Working with Logan
Logan was a rescue dog who was believed to have been badly treated at an early age. Of all the dogs he seemed to be holding back energy the most from me (in Natural Dog Training speak).
Stuck
We returned from a session of 'pushing for food' where I felt we were making progress. I opened the van doors to let him out. He just sat and looked at me. I gently pulled at his collar. In response he got up slowly, took a step forward tentatively, not fully standing up. I stepped back and waited to see what he would do. He stopped, looking past me, like a statue. I tried to get a sense of his feeling. As I did so I felt sadness and tears started to well up in my eyes. A feeling of “I wish someone understood me, I'm lonely and just want to be loved for being myself, of being confused and not knowing what was expected of me”. The strange thing was that at exactly the point when I started to feel these feelings, his tail started to wag gently 4 or 5 times. He looked more attentively at me, with some sort of recognition. I was curious, if he's picking up on my emotion - what was going on?
I thought about the van, that he was standing in and its significance to me. It represented freedom , free from day to day responsibilities and what I 'should' be. I bought it to enjoy my dogs, but even the decision to do so involved 'breaking free'. I left Logan to settle back in the van, where he stayed for the rest of the afternoon.
Too Much Pressure
A few days later, we were working together and our progress seemed to have gone backwards. He was hyper, to the extent that I was worried that he would bolt. I tried holding him back with the long-line and pushing for food, but he didn't want to engage strongly at all. I stopped trying and let him have a run, it seemed pointless fighting it.
He ran away from me full speed, totally ignoring my calls, so I checked in with my feelings. I was overwhelmed with the emotion along the lines of "its not fair, he doesn't want to stay with me, people don't love me, even though I am doing everything I can" - it honestly felt like the stuck emotion of a 3-year old! I wanted to bawl my heart out.
I sought advice from NDT friends who gave me feedback. I re-read the chapter in Your Dog is Your Mirror called 'Decoding Your Dog'. The advice was to consider what am I thinking when my dog does something good and what I am thinking when my dog does something that makes me feel vulnerable. I let the ideas come to me.
Avoidance
The next time we worked together I kept him on the long-line and when he strained I just encouraged him. I called him to me, but as he approached me he would veer off. I stood at the end of the line trying to understand. WAs it me? What was going on?
Then a eureka moment for me. He was being too pressurised by my expectations. When he was coming back to me I sensed he was picking up my anxiety in me, a pressure to perform.
I recognised and acknowledged the feeling of being asked to cope with things before I felt able to, being scared of moving forward in new areas of my life in case I made a mistake. I knew I'd made important connections because tears started to flow, which is always a good indicator for knowing when I've uncovered a hidden block. So I stopped calling him and just waited. Eventually, as I felt more balanced, he started coming back to me of his own accord, with stronger pushes than he had given me before. It was lovely.
Unlearn What We Have Been Taught
Below is the lovely advice that I got from Sang Koh, the NDT dog trainer who has been helping me with this process, that I would like to share.
The big lesson in this for so many of us is to unlearn what we’ve been taught. To quiet the mind and peel away the layers of personality we’ve developed through our lives that keep us safe. But we have to pull away those layers to have an emotional dialogue with our dogs. So my advice to you would be to actually do less “training” and spend more time just relaxing. As you saw, the pushing and all the other stuff will come in time, once you let go of the need to have Logan perform for you. Don’t worry about “progress” because there is no ultimate “goal”. There’s only being. Just be with Logan getting to know who he really is, learning to appreciate his true nature. The connection and bond you want will naturally develop once you can let go of the notion that he, or you, need to perform to be loved"
Just beautiful Joanne.