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As a young woman she lived for a time in Argentina, where a Guarani Indian taught her that even the wildest horse can be broken if the trainer snorts at it through the nose. To a horse, that is merely common courtesy, the equivalent of "How do you do?" Cows appreciate a pleasant snort as well, but dogs, which are more intelligent, are highly insulted by such antics. They prefer baby talk and are almost mesmerized by words with sharp d's and t's. They particularly like the word what, Woodhouse has discovered, as in "What a good girl!"
"Touch, tone and telepathy," she says, are her greatest gifts. One of her favorite stories is about an ancient English actor who had a vicious Kerry blue. The beast would sleep with his master, and every time the old gent turned over, the blue would bite him. Black and somewhat blue himself, the man finally called in Woodhouse. When she arrived, bounding up the walk, he yelled, "Don't come near! The bastard will bite you!" "Nonsense," she replied, slapping the dog smartly on the head and speaking to it severely, emphasizing her t's and d's. Within seconds the animal was licking her face, hopelessly in love.
"It's impossible to explain to someone who hasn't got the gift," says Woodhouse, "but I am on the same wave length as the animals. Every animal is sending out wave lengths, vibes, if you prefer that word. I feel a rapport with them, a complete lack of fear."
There are a few dogs that even Woodhouse cannot train, the canine schizophrenics and psychopaths, but she does not believe, as some people do, that modern dogs are inbred and naturally neurotic. "No, that is not it," she says. "The trouble is caused by the huge amount of protein they are fed. It's making them mad. Those one-in-all foods are advertising 20% to 27% protein, and that's like overfeeding a horse on oats. Fourteen percent protein is enough for an ordinary house dog; if it is fed too much, it will have too much energy and become hyperactive and schizophrenic."
A dog's intelligence, Woodhouse believes, is equal to that of a child of five, so naturally she used pupils some of her techniques on her own children. All three, for instance, were housebroken, which is to say toilet-trained, before the third month. "It's like house-training a puppy," she says, and she has gone on to use the same methods on at least one of her eight grandchildren.
Such an individual approach to life has made this astonishing woman a celebrity in Britain and several other countries. "Life for me began at 70," she says. She is the "most successful trainer in the world," according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Four new TV specials are planned, a new TV series on horses already has 10 million British viewers, and her four dog-training books are bestsellers. Everywhere she goes, she finds people trilling out "Walkies," her command to a dog to get up and get moving. For Woodhouse, so much attention is as much fun as a tickle on the chest. As herself might put it: What a clever girl."
—By Gerald Clarke