Another experience that we prepared for you and your dog is the Recall. Normally, recall is based almost entirely on reinforcement. You call the dog, the dog comes, and then you give the dog a treat, toy, or ball. This can work very well in simple situations. However, when the environment offers stronger reinforcement than
Once your dog understands the Stay and Wait exercise built on the basis of Conscious Relaxation, we can move into the heart of this work: Relaxation at Separation Anxiety. When I work with horse owners and dog owners alike, many people say that separation anxiety — not wanting to stay alone without the owner, without
In this Module, we are introducing Conscious Relaxation in the context of restriction, and we begin with the most basic form: restriction of movement. This is very important because in the next module, we will start to introduce Conscious Relaxation in the context of separation anxiety. For that work to become possible, the dog first
In this module, we are going to learn how to introduce two dogs to one another through Conscious Relaxation. Very often, when dogs meet, people expect excitement. They expect pulling, jumping, intense sniffing, rushing toward each other, or immediate interaction. Many people even interpret this excitement as happiness or friendliness. But in this work, we