Cornell alum on "Dog Whisperer" with her rescue dog
As a Cornell student Kelly Perry ’01 was highly competent with animals, landing an internship as a shark keeper at the Omaha Zoo and a seven-month fellowship studying pipefish in Australia. But lately she’s had some issues with her border collie, and on Friday she’s to appear on “Dog Whisperer” as one of the dog owners in need of help from the Dog Whisperer himself, Cesar Millan.
The episode airs at 8 p.m. CST Friday, Jan. 15, on the National Geographic Channel.
Perry, who majored in biology and environmental studies at Cornell, is now a park ranger at Tualatin Hills Nature Park near Portland, Ore. She and her partner adopted a border collie, Tucker, who became so obsessed with moving water that it almost killed him.
“I rescued this dog from the Humane Society, and I’d let him play in the creek in our backyard. Being a good border collie he organized things. He would take rocks and put them in small, medium and large piles,” Perry said. “When I took him to the ocean he would bite at the waves, herding the water and ingesting it. He went into a water intoxication coma. That’s when I realized his funny behavior needed to stop.”
Perry is a water-loving person and spends a lot of time by the water. “It pained me not to be able to have my dog with me, but I couldn’t train him,” she said. “I hired many, many trainers. Finally I sent a tape to the show and they came to film him. I had spent thousands of dollars on dog trainers and Cesar Millan solved it in five minutes.”
Perry said Millan’s motto is that he doesn’t train dogs, he trains people. “It’s never the dog’s fault,” she said. “Tucker just needed a job and I needed to show him what to do.”
Photo: Kelly Perry, left, and her partner Rob, right, with their dog Tucker and Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer.
