Leader of the pack | "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan helps a Bainbridge Island family

Hard to say who's happier these days out here in a comfortable corner house on Bainbridge Island: Brian Carney, at one time a milquetoast vis-à-vis his dog, or Mateo, a border collie who used to have an uncontrollable jealous streak.

Indeed, in the Carney household, dog once hounded man, sneering him into submission. Carney couldn't approach wife Trish to plop down next to her on the couch without Mateo giving him a snarl.

"Sometimes he'd be in the middle of two rooms, and if I tried to pass by he'd give me that look and that growl," Carney recalls.

Mateo once even drew blood after biting Carney on the thumb.

But that was B.C., Before Cesar, as in Cesar "Dog Whisperer" Millan. The TV show host, author and canine rehabilitator spent several days in Seattle earlier this month filming episodes of his "Dog Whisperer" show as well as hosting a seminar in which he chided humans not to treat their canines like babies.

Tsst! If you, dog owner, aren't taking into account what the animal needs, such as a daily 45-minute walk.

Tsst! If your household's alpha dog walks on four legs. Dogs are pack animals, and it is you who should be leading the pack.

A way with canines

Since arriving in the United States from Mexico (illegally, he's admitted in his first book; he's subsequently become a legal permanent U.S. resident) and transforming dog-grooming work into a blockbuster dog-psychology career, Millan has emerged as a kind of savior for the problem canine set.

His "Dog Whisperer" TV show, currently in its fourth season, leads the ratings for the National Geographic Channel. He's got a New York Times bestselling book, "Cesar's Way," and has just released a second book, "Be the Pack Leader: Use Cesar's Way to Transform Your Dog ... and Your Life." And his Los Angeles-based Dog Psychology Center receives as many as 100 requests a day for help.

To read his books, to watch the TV show in which he visits households in doggy disarray and transforms them, is to absorb a basic mantra: Dogs want to be dogs and live healthy, balanced lives. But to actually witness Millan in Dog Whisperer action is to truly be awed.

A force to reckon with

That occurred the other day when Millan — muscular and assertive, kind of like a bull terrier — stepped into the Carney backyard and fixed his eyes and his entire body upon the Carney's two other dogs, a border collie named Daphne and a German Shepherd-Shiba Inu mix named Madison. As it turned out, Mateo, at least while she was in the backyard, exhibited nothing but calmness while Millan's TV crew initially filmed. But Daphne and Madison wouldn't stop barking, wouldn't stop scowling, occasionally lunging at anyone on two legs.

It's unnerving, so much racket, so many teeth, with only a pantleg as a shield. Except Millan, nattily dressed in a burgundy scarf, legs in a slightly wide stance, oozed force. "Don't move," he instructed to his director and to a reporter, who promptly obeyed. Three cameramen and a sound guy also stood still but only briefly, their duties quickly trumping Millan's words.

The dogs raced and lunged, barking nonstop for some 20 minutes, but Millan never abandoned his gaze. Yes, he's been bitten, and he has the scars to prove it. "But you can't blame the animals," he says. "It's never the dog's fault. They're just reacting."

Doggie do's

In this case, the Carney dogs were largely nervous, and the constant barking — whenever guests came over, whenever the school bus stopped nearby, now — resulted from a lack of constancy in their lives. "Exercise, discipline, affection" read the Millan commandments. To be followed in that exact order.

Trouble was, the Carneys, formerly corporate America workers (he in architecture, she in engineering and now both running an at-home law firm research business) used to arrive home stressed and depleted. They had lost the structure, patience and focus for their dogs. Thus the nonstop chaos, Millan quickly surmised.

"There are followers, and there are leaders," Millan says. But in the Carney household, the wrong species was holding the leash.

"It's a state of mind," Millan says. "I don't try. I just do." And that is, in the simplest terms, how a pack leader gets born.

"Tsst!" Millan snaps at the barking dogs while using his hand to simulate a bite on their necks. (It should be noted that Millan's techniques have been criticized by some as harsh. A TV producer sued Millan last year after claiming his Labrador retriever was injured at the Dog Psychology facility.)

"Tsst!" Millan snaps at Mateo when everyone moves into the living room and the dog refuses to let anyone sit on the couch alongside Trish Carney.

"Tsst!" It takes just three rounds of couch-approaching until Mateo really mellows out.

"Tsst!" pronounces Brian Carney, trying the Millan-mandated motions, sending Mateo into a calm, submissive state, getting him to move so husband can sit next to wife.

Good dogs!

Brian Carney, interviewed one week after the Millan visit and asked how things are going: "Wonderful."

"The thing is, I really feel like Mateo and the other dogs have respect for me now. We got so much from Cesar," he says. "Blows my mind."

The Carney "Dog Whisperer" episode will likely air on the National Geographic Channel sometime next year.

Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com