Cesar's Way

Last night, while out to dinner at an upscale, expensive restaurant, I told Rick I may be leaving him for another man.

His calm reply was that I really should have waited till he had picked up the check before announcing that.

Of course, I'm not really leaving my dear husband, but I have become somewhat obsessed with Cesar Millan, "The Dog Whisperer." Rick is well aware of this as he is as impressed and fascinated with him as I am, though not, I suspect, drawn in quite the same way to his powerful male energy! Cesar is a man who is so attuned with the dog psyche, he's practically half canine himself. And those who know me well know that I am completely enamoured of dogs. What's not to love about such a guy? I'm sure I'm only one of at least a million women who are attracted to him.

Truthfully, I couldn't actually see myself with Cesar, who is, for starters, happily married (as I am), much younger, and very unlikely to be interested in me. But more than that, he is such a dominant force, I would likely have to give up my status as the Queen of Everything to submit to his powerful pack-leader personna! There is something, however, within the female animal body of me that is responsive to that male, dominant energy, despite all my higher thought and insistence on gender equality.

Fortunately, I have the exact man I need already. Rick is really the perfect blend of male-female energy: no one would ever mistake him for a female, yet he is very balanced and his strong maleness is tempered by a healthy feminine aspect that allows us to relate emotionally in ways that many men simply woudn't able to. And, he is strong and very masculine while still repecting me as the royalty I am sure I am. No--I'm not going to give that up!

As for Cesar, he is very well-balanced as well, but being from Mexico, his machismo is quite developed, and his focus on being "pack leader" to his dozens of dogs does nothing to detract from that. My friend Catherine, who turned me onto The Dog Whisperer, says his beautiful Mexican-American wife, Ilusion, had to straighten him out about that early in their relationship!

All discussion about my feminine attraction to him aside, I am learning so much from watching Cesar's show on the National Geographic Channel. He is all about energy, and working with energy, and, as he says, he "rehabilitates dogs and trains people." The primary way he trains people is to make them aware of the energy they're embodying and projecting. He has the ability to model this so effectively that I have been able to deepen my understanding of directing energy from just watching him on TV, and already see without making a concerted effort, that our dogs are responding to a subtle shift in the energy that we are putting out around them and the few techniques of Cesar's that we've applied.

I love that he is not only helping human beings understand the dog's gestalt, which is not the same as a human's contrary to most dog-owners beliefs, he is bringing the concept of working at an energetic level to the mainstream in a matter-of-fact, non-apologetic way. Apparently, he is a controversial character in the dog-training world, but I believe the issues with him are all based in a mis-match of paradigms. I think the Cesar Millan nay-sayers are ones who don't see things in terms of energy but are caught up in the old paradigm of seeing things mechanically only.

Whatever the case, I am really pretty accurate at reading people's essential selves, and I see only the highest of intentions at work with Cesar. I am so grateful he's out there doing what he's doing, helping people to be more effective pack leaders so that dogs and humans can learn to coexist at a higher level. And happy I can watch him on TV everyday--with Rick! Here is a picture of our pack, taken last weekend: