What the Dog Saw [62]
Early in their marriage, Illusion got sick, and was in the hospital for three weeks. “Cesar visited once, for less than two hours,” she said. “I thought to myself, This relationship is not working out. He just wanted to be with his dogs.” They had a new baby and no money. They separated. Illusion told Cesar that she would divorce him if he didn’t get into therapy. He agreed, reluctantly. “The therapist’s name was Wilma,” Illusion went on. “ She was a strong African American woman. She said, ‘You want your wife to take care of you, to clean the house. Well, she wants something, too. She wants your affection and love.’ ” Illusion remembers Cesar scribbling furiously on a pad. “He wrote that down. He said, ‘That’s it! It’s like the dogs. They need exercise, discipline, and affection.’ ” Illusion laughed. “I looked at him, upset, because why the hell are you talking about your dogs when you should be talking about us?”
“I was fighting it,” Cesar said. “Two women against me, blah, blah, blah. I had to get rid of the fight in my mind. That was very difficult. But that’s when the lightbulb came on. Women have their own psychology.”
Cesar could calm a stray off the street, yet, at least in the beginning, he did not grasp the simplest of truths about his own wife. “Cesar related to dogs because he didn’t feel connected to people,” Illusion said. “His dogs were his way of feeling like he belonged in the world, because he wasn’t people-friendly. And it was hard for him to get out of that.” In Mexico, on his grandfather’s farm, dogs were dogs and humans were humans: each knew its place. But in America, dogs were treated like children, and owners had shaken up the hierarchy of human and animal. Sugar’s problem was Lynda. JonBee’s problem was Scott. Cesar calls that epiphany in the therapist’s office the most important moment in his life, because it was the moment when he understood that to succeed in the world he could not be just a dog whisperer. He needed to be a people whisperer.
For his show, Cesar once took a case involving a Chihuahua named Bandit. Bandit had a large, rapper-style diamond-encrusted necklace around his neck spelling “Stud.” His owner was Lori, a voluptuous woman with an oval face and large, pleading eyes. Bandit was out of control, terrorizing guests and menacing other dogs. Three trainers had failed to get him under control.
Lori was on the couch in her living room as she spoke to Cesar. Bandit was sitting in her lap. Her teenage son, Tyler, was sitting next to her.
“About two weeks after his first visit with the vet, he started to lose a lot of hair,” Lori said. “They said that he had Demodex mange.” Bandit had been sold to her as a show-quality dog, she recounted, but she had the bloodline checked and learned that he had come from a puppy mill. “He didn’t have any human contact,” she went on. “So for three months he was getting dipped every week to try to get rid of the symptoms.” As she spoke, her hands gently encased Bandit. “He would hide inside my shirt and lay his head right by my heart, and stay there.” Her eyes were moist. “He was right here on my chest.”
“So your husband cooperated?” Cesar asked. He was focused on Lori, not on Bandit. This is what the new Cesar understood that the old Cesar did not.
“He was our baby. He was in need of being nurtured and helped and he was so scared all the time.”
“Do you still feel the need of feeling sorry about him?”
“Yeah. He’s so cute.”
Cesar seemed puzzled. He didn’t know why Lori would still feel sorry for her dog.
Lori tried to explain. “He’s so small and he’s helpless.”
“But do you believe that he feels helpless?”
Lori still had her hands over the dog, stroking him. Tyler was looking at Cesar, and then at his mother, and then down at Bandit. Bandit tensed. Tyler reached over to touch the dog, and Bandit leaped out of Lori’s arms and attacked him, barking