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California, of my friend and protégée, Cheri Lucas, where she keeps her own pack of fifty dogs for rescue and rehabilitation. This meant that the new puppies would be raised at Casa Millan—our midsize, suburban ranch-style home in Santa Clarita Valley—with daily excursions to the outdoor oasis of my new Dog Psychology Center property just a short drive away, as I worked to prepare it for its opening in the fall of 2009. All told, our core family pack (including my wife, Ilusion, and sons, Calvin and Andre) now comprised the four puppies, Junior, Blizzard, Angel, and Mr. President; my grandfatherly pit bull, Daddy (fifteen); our Chihuahuas, Coco (five) and Minnie (two); our Jack Russell terrier, Jack (four); Apollo, a Rottweiler (approximately two and a half); and a two-year-old Yorkie, Georgia Peaches, a puppy-mill survivor that I had recently rescued while in Atlanta for a speaking engagement. Because the Dog Psychology Center was in flux, I also regularly brought home dogs from the Dog Whisperer show that needed more intensive rehab, so the pups would be exposed to a revolving cast of different breeds, ages, and levels of stability.
    My puppy experiment was ready to begin. The goal was to raise four balanced dogs of different breeds, to maintain the stability they were already born with, and to prevent any future issues from forming. Throughout the rest of this book, these puppies will appear in costarring roles with me as they go through their different developmental stages, so you can see exactly how I applied the concepts of dog psychology to their rearing.
    I felt inspired and invigorated as I set up a line of baby gates and rearranged the row of comfortable kennels where our dogs sleep in my large garage, which has an open door that leads to the side yard. Eager to help, Calvin and Andre pitched in to prepare our home for this exciting new experience. For the next seven months, my whole family and I would be immersed in the pure delight of watching these dogs as they lived through the magical season of life that is puppyhood, and on into their adolescence.

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PERFECT MATCH
    Choosing the Perfect Puppy

    Georgia Peaches
    G rowing up on my grandfather’s farm in rural Sinaloa, Mexico, I lived among scruffy farm dogs, our loyal friends and coworkers in the fields and around the house. You wouldn’t call these dogs “pets” by American standards, in that their lives were spent near us but not as a part of us. They were our dogs, yet they lived in a world separate from our human lives, content and balanced in their own dog culture. I watched a lot of litters born among these dogs, and though the puppies were sweet and appealing, I never really experienced the extraordinary “cuteness” of puppies until I came to America and was exposed to the hundreds of breeds in this country: French bulldog puppies, with their flattened snouts and oversized brown eyes, or Lhasa apso or Westie or poodle puppies, all heartbreakingly adorable balls of fluff. When I saw some of these more attractive breeds as pups, I began to better understand why Americans tended to “baby” their dogs—something that is not a part of the culture in Mexico.
    All baby animals are appealing, but in my personal opinion, puppies simply corner the market in cuteness. Even the most hard-hearted human can’t help but stop and sigh when passing a puppy on the street. I have many clients who are ruthless businesspeople in their professional lives but who absolutely melt into butter at the sight of a juvenile dog. According to Canadian psychologist and animal behavior expert Dr. Stanley Coren, “Very young mammals have pheromones that give them a characteristic ‘baby smell.’ One of the purposes of these pheromones is to excite protective instincts, or at least non-hostile instincts, in its own species. However, because of the similarity amongst all the mammals, we tend to find that other animals will respond to it.” 1 Coren’s words offer a