Muse

I'm not saying that to give affection. I'm just saying give affection to patience and calmness and open mind, right? Because when your dog misbehave, 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, flight, avoidance. Those are the bad state of mind. The good state of mind is patience, calm, surrender, or happy-go-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 Millan, 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 Cesar 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 into 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 Mutt. 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 mudded with other breeds like this one, they breathe 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.

You can see 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 Cesar Millan. Cesar Millan. Yes, sir. Welcome, I'm a huge fan. Thank you. Same here. 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. Thank you. It's a true honor and pleasure to have you here. That's very kind. Yeah. In modern parlance, they say, you're the man. No, you're the man. The pack leader. That's right. Many, many people want dogs, have dogs, have 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. It's all 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, right? And so how? Well, that means the human has good energy. And what's good energy? Well, 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 learning how to breathe, right? The power of confidence, that's knowledge, right and the power of love when 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 world cup 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 is the comment before anybody's going to go to something so powerful uh 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 it's the same way we have to connect with a dog it's not just emotional it's not just intellectual you know 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 why i say trust respect love trust the spirit respect instinct love with the heart create with your mind for many people especially in the united states

they're not familiar with feeling energy and exchanging energy with a dog right i'll give an example of when costello my previous bulldog some probably bulldog mastiff 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 that's right spirit ah spirit animal species breed name you see so the last thing they are is the breed in the name so when i rehabilitate a 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-behaved when they understand rules by the limitation no matter what breed they are so it really doesn't matter if you have a pit bull or rottweiler german shepherd or i'm mexican and you're white and african america it really doesn't matter the race of the human what matters 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 that help other humans or they create well-behaved dogs because they're following in that path. You know, there is some people who 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 want to share briefly that I realized now is probably the spirit component, but it was something that I tried on the basis of what I read in your book. So I was walking him and sometimes he didn't want to walk in a particular direction, you know, so he was always walking my side and a little bit behind me. I had that going from very early point. I practiced no look, 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, 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 around, I'm 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. Yeah. 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 disapproval. That's right. And he would stop. It was wild. We were, you know. 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 you think this is crazy right yeah 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 the energy that I was sending yeah 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 what like what is this and 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 um the the power of prayer but uh my mom certainly is always connected uh you know when I crossed the border I felt 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're going to be, I mean, the fact that people are not aware of energy, we can feel that that 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 animals, they don't go into the mind. They stay within their 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 it. That's all you think about it. Even when you go to sleep, you're not talking about it. So you create the law of attraction. You create the law of creation. The most difficult law is the law of maintenance, right? Because it's easy to attract. It's easy to create. What's hard is to maintain, right? And that's why patience is so important or silence is so important, yeah? 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 that capability to trust. And then your intention, right? What is it that you want without 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 that's that's why a cat can control a rottweiler and a pitbull right when people feel oh 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 without saying

a word. That's exactly 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 into it. You know, I bring him to class. I taught a 400 person class. He would walk in. It was very interesting. Everyone, you know, dog, dog. Most professors wouldn't bring their dog 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'd just like glare it all up. He could light up a room, but I understood that I wouldn't let him be like too much of a celebrity or else he would start misbehaving. I had to remind him like, you know, we have a structure and an order. That's correct. 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 gives you a little bit, you know, agility into it. And you learn to control hunger, which in a third country, that's what we learn.

right? We learn to control hunger. We learn to be quiet. We learn to be calm. 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 apprehend of walk a dog off leash. You know, 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 it off leash because that's all I knew. You see it? And so that energy of silence, calmness, confidence is what now that I understand what I did is what led me to this event, you know, for people to see me from Englewood to South Central. It's a Mexican guy that walks a pack of dogs from Englewood to South Central, off leash. That's when the LA Times came and did a piece of me because they couldn't understand, you know, this concept of walking a dog off leash. This dog shaman or something. And a dog in the land of the free, right? Because, you know, dogs in America have rights, but that doesn't mean they can walk off leash. You see, 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 the dog should be the most well-behaved, then a dog is off the leash. You see, but the leash in the animal world is trust, respect, love. The leash in the animal world is that human understanding, you know, silence, calmness, 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. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking Element makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. My days tend to start really fast, meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise. So to make sure that I'm hydrated and I have sufficient electrolytes, when I first wake up in the morning, I drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with an Element packet dissolved in it. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So if you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash 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, if 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 this.

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 adapt 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 explored but the first activity he learns is to follow follow play explore so play and explore becomes like a reward activities that's the Chuck E. Cheese time right right and so the follow is the one they learn you know the rules boundaries limitations they learn 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 explorer. 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. In order for people to have a front of the 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 back, he becomes fearful. The middle of the pack should be the one for the families because they're naturally happy-go-lucky. But if you do too much excitement, they become hyper. You see it? And this is a crossbreeds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter if it's a bulldog or a, you know, a dachshund. And every litter is front of the pack, middle of the pack, back of the pack. But it's more back of the packs being born, like followers, then it's only one per litter, a litter of the pack. So that's what they call in the breeding world, a pick of the litter. See, so in a litter of German shepherds, only one, it can be a police officer. 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 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'm thinking United States, but elsewhere, because this is going everywhere and this episode will go everywhere, middle or back of the pack? 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 if that's what's appropriate? Sounds like that's the goal.

The front is going to be very easy to assess because he's going to be the biggest one. is going to be the one that's moving the sisters and the brothers away from the mom, right? He's already going to practice dominance. And then the middle is the second to get to the mother. And the back of the pack, they 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 can't, How can you assess if you're just looking at the litter?

Well, normally if you're in a situation, the breeder knows because that's what they put ribbons, you know, color ribbons. So they know, okay, this is middles, this is our back. Even though they don't call them that way, they just call them round of the litter, you know, pet quality in front of the pack. The front of the pack is just the obvious one, right? And so when, just go inside, you know, where the puppies are and there's no mother and nothing, just stay 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, and the front of the pack will go. And then in the middle of the pack, we'll go and play. It's hardwired. It's there. That's why you can guarantee good behavior, right? Because now you say, okay, I want a middle-of-the-pack Border Collie. I want a middle-of-the-pack Golden Retriever. I want a middle-of-the-pack pit bull. You can have it, you see, because that's going to guarantee to 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. They're born, you know, with the disposition of giving direction, protection. So whoever 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 the wars that I go through. Right. The divorces and all of that stuff. And I went through and I find my silence, my calmness, my confidence, my love, my joy, 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. Cause it will, it will require so much. I would need to find him a job. You see what I'm saying? Like a, like a border patrol, something like that. Looking for, 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 was Costello front of the back. I think he was. He was an enormous dog, I mean, even within his litter. And when I went to go pick him up, 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. He was... They claimed. Yeah, he didn't yelp, didn't yap at all. He just ate everything, took everything, peed where he wanted to, did everything. So 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, he's gonna be the pick of the litter. They said that, but definitely not. Quickly, it was clear that he kept a little bit distance. He is very sensitive. Okay, that's good. Much sweeter. Yeah, sensitive. Yeah, much more playful. And that's the part that I have to work with because they enchant us. I noticed with Strummer, he has figured out that if he gets into play mode, it lights me up. And then I have to remember to stay in my place, my proper place, because I'm trying to teach him here, this is the order of things. It's very important because I wanna 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 that's a little bit of a sensitive topic, right? Because every guy wants to say, yeah, I'm an alpha, not a B. Everyone thinks that way. I like to think in different circumstances, people can move up or down the 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 alphas, 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 call it what it is. It's a hierarchy, but that makes it sound like one is better. It just is what it is. You're either front, middle, or back of pack human.

That's their special magic, right? Being back of the pack means the master comes to render. So we have to learn to master comes to render. That's our more sensitive state of mind, right? So when I'm assessing and evaluating a dog, I go into my calm, surrender state. So I go in the back of the pack, 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 take advantage of this position, of this state of mind, right? The dog, the back-of-the-pack dog is going to tell you, listen, I'm here to master calm surrender. It doesn't mean I don't do happy-go-lucky, but he can never do calm confident.

Back-of-pack can't do front-of-pack. Never, never. And are we 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 versus what the dog can't. So it's important to understand that a dog is born with a position. And the human can go from whatever position he was born to different positions, right? Because it's a lot of, like you say, it's a lot of scientists, people who are 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 of 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 uh recommendation no look no touch 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 is wagged they're excited and i i'm like i'm gonna ignore my dog this feels like abuse right you know but i come in do my thing it's and then after some period of time and be 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, it almost would confuse him. Like, this is not how people enter the space.

Most people, I think, have a very hard time not greeting their dog with men and women squealing. That's right. My baby! It's good. 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. You know, I don't want to ignore my dog. And I don't want to, like, tell my dog that I don't love him, you know, because then the interpretation, the dog missed me. But, you know, 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, you know, when people see 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 intimate space. So it's a ritual. So it's three rituals that are very important for people to master with no touch, no talk, no eye contact. One is the meeting. Every time you meet a dog, always remind them about safe, peace, nose, eyes, ears, trust, respect first. And then is the walk. The dog right next to you, following you, quiet. And then when you feed. So those three activities are very meaningful to dogs, but it 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 and peace, of trust, respect, of nose, eyes, ears.

You have to tell them that. Dissect nose, eyes, ears for us. Because I think most people, because we're humans, especially in the U.S. and, you know, in Northern Europe or wherever. Yeah, England. It's speaking. Yeah, people are just speaking constantly, like, hi, hi, hi. you know, this is not the best way to communicate with a dog, who you are and what you're about and what the trust relationship. Well, it creates 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, that let's say you do that your dog has learned to welcome humans excited you see it so when a dog is born he burns with the nose open 15 days later they open the eyes 21 days later they 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 but when people wants to do ears size knows, they want to create a human. They want the dog to understand the way you and I understand. Hey, Andrew, how you doing? But we can control that excitement, right? At least we should. Some people can, right? But so it's a different ritual for us. We believe in parties. We believe in parades. For a horse to go to New York is a very excited place. It takes conditioning because no horse will ever volunteer going to New York. See, it has to be conditioned, right? Because you're bringing him to a very excited environment with his instincts, say, flight.

Recently, there have been these problems. Sorry to cut you off. 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 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.

Or you have to make sure that you keep eye on how is the spirit of the horse, is the instinct of the horse healthy, you know, is the spirit happy. You know, because 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 police dog can bite a police officer because it's overworked.

I have a few friends from the special operations community. They work with these dogs that jump out of planes, parachute, do- The Belgian Malinois. Yeah, the Malinois. 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 in to 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 the hierarchy. He's like, it sucks because 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 instinct. It's reaction. So at the moment your energy goes down, bam! Amazing. At the moment. So they keep an 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. They keep them that way. Yeah, they're vigilant. They keep them 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.

Until 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, you know, like, you know, get off me type thing?

Well, this also has to do with how much exercise, physically exercise, the dog has received, right? How long is his walk? Because 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 borders on abuse. It's really incredibly hard on an animal that has that much energy. But this is the same people that say, I love my dog. And my first question is, how long do you walk them? What is your recommendation? I realize it varies by breed and by age. Yeah, and by level of energy, because 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 a dog is at the back of the pack doesn't mean they don't have high-level energy, okay? Because the sled dogs, there is a lot of guys that go in the back. There'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 where 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 the back of the pack, it's couch potato, you know? 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. No, you can have a bulldog that is absolutely athletic. Absolutely athletic. He has that stamina to go. And, you know, obviously you have to help him with the breeding part because they just go into, you know, no limits. So you have to help him, you know, calm down. I tell you, Strummer has a lot of energy

compared to Costello. So, two minimum 30-minute walks per day as much as a couple hours twice a day.

With a backpack on, right? Obviously, the dog is a little older because, you know, the backpack adds that extra half hour because now the dog is carrying something.

So, a weighted backpack. Yes. And how should one assess, like, percentage of body weight of the dog?

At the beginning, you can just put a backpack because 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, a leash, a collar, a muzzle, a boots. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So psychologically, that drains them, right? Because they got to get used to it. So you walk into the dog, calm, surrender to it, and then you take it off. And then the mind will become very drained. Once the dog gets 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 going to 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, because a tired dog is never going to give you problems, ever. True. Ever. How? He doesn't have the energy to give you problems, right? And then on top of that, you create rules, bounds, limitations, such as just put food right here, but you can't touch it. So the mind now has to be disciplined not to touch it. Then the mind has to learn instead of doing this, to do this. And that requires 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.

Yeah, the first thing that I taught Strummer 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, because I had learned the hard way with Costello. It was much more stubborn. I could set food down. Yep. But 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 going to 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 nerd neuroscience 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 going to touch it. 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. So I have a rule. No, no skin in dog's mouth. This is just like it's all. All or none, make it simple. Cause when it's really cute when they're a puppy, their teeth are 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, no, but he wants to play. It's like no skin goes in his mouth. Then he, cause 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 going to be like, this is terrible, right? You're putting food in front of him and he wants to eat. and you're not letting him, but could you elaborate why this is so important to the dog's 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. They didn't know what they were doing.

Or they feel guilty because they didn't walk the dog. Guilt plays a big role in raising 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 structured walk since he was little. And people say that's too much for a puppy. 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 two to four, they follow. You know, they follow and somebody's always taking care. You can see it in the African wild dogs. There is always somebody that supervises the litter, but they allow them to follow, right? And then they go to a certain stance because they're growing. But as soon as the dog gets into six, eight months of age, that guy wants to walk more than 30 minutes, guaranteed. He doesn't want to stay in one place too long.

So all these people with their dogs home all day, or some people 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? It's 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 where the dog does exercise, but the dog is going in circles. So exercise for a bird is going for a fish. 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 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? Well, the dog is following them, right? They're in a follower state. And so the dog that lives with the blind is not allowed to get distracted because his purpose is to guide the blind. And the dog that lives with the homeless, he's not allowed to go in front. Consciously or unconsciously, the dog stays in the back. Nine out of 10 homeless people have a pit bull and the dog is well-behaved off-leash. I see a lot of them in my neighborhood. This is Los Angeles. It's incredible. Incredible, right? But in Mexico, every single dog in a total country, every single dog is off leash. So 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 their dog to be off leash. This is the nature of a dog. You see it, it doesn't make any sense, you know, once you hear it. You just have to help them by practicing the ritual of no touch, no talk, no eye contact. Let the dog be calm, surrender in front of you. Make sure they're in the walk. He's 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? That when you greet, when you walk, and when you feed. So then this dog is going to have this beautiful, silence, calm surrender. And this is the dog you bring into dog parks or dog beaches. And then your job is to make sure that the dog that your 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 bring my dog to dog parks. I used 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 AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. AG1 is designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy. And it does so by helping to fill any gaps that you might have in your daily nutrition. I get asked pretty much all the time, if I could only take one supplement, what should that supplement be? And my answer is always AG1. It has just been so helpful for supporting all aspects of physical health, mental health, and performance. If you would like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get a special offer. For a limited time, AG1 is giving away a free bottle of their new omega-3 coenzyme Q10 product. Omega-3 and coenzyme Q10 are known to support cardiovascular health, cellular health and energy generally, brain health, and much more. I personally take them both every day. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get a free bottle of the new omega-3 coenzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly five years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. The latest Eight Sleep model is the Pod 5. This is what I'm now sleeping on, and I absolutely love it. It has so many incredible features. For instance, the Pod 5 has a feature called Autopilot, which is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns and then adjusts the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It'll even elevate your head if you're snoring, and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep. If you'd like to try 8sleep, go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to get up to $350 off the new Pod 5. 8sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350. I've followed your recommendation with Costello and also with Strummer, exercise, discipline, and then affection. And affection, body and heart. And for many people, you know, they're going to hear that. I mean, it's reflexive for you now, of course. This is your domain, but they're going to be like this, but they don't want to walk first thing in the morning.

I want to cuddle with my dog first thing in the morning. I mean, my household now, I had to be really clear. Like, if we don't follow this, we're damaging the opportunities for Strummer. 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. The day always starts with a walk, then discipline training, and then food, and then some affection. Yeah. But it's not hours of, like, cuddling on the couch or anything. It's like a, you know, I mean, I love him. I would love to pick him up and treat him like a little baby much more often than I do. Right. But I just see the incredible results that come from this exercise discipline and then affection.

Well, just living a natural life is love. Because you're like, we want them to live as natural as possible. And so that's love in my eyes, like exercise discipline. Discipline is not punishment. Because that's a word that in the animal, the dog people, when they hear the word discipline on the dog, they put it as punishment. Yeah, they're thinking of a teacher hitting them. Yeah, like you're punishing the dog. And no, you're just making sure the dog follows the rules behind the limitations. The dog follows a structure, you know, and that's what we call discipline, right? 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 end up helping people is understanding the word so the word doesn't block them from doing the right thing, right? Which is your job as a pet parent, because now it's the title, pet parent, right? It's direction, protection, then love. Yeah, but most people want to do affection, affection, affection, and when it should be exercise, discipline, affection, body, mind, heart.

I think the walking part is so key, obviously. And I'll just say it. Tell me if you agree or disagree, if you want. But 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 can sense if your energy is on the walk or the energy is someplace else. Are you connected or you're disconnected?

Or you're in a flexi-leash with a harness on and you're in the phone, which is the worst. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so 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're connected to earth. But you can't be connected to technology. And the phone is the same thing. 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 really 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 and so what is prayer an imitation of everybody doing the same energy it's 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. This 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 right you learn everything through the the logical structures and you know science and science and my dad's a scientist and 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 an 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. Because I think it's going to be extremely useful to people 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? Per life and death. So it's just, that's when in the Mexican culture, we have the day of the death. So we learn to be okay with it. We learn to accept it because, you know, in Mexico or a thorough country, death is everywhere. You can see it everywhere. You know, I'm from the north of Mexico, Sinaloa, and you see people with the chop heads and hang up and, you know, you go to school and people are dead. So what do you end up doing in this moment? Well, you end up believing that God will protect you. That's your spirituality, right? And just like what I don't want a person to break into my house, you get a dog, right? And so that the mother nature to protect you. So for us, when we grew up that way, seeing death everywhere, we learned to surrender to this higher power, right? And we are what you believe, you know? So it's really good, you know, 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 pack leader, right? And we just surrender to that, right? As well, we surrender to earth, giving us food and taking care of earth. Because 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. Yeah. It was a Catholic country. Yeah.

Latinos. By design, we are taught to spirit first. And then second is mother nature. Yeah. It's like an order. And then you have to go to work. So job is number three. And then you have to love the family. And then love is at the end. But it's God first, earth second, And then there's family or work.

Well, here in the United States, we're raised very differently. Yeah, sell first. And it's also this idea that stuff is the portal to happiness.

That's right.

Having the latest phone, having access to all the apps. Shoes, a lot of shoes. Shoes, bags. I grew up with one pair of shoes.

You know, one pair of shoes. And so we grew up with nothing. But then, so how do we stay happy? Right? How do we stay happy? So it becomes like a belief system, right? And so that belief system, it has helped a lot of people that I know to stay happy. It's just happy people with nothing, which is the key, right? You first have to 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 is to love. Profound is 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, right? 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.

I used to joke because I'd bring Costello to my lab with me, a lab of about 15 people. I'd walk in with him and he'd go around and he liked walking into 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 to try and get them to play. You know, he was part of the lab and people really, I like to think they loved him. They told me anyway that, but I used to look at him sometimes and I 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 they're 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, it's almost like disappointed because people weren't feeding them the adoration that they felt they deserved. But no one cares, right? Because they're in their own experience. And I just mentioned this because in your book and these teachings of that, that we've been talking about today, they, 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 like most of the time when we think we're operating from a place of like knowledge and roles and all this stuff there's something that's been constructed by humans like a uniform to show this person's in charge they have all the stuff that reveals their accomplishments the degrees on the wall you take that stuff away and it's a very different kind of interaction like who's this person like what are they about like what moves them forward or back are they a good person or a bad person are they scared and And 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 you looking at it. That's 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. See it? They don't know how to do what we humans do. They just don't, right? So I listen to the human because I need to understand, okay, where is this human stuck, right? And then through that conversation, I go, okay, what about it? If we think of spirit, think about silence. Do you like silence? Okay, silence is part of the spiritual world. And what about calmness? Calmness, I think I'm calm. Okay, let's breathe. And then I change the instinctual world just by just breathing, right? And then I start giving the information so the intellectual world is more simple. It's more clear with the nose, eyes, ears, rules by the limitations. I'm just giving this simple information, right? So your mind knows how to execute, right? And then when do I love? Hold on. Just wait, wait. And 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 was a victim, right? I said, if you rescue a dog and then that dog was in a bad situation, that person goes and rescue a dog because he feels bad. And then that same person started 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, doesn't listen to the humans. at the moment I grab the same dog and I bring him to the ranch and I give him silence calmness and be part of the pack that dogs changes they live in the moment so really what happened to the past to a dog a month ago a year ago is irrelevant it's irrelevant what's relevant is how do you treat him now

right? And the only thing they need to become good 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. Or 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 can dogs 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 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 uh the nose eyes ears but it's versus without the It's just the animal in them is gonna 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 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 dogs doing tricks doing tricks or walking on their hind legs. None of that impresses me. I also like cephalopods octopuses. I have a couple of them actually, and I'm fascinated by them. And people think they're extremely intelligent and they may be, 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, right? Reward this and reward that. 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 onto other species. And 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.

Is that self-oriented first versus back-oriented? You know, what is what the pack needs versus what is what you want, right? So that is more like when the human just wants a baby, for example, and they get a dog. Humanizing a dog, is it good for the dog? No, right? It's not good. It's good for the human, you know? It's good for the human fantasy and fulfillment, emotional fulfillment or whatever thing they have in their mind. But is it good for the dog to be a human? Why would he want to be a human? Why did I try to do the same thing with a cat? Because what they say is, it's a cat. So you can't humanize a cat. You see what I'm saying? So the cat sends the human to hell, right? Yeah, because the cat only comes whenever he wants to come. So you can't influence anybody who doesn't want to be with you, right? The dog, you have to teach them to live without you, right? He has to learn to keep you distant because he's a pack-oriented. So you can influence a dog much quicker than you influence a cat, right? 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. You know, I was going to invite you to a ranch because we have all the species and we can assess and evaluate your dog better, right? With the chickens and the dogs and the different species so we can see the prey drive, you know? And you are going to be able to see, do you have a dog with prey drive and how do we block it, right? Or you have a dog with play drive and you just leave it open. Oh, I'd love to bring Stromer out there. Yeah, 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. See, I don't want a dog that has a protective drive. I'm not interested in that. I just want a dog that accepts everybody. Yeah, and that's a dog that is going to give you zero lawsuits.

Zero liability, right? Because he accepts everybody.

Oh, yeah. I know people in California in particular whose dogs charged other people lawsuits. Even if they didn't bite, that's a whole thing.

And it can be a Lhasa Apso. It can be a dog that was not meant for protection. But because he doesn't have rules, boundaries, limitations, he doesn't walk in. Every day the dog is bored, confused, or frustrated. And then he releases that because he's a predator. Dog by nature is a predator. They're going to move forward to release energy. You see it? So, but you want them to move forward with the right state of mind, right? Or when you tell the dog to move forward, right? 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, you know, putting people in a lawsuit, which another place where the dog doesn't know, you get in a zoo about it, you know? So, he's not going to, oh my God, we're going to lose money, you know? The dog is not going to understand that concept.

As humans, we project so much onto other species, other people. And 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 that I realize not all of this is under our control. That's my belief. and trying to invite certain things in. So it's not reflexive. I do it as a, 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 live an anxious life. We're the only species that follow unstable 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, right? That's practically it. 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 self. They should do 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 touch, no talk, no eye contact, and just help my dog to calm down. And then I'm going to give him affection. I'm not saying not to give affection. I'm just saying give affection to patience and calmness and open mind, right? Because when your dog misbehave, 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 flight avoidance those are the bad state of mind the good state of mind is patience come surrender or happy-go-lucky those are good state of mind 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 because I think many people feel devoid of real love and connection and the idea that they're fur 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 i when i heard first heard you say like they're you know they're spirit animal yeah you know uh species and then breed and then the name the name it was so helpful for me because um 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, you know, I stopped working with animals because it was really hard on my soul. Yeah. I understand biomedical research. 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. Well, I thought about that. So when I heard you give this description of, you know, spirit, animal, et cetera, I was like, he's saying, don't humanize these animals because it makes them feel unsafe. Yeah.

Or confused.

Or confused. Yeah. And years later, I realized, again, with all due respect to biomedical research and the need to make discoveries, I do think there's too much animal research that's unnecessary, these kinds of things. Some is essential, but et cetera. But I realized there, we're 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. And 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. I'm going to work with humans. Even saying I work on humans, you hear scientists say this is terrible, terrible. And I think words matter to humans because they shape how we behave. 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, et cetera. That's telling 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 this is the structure that I hear emerging that 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 FaceTime with you. 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 Frenchies. I said, well, you work long shifts. She goes, yeah, they're home alone. I come home and they're pooping and peeing. I feel so guilty. That's right. And my first thought was you shouldn't own those dogs, but she's in love with the dogs. I thought, well, okay. So I passed along a little bit of what I learned. 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 excited to see me that I couldn't just pick them up and just hold them, but it's

making them anxious. She's nurturing. The same nurse that is helping humans to be healthy. She's helping her dogs to be unhealthy. It's so contrary. 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? 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. Suburban 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 trust, respect, love. The most incredible relationship with a dog is, 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. Does energy really work? Yeah. What about if I have a good philosophy? Does that really work? Yeah, it works. What about if my actions are good? Does that really work? 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 trust, 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 safety. So a horse person is going to teach a child, don't scream, no touch, no talk, no eye 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, ask if you can pet them, right? But because in the horse world, safety is number one, how do you keep a horse calm? and you wait and then the horse come what how do they walk a horse the wall the horse is right next to the human never in front right so people can people you can see a little kid walking a horse you see it and the horse is behind the kit not in front of the kit 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 Wait until 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, dog is man best friend. Yeah, the dog has the best titles of all the animals in the-

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 you love who they are 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 and they'll say 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 something 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 things. 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 and primates in zoos. I'm not, I want to be clear. I don't, you know, 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, if you want to do an affiliative behavior with, with a monkey, you lip smack, which sounds kind of cute and funny. And people go, Oh, but you, 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, look, no look, no touch, no speak. 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 that'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 finance senses 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. I had fish and things like that, but I wanted a 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, what if he doesn't attack? And there was all this stuff. And then I read your book and I realized if 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 will be informative for people because we, the human brain just is 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 I really want to underscore because people hear affection last.

This is just guys being like, I'm alpha. No, it's the complete opposite.

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 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 what you want to love. 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 calm, and you will see the outcome. The reason why I said no touch, no 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 means. It means fight when you're looking at somebody. I want to touch him, right? And then when you talk to a middle of the pack, you're going to get him very excited. so if you practice no touch no eye contact to any position of the back what you're going to allow is nose eyes ears to come to you you see it so you're going to create a law of attraction the dog is going to come to your smell and then he's going to assess and evaluate can i trust can i respect do i feel safe are you a peaceful human that's what you want them to know about you that you can be trusted that you can be respected that you feel that you can be a safe source a peaceful source then once the doggy okay yeah you have that then the dog is going to sit right next to you it's going to do this or he'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 there's nothing wrong you just you're just following the steps you are the one who's being disciplined You see, to be a good leader, you have to be a good follower. So you have to understand the power of calm surrender. You have to understand the power of patience. If you don't understand that, you're going to be a terrible leader. So I'm not telling people to be a pack leader just because you're the doggone owner. 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, it's a celebration energy. This one is direction protection. What do we want of our PAC leaders, 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. is our instinct to want this, is our spirit to want this.

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going. I just got back to- We can learn a lot from animals, right? I think all leaders should show us themselves with a pack of dogs so we can assess and evaluate their energy well. know because they they say the philosophy we want to hear right 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 right look at Mexico right we always all a woman president as Mexico is gonna be well taken 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 it I mean? I don't like to dogs. I say, you know, listen, I'm going to bring you back your silence, your calmness, your surrender. That's my contribution to you because you humans made you fight flight avoidance. And boom, 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 brainwash the human all you want, lie to the human, and the human will vote. We're the only species that follow unstable 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 watched that series on Netflix, Chimp Empire.

It's fascinating.

it's very hierarchical, you know, troops. And the alpha occasionally will feel like he's losing some control over his troop. And he'll go on these displays where he starts breaking trees and beating his chest. And they look a lot more like humans. Humans look a lot more like them. But I saw an interview with Jane Goodall. You've probably seen this where they said, you know, what is your favorite thing about them? And she says, no, dogs are my favorite species. You can really trust them. All right. The chimps. I like humans. They're way too much like us. They lie. They cheat. I mean, if you watch Chimp Empire, brace yourself for, you know, when they decide they're going to ostracize a member of their group. Let's try them. It's, 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.

Yeah, good habit.

Waking up in the morning. I will say hello to Strummer. 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, cause I love him. My heart fills when I, when I walk in the room with him. 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 a like oh but he's like i want to cuddle him and i'm going to 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 cave to our own feelings of love but it can damage the safety and the general pack order. And then people think, oh, pack order sounds like not love. Could you elaborate a little bit on why it's 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 their home, because I like to assess evaluate the dynamics inside the house the dog is in the front wife is number two kids are number three husband is in the back back of the pack this is in the United States United States so why the dog is in the front she puts him there why because she only practice affection and why the husband is in the back because she practiced rules boundaries limitations with him you see it so look look so she is capable to practice leadership but she practices with the wrongs member in the house the dog needs the leadership right because what why did they call me because now the dog doesn't the kids can walk them you know the guy 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 Labradoodle. It should be the easiest one, right? Because those two breeds are practically, you know, the epitome of like most docile breed.

I know. I tell the Labradoodle people like, try raising a Bulldog Mastiff. Right. Yeah.

From eight weeks on. You'll learn a lot about yourself. It's a different strength, 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 practiced rule-bound 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, why are you giving love to? I'm so happy you're raising this.

I think some people will say, well, she has to treat the husband basically like a child because he's playing video games. I mean.

the assumption here that we don't know what the dynamics are between the husband and the wife right and i i have a lot of uh 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 uh it's a bit more of kind of the structure i grew up in at least for the early part of my life um 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 the kids and sadly we didn't have a dog but things are very different nowadays yeah 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 it's there's an agreement

there it's correct there's always an agreement yeah the agreement is that he surrender yeah that's the agreement at one point you don't want fight 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 we don't want that that exists too and that's bad also yeah my

relationship now with a woman is is i have that 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 happy wife, happy life didn't work for me. And so I just went back into, okay, I'm just going to become confident and attract a woman that wants to come surrender 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 couldn't I couldn't just not be masculine right or calm confident I just couldn't I just couldn't and that that's it works beautiful now oh it sounds like you've

hit the bullseye yeah there actually I've since we're talking about human relationships. I have a friend, he has a very happy, very successful marriage in the real sense that you walk into their home, like 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 the women that would be like partners good partners for you yeah 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's a very edgy thing to say you know at the time now you can have these kinds of conversations yeah and it 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 gonna like keep me in line. I was like, I was very shocked. I was like, this is incredible. But he was being honest. He wanted someone who was basically gonna like keep him out of his childlike nature when the childlike nature wasn't gonna help 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. It gets into notions of like all sorts of things. But this is a fundamental aspect of the human spirit. That's the instinctual 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 i my confidence is going to lead my pack right because that's what i do with dogs that's practically it i walk a pack of dogs so they all gotta go into a calm surrender state and so in my house i wanted the same thing because i want her to feel safe peace I want her to trust 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 confidence, high level of confidence, high level of love. I need to earn that position. I don't just want it. I earned 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 at. the mind not in the house was temporary 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 uh current relationship after your divorce to sort of feel into this and and think about how you were going to be that or um is this something that you decided to evolve in the

i realized that i was picking the i was picking the wrong woman right i was uh i was i i couldn't understand why i can pick a dog and and making the perfect i can pick a perfect dog for you like i I couldn't pick up the perfect woman for me. I just want the one for me, right? What I think is perfect for me. And so I had trouble because I had the wrong philosophy inside my head, you know, what a man should do or what a woman should do. It was the wrong philosophy, period, right? Once I changed the philosophy, then I went, okay, 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 PAC leader, but not in the house. She's a PAC 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 it. She came and said, I just want to give you my calm 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 also. Like there was a knowledge of self going into it.

Yeah, because when she's doing her business, she has to be a PAC leader. They get tired of being PAC leaders, right? They 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, calm, surrender. She needed to connect to her instincts, right? It was important because, you know, she connects to God. So she's come surrendered to God, right? So she's come surrendered to the business. But she needed to become surrendered to a man. But it has to be the right man. So I was the right man at that time, right? Because I earned the position. You know, I didn't just... Machismo is you're not earning the position. You're just a man and da, da, da. No, no, no. When you're a good PAC leader, you earn the position. You know who you are. You value who you are. And that's what you love. Self-knowledge, self-value, self-love. So I did my rehabilitation for me because, you know, even though my grandparent and my father taught me well about animals, they didn't tell me well about women. They said, you make money and you get whatever you want. That was it. Yeah, that's an incomplete. It's like, how do I assess and evaluate if that's the right woman? How do I do? How do I make sure I do good connection, communication, relationship? Everything I teach with a dog, how can I achieve it with my same species? Right? But I didn't receive information. I was 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 my, well, I'll just be direct. Yeah, please. I mean, I think my parents split because of a power struggle about roles in power. And my father's from a Latin country. My mother's not. But irrespective of that, it didn't matter. I used to think that was the reason, but it was... Now, fortunately, they both remarried. They've been remarried for a very long time, very happily to do a new partner. And my sister and I always say like, they're like with their perfect fit. It just like works because of exactly what you're describing, these dynamics. 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. 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 that 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 mean, yeah, a lot of confusion. And of course.

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, 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, or I'm 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 uh that what i was looking for is exactly what everybody looks for in a relationship human dog safe peace love trust respect 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 and my own species, you know, and, and, and, uh, and I'm, I'm the happiest I

ever been. Right. You, you breathe and exude happiness. I have to say it's, it's real. It's

tangible. It's amazing. Cause I was already happy with, 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, so this dream was bigger than what I thought, but then I couldn't have a good relationship with a woman, which was fascinating to me at that time, why I have five flight avoidance, why I don't have come, surrender, 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 give direction protection. But if I'm not, there's no need. So that makes me a very consistent man with my role. That's it. I keep my peace. I keep my patience, my calmness, my comfort, my love much every single day of my life. 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 deep desire, and fortunately I have it now, to not have fight or flight at home. Or from a dog either. Or from a dog either, right? That one would be scary. So I'm guessing that the home you grew up in had a fair amount of fight or flight. Otherwise, maybe that would be-

It was very machismo. You know, my parents still married, but that's all, you know, it was this way or 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 the dream of a woman, right? So she has to, you know, have just be a mom and stay at home. And it was hard for her, you know? Yeah, but that's all I saw, you know? Yeah, when my dad was disciplined, was disciplined with anger. And when my mom was disciplined, was disciplined with guilt. And that was it, but it worked a little bit. Then I come to America and there's, ah, 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 incredibly interested 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 the instinct. Now I can tell you how I did it. But in the beginning, when I jumped the border, it was all spiritual. 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 Stoics, that's a great philosophy, right? And then your actions. Okay. And just walk, shoulders up, head high, breathe, walk. and that's practice your 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 um

as a practical tangent the 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 gonna be the back leader that doesn't work and i'll tell really doesn't work with a Bulldog Mastiff. No, you can't fake it. 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 strummer is really being stubborn just for stubborn sake i'll do and that's it yes that's all it takes yeah 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, yeah. And if I were to, and I'm realizing as I say this, that little is probably more of a reminder to myself as much as it's a reminder to him. It happened to both. Yeah. I'm just kind of trying to create this thing. Like, no, we're going, I lead 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 can we talk about that when a dog is in a very respectful of one person, obeys the boundaries, but then to other people, they're acting out. How should that be remedies? 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 and their emotions and how much they think about things, right? So, you know, the fact that we go into the silence and the calmness and just we follow through, that's the spirit, the instinct, and the mind. And that's why it's walking the dog. But in my experience, women go into the emotional vibration, and then they say, Castelo, vámonos. 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 am I going to practice silence? And instinct is a powerful thing. How am I going to practice instinct? Breath. You're 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. It's 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 do. But at the same time, the same woman can ride a horse and in order to ride a horse she had to be quiet calm confident oh yeah

i might 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 her 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's a 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 um and but her in the presence of that horse like she just understood because he was dangerous he was actually a dangerous animal and a totally different side of her came out and that's the first time i realized i was like i was i mean i was a teenager right but i was like wow like she has this immense power that's not like the kind of power that we think about, 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. I had to learn to be around him. But just the level of calm and confidence to clean a horse, like, you know, a horse can kill you, right? But if you walk around going, oh my gosh, this horse can kill me, it does not go well.

But exactly. So what we have to remember is the human part before the gender, right? So just go back to your human. Can a man and a woman ride a horse? Yeah. Why? Because they're using the same energy and the same philosophy and the same actions. So is it 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 female clients to, don't forget, you also have this calm, confident inside of you that your dog needs, right? Craves. And especially in your, 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 tap into what people call masculine energy. right that's so can a can a can a woman ride a horse yes she has to be in this energy to do it you see it she has to so she they 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 it's 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 a man But if we divide and we see each other different, I said, no, it's because I'm a 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 not 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 confidence that changed 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. Purposely, 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, right? Because when we unite and then we become powerful, the pack unites. But if the pack is separated, the pack fights, flight, and avoid each other, right? So purposely, we get the wrong information. That's why my goal is to give people the right information. If you have low money, middle class, rich, it 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. It has nothing to do with what position in the pack you are. economically speaking see it so what is that world looks like well that word look like like all humans around the world regardless of the economical position they're all gonna have an amazing relationship with dogs how because they all have the same information that's it I love that I

mean I feel like we're we're drifting further and further away from ourselves as as a species and 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 like the need for calm confidence when we just want to be loving that's really about wanting to be loved yeah you know the person coming home is not it's 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 that this person just feels so tired at the end of the day what they need is something that just adores them. You know, and 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, it means building the relationship means not doing this thing in the moment. I'm thinking about the whole relationship, safety first. It's all right. And so 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 dogs, wins. Everybody wins. But it requires a level of 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 right you're a virtuoso at this but for the uh i would say there's unskilled skilled master and virtuosity you're up back on the back but so for somebody who's trying to move from unskilled to skill 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. Lots happening. And it's coming through the phone and this and that, schedules. How do you recommend, young or old, that people start to cultivate this awareness in this?

I think the quicker we become aware, what is life about, right? Because we're all going to die. And so what is life about? And life is about life, right? Life is to be happy, to be healthy, to be loving, and to be smart.

that's life. And then it's time, how you structure, how 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, right? Because they're very grateful of life. They structure time very wisely. And then by the time they die, they only take good memories, right? Because 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, right? And things that we can definitely practice, this concept of love, right? And so that to me is be grateful of life every day, be thankful of life every day, you know? 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 achieved. And of course, you know, 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's Cesar Millan? Cesar Millan is a spirit, he's an instinct, he's a heart, and he's a mind, right? So and then, oh 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 that people unconsciously have confused. See, because dogs in America, you know, dogs in the world 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 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 fight 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. That's, you know, taking the humanization to another level, but that's, that's just shows you, you know, the, the, the creativity of human. But not because the dog has all this money, fame, and power, the dog is happy. My goal is, is for people to understand that, you know, happiness and health and, and, and having a good heart and having a good creative mind. It shouldn't take too much. Right. It's just, 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 your mind learn, achieve, gives 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 understand what you mean. So what I help people with is I put them in a cold plunge, right? And once they go through the fight 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 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 there'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 and wait. And so then once they see it, okay, that is the meaning of not having nothing in your mind, right? So I make them experience it.

Versus if I just tell them, they can't picture it. But 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, you know, it saves on the water bill. So this isn't like having to run out and buy something. What it tells me, because the cold plunge immediately, reliably releases adrenaline, which then wakes up the brain as well. Does your instinct. shuts down the forebrain the very fascinating um that you're saying this because the forebrain 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 then they get to peace yeah yep and that's the energy to bring to your interaction with your dog yes and ideally to your spouse and your kids everywhere everywhere so a human after

a cold plunge brings that energy everywhere. 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 meeting a dog, to walking with a dog, to feeding a dog. That's it. That's all I want people to experience because everybody wants to, ah, they want to do that, right? Or they want to do, I'm not aware of how I feel. I just want to give affection. You So that is good for the human, not necessarily good for everybody else because that human is spreading 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 plunge. 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-go-lucky. And that's all you want. That's it. Those three state of minds are super powerful.

You know, I've thought a lot about deliberate cold exposure, adrenaline, norepinephrine. You get this long arc of dopamine that lasts hours and hours and hours afterwards. And then my critics will 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

drugs. Well, a good relationship with a dog is long-lasting dopamine. A well-balanced dog is a long-lasting whatever you want. 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, And then you do your plague explorer. That's the best medicine any human can get.

It's the amount of peace that I still get from my relationship with Costello. I mean, he's passed now, but he's still leaving his spirit is, I mean, it makes me well up, you know, not out of sadness. It's like I can feel the love of the relationship. You know, I had to ask on my list, and I'm going to ask, is this the right time? I believe. So as Costello got to 11 years old, it's pretty old for a bulldog. That's right. He had some sort of spinal stroke. He couldn't walk, he was falling over. I was like distraught, how can I get this fixed? 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 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, oh, of course I have to do this. 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're going to cry or whatever, just do it away from them. Otherwise you hold them. Right? So I want them to go back. That's why it's so good to believe in God, because they're going back to the source. So they're way better with him than with, you know, here. 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. They can, you know, as many, many signs. But at the same time, you know, when it's 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 him to depart. It's time to go. So when I die, I want everybody to be happy. I don't want no sadness. Listen, my life is beyond what I thought, right? So I give that same life to a dog. Same. I'm a 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? It's all about honor. It's all about respect. That's my way of showing my heart. And in my mind, I don't have one day that 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'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 what that's why i'm here right i'm here uh 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 i uh it challenges me to even say it because he's still so new but when strummer dies yeah the last out uh 24 hours of his life will be a celebration

yeah with him yeah celebration all right yeah all right it's a happy spirit you know sing laugh dance you know uh just happiness because they once you start going like this they don't they they get worried you know and then the spirit lingers you don't want it you just wanted 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 gonna have the you know how many dogs i 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 now it's 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, 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 around a loss of a loved one or a breakup or loss of a judges of the world, whatever.

Yeah.

What is your stance on that?

It's bad because they're passing that energy. The dog doesn't know what happened. 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 he can let go of the energy. Same thing when you bring a dog to a hospital, right? And the therapy dogs. They go to hospitals, you know, kids with cancer, da, da, da, da, da, depressed 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. Utilize it. It's available. But again, you can also go and take a cold plunge before you hug the dog. And that way you kill that energy. 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 just to go and throw that negative energy that you just grabbed. 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, I'm thinking of one in particular, and they would do this, like what I would call trickle down anxiety. They'd be stressed and they'd walk through the lab, stressing out. Graduate 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 we're so i'm just gonna say it i feel like we are so selfish yeah as a species like that these animals are here for us and just for us to give me love

when i get home to console me when i'm sad to give me all the things i want yeah that i would be blind to the the basic needs of that animal it's 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 just a selfish

The selfish part and the unselfish part. So what I'm saying is don't forget, you know, to be at service before somebody is at service to you. Right. So the spirit instinct is 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 you don't forget that. Right. To be at service. because 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, da, da, da. Okay, fine. You just skip spirit and instinct, right? Because the 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 for things and this is what you want to give to your dog, to yourself, to your house, to your family, And then you're going to be focusing on making sure that you snap out of it, whatever, like you do on yourself to snap out of it, right? And then you go bring, you know, patience, calmness, confidence, 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 got to 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 spread all over the house absolutely your plants are gonna die you know your dogs are gonna be like okay this energy is is not good so we right and then your family will get it so you're entering you're gonna

enter into this dark energy these days on social media there's so much i'm realizing about the low level um stuff like you should never hug a dog you should hug a dog you should never pick up your dog off the ground yeah it's okay to pick up your dog should never be in your bed yeah your dog should be in your bed you see all these contradictions you see the same thing in the health space yeah like you should cold punch you shouldn't cold punch you should sauna you should like it and it comes down to a basic fact which is that it's not about the practice it's the 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 strummer loves being held costello hated yeah strummer he's ha he's basically happiest just being carried around but i know you don't i don't carry around too much but it's funny he just drapes yeah he's so happy that way he wishes he could go through the world that way frankly it's not about carry or don't carry no it's about what is your energy Why are you doing this? Is it for you? Is it for them? What's, okay.

And if the dog feels, because you know, 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 just what state of mind the dog was in when you did this is more important, right? Because what about if a dog is in a flight state and you want to carry him? He's going to feel trapped. And then the dog is going to bite or he's going to pee or he's going to scream, right? So you could have prevented that just by not focusing on what you want her to do. It's the dog that you want to do that in a calm surrender state, right? Can a dog stay on the bed? There's nothing wrong, you know, sharing your house with the dog. Think about invading versus inviting, okay? So when the dog goes on his own, he's in by invading. When the dog is waiting and you tell him to come over and you tell him where to go, that's being invited. So that mind is going to become surrendered. The other one is going to get territorial. You know how many times I have rehabilitated dogs who claim people's bed where the husband can't come near the bed because the wife and the dog were already there. I done a rehabilitation where the husband slept in the living room for three years because she wanted the dogs to stay in the bed. And when every time the guy came into the bedroom, the dogs were 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. 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 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. Uh-huh. Okay.

So there, the dog is basically taking advantage of the open slot.

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 taught the dog just to wait. Wow. Right. But she needed to make sure that she agrees with agreement, commitment, follow through. Nothing can happen without agreement. So she needs to be in 100% agreement. Otherwise, the dog will not do it. They really can sense any kind of small fraction of resistance. Your energy goes down, they're going to take over. Your energy goes up, they're going to move away. Right? Your energy have to be bigger for you to create the 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. 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, calmness, confidence, love, joy, because that's how you're going to deal with life, right? So with animals, it's a perfect way to maintain this, you know, within yourself, right? It's like a gym, going to the gym every day, right? But it's 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. And that's it. And then you go to work. So imagine if people develop this beautiful habit. Okay, I'm going to do what Cesar says, you know, silence, calmness, confidence, love, joy for 30, 40 minutes. And then I'm going to feel the silence, the calmness. Then I go to work. Right? And when I come back, no touch, no touch, no eye contact, sending my dog back. And then I can do the greeting. Then I go 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.

I 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 yeah in six months if you but they want each other this and that and the kids are young there's no way and i um and i know the struggles that they're having and it's they're they're both overworked they're under resourced so this is uh 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 yeah and i said do not get a puppy now and if you Do not get two puppies. This is like insanity. Like you want to, like it could break your family. Or, and she said, I promise the kids. Or break your heart because you have to get rid of the dogs. So this, 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 they're 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 want that. And I was thinking to myself, and you're already under-resourced. I share 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. I won't state her profession for states, but she's in 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 that will fulfill. The dream that I had. Right? Yeah. Prior to, you know, 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 that love to migrate longer than any other breed in the world. Right? So walking is one thing. Migration is another thing.

This is why I got a bulldog. You see? This is why I got a bulldog breed. I actually didn't get a purebred bulldog because they have issues. Yeah, they have issues. But, yeah, a dog that needs to migrate, how much walking do they need per day? Hours, and especially a pack.

So the bigger the pack, the longer the walk. I know. They both work such crazy hours. You can also let her know, hey, begin with fostering. So that way they get to know themselves as a family. Is everybody in agreement? Is everybody understand? What the rules, boundaries, limitations are? Does everybody understand 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 him. You're just temporarily keeping him in the house. So the dog gets a home and a family. It doesn't necessarily have to stay in the house. But the human gets to learn about themselves before they enter into the purchase or the adoption. Right? So to have two puppies, a Huskies, you got to have to purchase them, right? And so she's going to go in to make a purchase. And then eventually you realize we were not ready as a family. In my mind, I was ready. But in the whole pack, we're not ready, right? And the puppyhood is from birth to eight months. So in a matter of six months, you have a dog that is this big who is an adolescent now, right? Now you got to think about spay and 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 spay and neuter? Well, in America, it's necessary because dogs are not going to mate and they spend a lot of time indoor. So I neutered Costello. Yeah.

I put him on testosterone therapy his final two years. Vets that I knew said, we would love to be able to do that more, but there are reasons we don't. With Strummer, I thought, keep them intact. 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 vasectomy. This is a 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 your dog. To neuter your dog, yes, right.

What in the world is best? Well, it depends 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 different country, they're not neuter, but they're not looking for trouble. They're not, you know, they may 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. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but I've seen it a lot. Dogs humping their owners or dogs humping furniture in the house. I mean, Costello tried to hump me once.

Yeah. It never happened again. I just made it very clear that was not 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.

It has to be clear. They won. So that happens and they won. 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 it ends up funny. But the dog ends up becoming more and more aroused about the humans. So now he's mounting, which as you know, is a sexual and his dominance, you know, behavior towards the human. So in America, definitely a dog needs to be neutered more often. Plus we have an overpopulation, you know, 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 through, 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 rub. I'm guessing it 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 up?

Look, so if a dog is doing agility and a dog is like excited because he's doing 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 on 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. It's what are you petting? Makes total sense. Makes total sense. I mean, a soft, slowly calm. Restaurant means calm. Agility means go for it. Good job. Yeah, go for it, right? It's like what FIFA is doing right now. Everybody's excited.

nobody's like you serious with um barking uh i learned from your book like if costell or when he was a puppy he he could let it out yeah 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 sensed a threat, a bark, he only would bark once. He had this. I mean, he had this like, I mean, man, his, he was a beautiful specimen, I 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 bark how often do you walk uh once a week twice a week or whatever so the barking becomes a way of draining energy or like destroying your house you know a destructive behavior why would a dog destroy what he sleep well because he doesn't do much with his body in his mind so he has to drain that energy and that's what we call destructive behavior but people don't understand that we are not we're in a way practicing destructive behavior by not doing what we're supposed to be doing, which is walking the dog every single day. At the moment they wake up in the morning, they stretch. The second thing they want to do is walk. Should you wait for your dog to get 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 biologists definitely, as soon as the sun comes out, they should go. They should go. This is what we do with Strummer,

even though Bulldog, I mean, they'll sleep till 10 a.m., but we have to work, So we take them out.

No, no, take care of it. It's easier. It's actually better, right? Because it's like, oh, 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't go into a resting state. You see it? So it's very important that we follow the five body motions because every single animal, as soon as 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 that gives 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? In the beginning, yes. The same path is important. They create trust to the environment. But once they know it 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 not get bored. Because they learn a pattern really fast, and once they learn it, there is no growth. So then the mind gets also frustrated, bored, or confused because there's no growth. I love it.

I trained Strummer to run on the treadmill for little rewards here and there, 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 get his energy out. If there's fires again, I don't want to be outside. Anyway, I'm so glad to hear that the treadmill is okay.

You know, the first treadmill I saw, remember the show, The Jetsons? Yeah. With Astro. With Jetsons? Yeah. That was the first dog I ever seen on a treadmill. And I was a kid. Then I come to America and I see a whole bunch of treadmills, you know, in people's garage. And I say, do you ever put your dog on a treadmill? I say, no. Can you put a dog on a treadmill? I learned that by watching The Jetsons. Oh, 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 started putting dogs in a treadmill, and people were just fascinated. But I said, listen, this is not for you to stay lazy. This is just for emergencies, okay? And for you to challenge the mind, and, you know, and that's it. But it's not so you don't walk.

Yeah, I do a walk with him. 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 it a little bit we're done like we I've been trying to share this thing with him like this is our thing and now he loves the treadmill he will be dying to get on the treadmill

so if 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 don't do it. You know, they don't do this other titles, right? I'm just want to be a dog lover or the mom of this dog or the father of this dog. Yeah. You can also be a coach. You can also be a religious coach, you know what I mean? A 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 you know spiritually and instinctually and intellectually that's it 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 in a natural simple profound way that's it you know which is about trust, respect, love, safe, 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 your 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 workout. 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. You see it? They keep you on 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. So to have a good relationship with a dog is automatically lets 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, ours and these animals, dogs in this case, and you put that first. then all the other stuff about pet not pet pet not the pet 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 that's a that's a story that's partially true but there's actually if i'm editorialize a little bit there's 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 yeah but when we align all those things and we start from spirit yeah it all kind of falls into place yeah but we have to be vigilant and we have to basically train ourselves yeah it's all about training ourselves that's why i train

humans rehabilitate dogs that's that's my job i train humans rehabilitate dogs you don't have to have a dog to talk to me because you know uh learning how to be with a dog is learning how to be in life period right it's good for you to be a pack member a good pack member at home You need to know what is your 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's in that position, he has to be the fittest, right? Fittest 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 dog. It's about training the human to be a good human. Right. And then that human is going to have good everything because that's, that's what his 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 um you are incredibly knowledgeable incredibly wise your 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 and themselves better, but as you pointed out, be a better human. So you're a special one. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Cesar Millan. To learn more about his work, please see the links in the show note caption if you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast please subscribe to our youtube channel that's a terrific zero cost way to support us in addition please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both spotify and apple and on both spotify and apple you can leave us up to a five-star review and you can now leave us comments at both spotify and apple please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode that's the best way to support this podcast if you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. and of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, the Neural Network newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one- to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to HubermanLab.com,

go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Cesar Millan. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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