Invest in your dogs mental state and it will pay off in dividends for the rest of your time together.

This is what I love and why I love doing it!  Seeing a dramatic change in a dog's mental state!

Jasper is a typical small dog who presents a nervous and frightened and jumpy state of mind...an overreactive syndrome let's say.  His inner thought monologue consists mostly of wildly worrisome thoughts...thoughts that somehow relate to his early demise or fears therein.  It is my view that a dog's psyche can be filled up with highly overreactive responses for any number of thought "triggers"...meaning a Rolodex of things that a dog usually overreacts to in the exact same way, when they are triggered by them.  The following links to videos of Jasper, are four examples of what I will be talking about:  https://youtu.be/4FTt8We4os8

Dogs Have Triggers Like: A stern voice, a provocative movement, a hand gesture, a sound, a certain tone in a person's voice, the speed at which the dog is approached, the size of the person moving towards the dog, the type of shoes or boots the person is wearing, someone just carrying a leash, someone jingling a leash, the dog being on it's back, seeing an open door, hearing a gardner working, hearing traffic, hearing another dog barking, their owner walking to the kitchen, opening a door, getting out of bed, walking down a hallway...you got the idea! It's maybe hundreds of these things they will "Naturally" just react poorly to.   https://youtu.be/ZX9Qy1SDHnw

There is really no comfort that resides mentally inside some dogs heads.  They could be small dogs or bigger dogs.  It's a cacophony of many jumbled visions of what could cause something terrible to happen to the dog.  It's overwhelming and debilitating!  You, as a human, may have experienced this kind of overwhelming sense of having too much going on at any particular time, and being on the verge of a snap at "Just one more thing".  When you reach that point...what do you do to relax?  Take a hot bath, drink a glass of wine, get a professional massage, take a vacation, go out and have a long dinner with friends...?  Dogs have no way to decompress like humans do, nor do they realize that they SHOULD decompress or relax, nor do they realize that they CAN even relax, and certainly may not even know HOW to relax.  Humans can decide to relax and then go do it, but dogs don't know that option even exists AND SO THEY ARE ALWAYS IN A PERPETUAL STATE OF NERVOUSNESS!

A very important part of my "Method", is to give dogs a well needed neck, and back massage.  I find dogs so wound up and tense that it makes it hard for them to walk or think clearly.  When I show them they actually can have a relaxed state of mind and body, they sort of melt into a new reality that gives them a breather from that Rolodex of fears flipping through their heads.  Once the dog learns to feel what it's like to actually BE RELAXED, then they now have a point of reference to return to. Notice Jasper's eyes change in all the pictures!  https://youtu.be/5rgoMXziUyg

What I attempt and mostly succeed in doing for a dog's mental state, is to give them something to concentrate on other than their "inner monologue of fears".  Once they begin to listen and respond, and by asking them to Stop-sit-and Wait, they must keep returning from their inner thoughts or worries, and refocus and concentrate on what I have asked them to do, (albeit may only last for maybe instants or moments), and by this process of coming back to listening to me and getting out of their heads, they can find at least a moment when they "KNOW" exactly what I want from them, and that becomes the seed of confidence that they can begin to rely on in "knowing" and not of "fearing" the unknown, and THAT is WHEN they BEGIN their journey of learning to listen and to correctly respond to what makes the trainer happy and ultimately...them being happy and confident FOR A JOB WELL DONE.   A shared moment of connection between man and dog becomes a string of those moments that all link together to form the true bond that I help create between dog and owner.  Does that make sense?  https://youtu.be/Q-SCN8a29Js

This is the concept behind what I believe is so important about leash training...it's what I always go back to and is the biggest reason why dogs who start out in families being agreeable with most anything, eventually become "independent" thinkers and develop "issues" due to a lack of boundaries and rules and some organized order for them to follow in the home.  The leash keeps them listening and connected and focused on their owner and of the commands.  That leash becomes the telephone line of your thoughts going straight into the dogs head.  Like I say...Dogs will make bad decisions that effect everyone around them, because...dogs want to do what they want to do, when they want to do it!  It's what dogs do!  So, it's the owners job to guide their dog along the path of doing what the owners want them to do and to not do what the owners don't want them to do.  This is easier than it sounds...obviously, or everyone who owns a dog would all have perfect dogs.  Again, that's where I come in!

My method, in a nutshell, is how I get dogs out of their heads and to learn HOW TO LISTEN before returning them back to their owners control (or lack thereof). This is where I differ from dog trainers who teach classes in heeling.  I work with the psyche.  I also find myself training the owners as much as the doggies!  My business tag line is                                                                                     BEHAVIOR TRAINING FOR DOGS AND THEIR PEOPLE!

Before a dog can listen, he needs to KNOW HOW TO LISTEN!   When a dog spends a day or two with me, (Dog Day Transformation), they first learn how to be calmer, and how it's ok to be calm and unafraid...even for long moments or an entire day, and then how to listen to instructions from a caring, patient and calm leader.  I say to my clients that dogs have "built up their own 3 lanes of a superhighway of overreactions".  This means that they have well warn paths of reacting poorly to many things, (like I mentioned earlier in that long list of "triggers").  What I teach is to think about creating an alternate route or detour around those well warn overreactions or triggers, and to build a detour of calm non reactions to the things that they used to react to.

Don't you think your dog or any dog deserves to be taught how to listen and to be calmer under the same  circumstances that had previously set them off into a bad place?

I say...Invest in your dogs mental state and it will pay off in dividends for the rest of your time together.

BE WHO YOUR DOG LOOKS UP TO!

WAY OF A DOG

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