House Spoilers: Lisa Edelstein and Her Pets - House Training

[Photo: Cesar's Way]

Lisa Edelstein talks to Cesar's Way and shares to all a chapter of her life when she's with her bestfriends - her dogs.  Read on to find out more about her sweet and caring love for her pets. 

Not everybody who makes a living getting barked at is a dog trainer or a veterinarian. There’s also Lisa Edelstein, who plays Dr. Lisa Cuddy, Hugh Laurie’s long-suffering foil on the Fox hit drama House. Her role basically calls for her to endure the egomaniacal, Vicodin-popping Dr. House’s personal insults and sexual innuendos while keeping his career from imploding.

“But coming home to animals you love snaps you back to reality,” ” she tells Cesar’s Way.

Nowadays, those animals are her two rescue dogs, Shazam and Kapow. Shazam is a Schnoodle—a Schnauzer and Poodle mix—and Kapow is a Whoodle—a Wheaton Terrier and Poodle mix. “When I got Shazam, he was -pretty pathetic,” says Lisa. “He was only a puppy, but because he had gray hair, people thought he was much older. He was also very skinny. Had to be put in a hospital.” As for -Kapow, she says, “I wanted a breed that would get along well with Shazam, and it’s worked out great.”

The two pups are just the latest in a long line of pets that Lisa has saved from harsh circumstances, a preoccupation that started when she took in a stray cat at age 11.

“My parents were very understanding,” she explains. To grasp just how understanding, it helps to know that Lisa’s entire family is allergic to cats. And what’s more, the -adopted cat in question turned out to be pregnant.

Lisa’s father, a doctor in suburban Wayne, New Jersey, helped her find homes for the kittens, but most of them either died or were abandoned due to the carelessness of those who’d adopted them. Lisa cried. And then she got angry. But even more important, she began to feel extremely protective of animals without homes. The experience also opened her eyes to how much training people need before adopting animals, and to all the precautions they need to take—things she stresses these days when she helps people adopt pets as a volunteer with the Best Friends Animal Society. “Those who rescue strays mean well, but many times they take on too much responsibility,” says Lisa. “You’ve got to be prepared to do the work.”

Lisa has been training for what seems like forever, starting with her first dog, a Poodle named Corky. “He was really my mom’s dog, but we got along well. I grew up with him,” she says. “He was like my friend, not my dog. A great guy—he lived to be 19 years old.”

It wasn’t until Lisa had moved on from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, gained local fame in the 1980s club scene as “Lisa E., Queen of Downtown,” and wrote a musical, Positive Me (inspired by the AIDs epidemic that was killing many of her friends) that she relocated to L.A., where she adopted her first cat, Bugs. She and her roommate then took in a stray dog, Sandwich, a Shepherd mix who’d been hit by a car.

“She had very severe injuries,” says Lisa, “but we took her to the doctors and took good care of her.”

Sandwich stayed long after Lisa and the roommate went their separate ways. “When she died, at age 13, my doctors sent me a card listing the injuries she’d sustained at age four months, noting how incredible it was that she lived that long.”

Lisa’s next canine adoptee was Wolf E., an American Eskimo mix found on a film set and originally rescued by one of the actress’s neighbors. When Lisa visited, the dog literally fell at her feet. She asked if she could borrow Wolf E. for a day—and ended up keeping him.

Wolf E. had his problems—including poor vision, seizures, and difficulty walking—but many of them disappeared after he settled down in Lisa’s home and began to regain his confidence. There was one trait, however, that Lisa just couldn’t modify. “Wolf E. got attacked a lot when I took my dogs out,” she notes. “And he would attack too. Then my other dog would get into the fight. It was a mess.”

It was at this point that a very young Cesar Millan made an appearance in Lisa’s life. “This was way before Cesar was famous,” Lisa recalls. “I’d heard about him from a shop owner near me who had an aggressive Pit Bull. She told me good things about Cesar, and the word of mouth about him was also good. So I asked for his help.”

Cesar was happy to oblige. He showed up at Lisa’s home with his own pack of a dozen or so dogs and everyone—including Lisa, Wolf E., and Sandwich—went on a long hike.

“Cesar was like a little Pit Bull himself!” says Lisa. “He was the alpha dog, establishing himself as the leader by walking out front. And I began to see what I was doing wrong. At home, my life with Wolf E. was fine, but outside, there was no structure. I was not out front walking the dogs in a way that would make Wolf E. feel confident. He didn’t feel like part of my pack.”

Lisa made the adjustments Cesar suggested, and discovered, she says, that she could control her dogs. So much so, in fact, that she adopted another one—Bumpa, “a complete mutt” she found near Dodger Stadium—just as her career was taking off, in the 1990s. She became a familiar face on such TV shows as Mad About You, The West Wing, Ally McBeal, The Practice, and, most notably, Seinfeld, on which she played George Costanza’s “Risotto Girl.” In 2004 she was cast in House, as Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital’s dean of medicine. It’s a demanding role that can leave her looking for a lift at the end of long days at the studio.

Which brings us back to Shazam and Kapow, with whom Lisa currently shares her L.A. home. It’s almost paradise—except for Kapow’s vision problems. “He has trouble adjusting to other dogs when I take him to the dog park,” she says. “He recoils sharply, and he’s very territorial. Maybe Cesar can help me once again.”

Which is not to say that Kapow and Shazam aren’t major joys in Lisa’s life. “They force you out of your own head,” the actress says. “You have to communicate with them, no matter how you’re feeling.

“And more important, a little bit of love goes a long way with them. It takes very little to make the dogs feel happy. And then you feel better about yourself.”