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"Dog Whisperer" Works His Magic For Canarsien
It took only a few hours for TV's "Dog Whisperer," Cesar Millan, to work his magic and "voila," 17-year-old Canarsien Maureen Lovetro, who has cerebral palsy, was smiling happily. Instead of nipping playfully at their leashes and being unresponsive to commands, Millan's magic transformed Maureen's two dogs, one of which was too raucous and the other just plain bored with life, into attentive walking companions. It was an especially important job Millan undertook when he visited the Lovetro home on East 94th Street. When he talked to Maureen's mother, Wendy, he found the teenager bright and "full of love," he said. Maureen was born with cerebral palsy. When she was four years old, she learned to use a walker - however painfully - to get around and her grandfather promised to buy her a dog with the hope that, by walking the dog, her legs would grow stronger. He gave her a beautiful cocker spaniel, which she named Chloe, but, rather than be a companion walker, the canine pal just wanted to play - and play - and play (The heck with that walking stuff! Let's play!). Maureen also has another cocker spaniel named Sammy, whose disposition is to lie around and watch Chloe play and play and play. When Maureen became a teenager, it was obvious that Chloe would not take the task of being a walking companion seriously, as the teen's grandfather had wanted. When trying to walk with Maureen, on occasion Chloe would tug on her leash recklessly and would knock her to the ground. Wendy told staffers of the "Dog Whisperer" show and, last September, Millan came here to see if he could help. And help he did! Noticing that eight-year-old Chloe was set in her playful ways, Millan said that he would first work with nine-year-old Sammy, since the male canine was much more docile. Within a half-hour of training, Sammy was walking on a leash with Maureen and her metal walker. "This is fine," Millan said. "Now, by being a companion to both Sammy and Maureen, Chloe can learn the same task." Within an hour, Chloe and Sammy and Maureen were walking together - calmly as could be, along the sidewalk. A few more practice runs and the dogs found that they had, as the "Dog Whisperer" would say, "a duty; a purpose in life." And Maureen had two "new" walking buddies.
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