You can think of a dog as a radar, and you can think of them as a radar indicator.
First of all, identify if the dog is in a high energy state where it’s paying attention to things that Nature is commanding. Otherwise figure out if it’s paying attention to the things that you’ve influenced it to be paying attention to. Attending to your choices of things is a direct result of its being in a low energy state wherein it’s previously dissected your behaviors and – as a relaxed, voluntarily submissive follower – it’s doing your things instead of Nature’s things.
The high energy dog gets its instructions from Nature – Nature is the high energy level dog’s boss.
The low energy dog has its brain in control, Nature has stepped aside, you have been vetted are its leader, the dog has submitted to you and is submitting to.
The behaviors the dog sees – since dogs communicate behaviorally and listen to other’s behaviors – the thing that it’s looking at is what’s on its radar. As a patient owner and leader, your job and your learning opportunity is to be aware of
- your attention and your dog’s attention – both at the same time –
- figure out where it is that your dog is looking,
- see if its energy is high or low,
- seeing if the thing it’s paying attention to will result in higher or lower energy,
- and if the conversation that you’re having with your dog – by virtue of how you’re both communicating to each other is proceeding – is going and change it so that the dog is making more eye contact with you than with anything else.
Once the dog begins to make more eye contact with you, it gets triggered internally, from the inside out, by a hormonal trigger that’s programmed into the dog to relax and submit.
In the submission,
- that is the behavior,
- the dog’s message, as well as
- the indication of what its relationship is with you,
- how it is in the current moment,
- where it’s been,
- and where it’s currently going.
The DOuGTrainer
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