think about their dog and getting a dog as more of a gym as opposed to, I mean, we're going to get a fur baby. I have a friend, I have to be very careful here. This is truly not about my household, but I have a friend, she's married, they're going through some struggles, they have two kids. And she told me the other day, they never had a dog. She's going to get two husky puppies. And I said, do me a favor, just get one in six months if you, but they want each other. This is not, and the kids are young, you know, and I know the struggles that they're having and they're both overworked, they're under resourced. So this is, and they love each other very much, but this is like a really hard situation. Right. And I'm thinking to myself, I want to be supportive. And I said, do not get a puppy now, and if you do, do not get two puppies, this is like insanity. Like you, like you want to, like it could break your family or, and she said, well, I promise the kids I'll break your heart because you have to get rid of the dogs. So this is, she said, my, it was a story, it's very interesting. She said, when I was growing up, my parents would make these promises and they wouldn't do it. And I told, and it broke my heart and I told my kids they could each get one. And I said, I said, well, you have no idea the kind of heartbreak that are going to experience. When you have to give them both back because one is biting the kid or one is like, and she's like, oh, I wouldn't work out. And I was thinking myself, and you're already under resourced. Yeah. I've shared this because I'm realizing throughout today's conversation, our concept of dogs and what they owe us is completely backwards. She's a very good person. Yeah. I won't state her profession for a second, but she's in a, a profession of intense service all day long and has, I've known her for more than two decades. But the concept is these puppies are going to come here and rescue us. Yeah. This is something of the feel, of the dream that I had, with my parents. More love. Just more love can't be bad, more love can't be bad. Yeah. And they're huskies, right? And they're huskies. So this is a breed they love to migrate longer than any of the breed in the world. Right. So walking is one thing. Migration is another thing. This is why I got a bulldog. This is why I got a bulldog breed. I actually didn't get a purebred bulldog because they have issues. But yeah, a dog that needs to migrate. How much walking do they need per day? Ideas. And especially a pack. So the bigger the pack, the longer the walk. I don't know. They both work so much. You can also let her know. Hey, begin with a fostering. So that way they get to know themselves as a family. It's everybody in agreement. It's everybody understand. what the rules boundaries limitations are, is everybody understands what the responsibilities are. Can we all see our good habits and our bad habits? Do we all follow through? So with a foster dog, you're not adopting it. You're just temporary keeping them in that house. So the dog gets a home and a family. It doesn't necessarily have to stay in that house, but the human gets to learn about themselves before they enter into the purchase or the adoption. So to have two puppies, Huskies, you got to have to purchase them, right? And so she's going to go into make a purchase and then eventually she realized we were not ready as a family. And my mind, I was ready, but in the whole pack, we're not ready, right? And the puppyhood is this from birth to eight months. So in a matter of six months, you have a dog that is this big who's an adolescent now, right? Now you got to think about spaying neuter because if you don't, then you deal with the hormones and then they can start fighting with each other. What's your take on spaying neuter? Well, in America, it's necessary because dogs are not going to mate. And so, and they spend a lot of time in the door. So I neutered Costello, yeah. I put him on testosterone therapy his final two years. That's that I knew said we would love to be able to do that more, but there are reasons we don't. With a strumber, I thought, keep him intact. Yeah. Then people say, Oh, but then they're going to mate with all the dogs in the neighborhood. You can also give a dog a sect to me. This is very easy procedure. It's funny. We don't do that. I learned that in Australia, it's illegal to not neuter your dog in Scandinavia. It's illegal to neuter dog. What in the world is best? Well, it depends on the on the on the place, right? Because in America, without a doubt, since the dogs don't go out as often. They rely on the human dogs in a total country. They're not neuter, but they're not looking for trouble. They're not, you know, they make when the female gets in heat. Otherwise, they're busy looking for food and water. So, you know, as long as you use your energy for survival purposes, you're not going to develop frustration. So what happens, you know, when a dog is intact and they don't get to walk enough, and they don't get to be challenged enough, and then it all goes into the arouse and the whole day, they're excited. And people go, "Oh, baby!" The thing comes out, right? And then the dog gets excited. How many? I don't know if you've ever seen it, but I've seen a lot. Dogs humping their owners, or those humping furniture in the house. I mean, Costello tried to hump me once. They'd never happened again. I just made it very clear that wasn't okay. And I used isolation. I just put him back in a thing. I left, came back. I sent him the message mentally, energetically, that's never happening again. It was very stern. They have to be clear. They want. So that happens and they want, but a lot of times people go, "Oh, no, no, no!" So they more celebrate that, right? And so they end up in a celebration and end up funny, but the dog end up becoming more and more arouse about the humans. So now he's mounting, which, as you know, is a sexual end-us-dominance, behavior towards the human. So, in America, definitely a dog needs to be neuter more often. Plus, we have an overpopulation. Millions of dogs die every year because there's an overpopulation problem, and that's taxpayer money who pays for the killing of dogs. So it's important that we regulate that. That's the only way you can regulate that. I see these crazy things on Instagram. Someone says, "When you pet your dog, it should be slow. No, when you pet your dog, you should row. I'm guessing doesn't matter. It's the energy behind it." Yeah. I mean, you obviously don't want to push against the fur, but somebody was saying, you know, all people are like petting their dog too fast. They don't like that. Is this just people making stuff out of the dog? If a dog is doing agility, and a dog is like excited because he's doing an agility, pet him hard, pet him fast because you want him like that. But if you want the dog to be in a restaurant, pet himself. So it's dependent what you want the mind to feel. You see what I mean? You don't want to pet fast in a restaurant, you know, and slow in agility. So it's not the action is, what are you petting? It makes total sense. I mean, a soft, totally calm. A restaurant means calm. Agility means cover it. Yeah. That's like what FIFA is doing right now. Everybody's excited. Nobody's like, which is? With barking, I learned from your book, like if Castell, when he was a puppy, he could let it out. Yeah. And the temptation is to say, no, but why would you shout back to a dog that's vocalizing? So I would just walk away. And then when he was quiet, I'd come back and then pretty soon he realized, nobody wants to be around a barking dog. And somehow he knew instinctually that if there was a threat or someone, you know, he sends a threat, a bark, he only would bark once. He had this. I mean, he had this like, I mean, his, he was a beautiful specimen. You have to say he was just so beautiful, but his barks were like a bass drum. But it was one. And then we just, but he would never just sit there and bark. I think a lot of people, their dog barks and they talk to their dog. So presumably, the dog is barking because that's what gets them some sort of feedback attention. That's right. That's right. Or, or the dog is also his only way to drain energy. Right? Like when my dog obsessively barks, how often do you walk? Once a week, twice a week, or whatever. So, so the bark can become a way of draining energy or like destroying your house, you know, a destructive behavior. Why would a dog destroy what he's sleep? Well, because he doesn't do much with his body and his mind. So he has to drain that energy. And that's what we call the destructive behavior. But people don't understand that we're not, we're in a way practicing the destructive behavior by not doing what we supposed to be doing, which is walking a dog every single day. At the moment they wake up in the morning, they stretch. And the second thing they want to do is walk. Should you wait for your dog to get it up? What if you have to go to work? Should you force your dog to wake up and walk? I certainly would. They're daytime animals. So the biology is definitely as soon as the sun comes out, they should go. You know, they should go. This is what we do with stronger, even though bulldog, I mean, they'll sleep till 10 a.m. But we have to work. So we take them out. Take care of it. It's easier. It's actually better, right? Because it's easy, like, I got it. But then you drain the energy quicker. Yeah, it's way better because you want them to stay waiting for you in a resting state. So it's five body motions. The animals do they stretch as soon as they wake up, right? Walk, run, rest, sleep. So a lot of times when you don't walk the dog or run the dog and you want the dog to wait for you, he can go into a resting state. You see it? So it's very important that we follow the five body motions because every single animal, so when they wake up, they stretch the bird flies, right? And the dog walks and the rest of the animals, the water animals they swim, right? So there is a formula that they have. So we want them to wait for us. We have to leave them in a resting state. And that's the meaning of waiting state. That's it. But they can't wait or rest if the body and the mind has not been drained. And another reason why the walk is so important because the walk is the only activity from play and explore. They give them calm surrender. Play and explore gives them an excited energy. Do you recommend walking them on the same path, novel path, giving them new? And the beginning, yes, then the the same path is important. They create, you know, trust to the environment. But once they they they know very well, you have to change it. Yeah. And you don't have to change like even going in a different direction. You can just come outside and put food in the floor and tempt the dog to want to smell and correct them. So that creates a challenge. You see it. So you learn to ignore food in the floor and you see it. So you start creating your own universal studios. So your whole house or your whole environment becomes your own dog psychology center where you're challenging your dog, you know, to to not get bored. Because they learn a pattern really fast. And once they learn it, there is no growth. So then then the mind gets also frustrated or confused because there's no growth. I love it. I train strumber to run on the treadmill. Yeah. For little rewards here and there are intermittent reinforcement and he loves it. He runs now. He jumps on. He gets on that thing. It never occurred to me to do this. But I realized that we're in California. It doesn't rain too often. But even when it rains, I want to have something where I can go get his energy out. If it there's fires again, I want to be outside. Anyway, I'm so glad to hear that the treadmill is okay. You know, the first treadmill, like so, remember the show, The Jetsons? Yeah. That was the first dog I ever seen on the treadmill. And I was a kid. Then I count to America and I see a whole bunch of treadmills, you know, and people's garage and say, do you ever put your dog in the treadmill? I said, no. Can you put a dog in the treadmill? I learned that by watching The Jetsons. Very cool. Then I came and practiced it in America because people just had the treadmill, but they were not using it. You know, so that's when I start putting dogs in the treadmill. And people were just fascinated. But I say, listen, this is not for you to stay lazy. This is just for emergencies. Okay. And for you to challenge the mind. And that's it. But it's not it's not so you don't walk. Yeah, I do walk with them. then bring him back and then if he still has a lot of energy and I have to go, I get him going fast on an incline, get him right to his threshold and then play with the limit. That's right. We're done. I've been trying to share this thing with him like, this is our thing and now he loves the treadmill. We're dying to get on the treadmill. People become more like personal trainers, they will challenge the dogs a lot more like a personal trainer. You see it? So they will be able to, you know, challenge the mind and challenge the body, challenge the mind, challenge the body. It's a personal trainer, right? But people don't do it. They don't do these other titles, right? I just want to be a dog lover or the mom of this dog or the father of this dog. You can also be a coach, you can also be a religious coach, spiritual coach, intellectual coach. I mean, don't forget that it's four worlds. It's not just the emotional world and that's the only one you want to practice because that's the easiest one, right, to love a dog is so easy, you know, to challenge him, you know, spiritually and instinctually and intellectually. That requires creativity. Yeah. That's a great relationship. Yeah. So awesome, really. It's good for you. Yeah. Because if the dog is doing great, that means you did great. So it's a reflection of you, right? The dog is a reflection of you, your energy, your philosophy, your actions. So every time you work out with a dog, you're working out with yourself. It's just an unnatural, simple, profound way. That's it, you know, which is about trust, respect, love, faith, peace, love, body, mind, heart, just simple stuff, right? And that creates the off leash that is, you know, the ultimate, we should all accomplish. And you shouldn't pay for it, right? I'm not trying to get my, you know, colleagues, the dog trainers, not to get jobs, but it's kind of silly that you hire somebody to teach you dog off leash. You earn that. That's something we have to earn, it's good for us to earn, you know, that trust, that respect, that love. It's good. It's a good exercise. It's a good worker. That means you use your spirit, your instinct, your heart and your mind. Every single day of life, that's why that dog behaves that way. See, they keep you in track just to live a natural, simple, profound life. And when you're having a hard time in life, that's where you want to go, to your natural, simple, profound, you know, never let this one go. But to have a good relationship with a dog is automatically let you have a good relationship with God. They're together. We're the only one that separates them. We're the only one that separates everything, to create chaos. We make a lot of things up. What I'm hearing today over and over is that you obey the spirit. You obey the instincts, hours, and these animals, dogs in this case. When you put that first, then all the other stuff about, pat, pat, pat, like all the other stuff falls into place, but it's a moment to moment thing. It's a daily thing. There isn't a, well, I love my dog. It loves me. That's a story that's partially true. But there's actually, if I editorialize a little bit, there's actually a fair amount of abuse of the animal in that situation. It's very self-serving. There's abuse of the animal. But when we align all those things and we start from spirit, it all kind of falls into place. But we have to be vigilant and we have to basically train ourselves. It's all about training ourselves. That's why I train humans, rehabilitate dogs. That's my job. I train humans, rehabilitate dogs. You don't have to have a dog to talk to me because, you know, learning how to be with a dog is learning how to be in life, period, right? It's good for you to be a back member, a good back member at home. You don't need to know what to do position and just contribute to the family, right? And bring good energy, good philosophy, good action. Even if you're in the back of the pack, or the middle of the pack or the front of the pack, it's not only the front of the pack, it has to have good energy. It's because he is in that position, he has to be the fittest, right? The fittest is not only physically, but spiritually, instinctually, emotionally and mentally, you know, with the body to take care of all those four energies, right? So otherwise, it doesn't matter what position you are in the pack. Bring good energy, good philosophy, good actions, right? And one way that you can achieve this every single day is having a great relationship with a dog. It just makes you a good human. Everybody wins that way. It's not about training the dogs, about training the human to be a good human, right? And then that human is going to have good everything because that's what he's energy and philosophy and actions are all about. So imagine if the world is led by good humans. Yeah, that's a beautiful image. Yeah. Well, Caesar, I am immensely grateful for you coming here today. Thank you. You are incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly wise. Your energy is tangible from the moment somebody meets you. It's a real thing. I can say that having experienced it in the room, I'm sure people listening are hearing it and feeling it as well. You also have an incredible relationship to the spiritual of animals and humans and a real, what I hear is a wish for humanity and for animals and your relationship to the things that are timeless. The past, the present, what happens next, it's really incredible. I said it before, I'll say it again, three different ways for the multi-generational purpose of it. You're the man. You're also incredibly wise and you're a virtuoso of bringing together information in practical ways that people can not just learn how to take care of their dog in themselves better, but as you pointed out, be a better human. That's it. You're a special one. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Caesar Milan. To learn more about his work, please see the links in the show note caption. 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