Dogs and horses

I've been taking one of my parents' dogs to training classes every week for about 9 months now. He is an ex-rescue so had very high anxiety levels when they first got him, and still quite anxious when we started classes a year after that. The classes have helped a lot but he still doesn't really relax fully in class.

One of the exercises is heel work, weaving in and out of the other people in the class in a big circle. So dog and I set off, dog on lead. No problems. Everyone else has their go and we get to our second turn. I suggested we do this off lead as an additional channel.

Benji has a bit of a fixation with the door, so off lead work is asking him to stick with me and ignore the door. Off I set to the outside of my neighbour. And off Benji sets - to the inside of the neighbour. Hmmm. Call him back to me and start over, and we were fine.

And at that point something goes CLUNK very loudly in my head. I've just spent two days that week watching Mark Rashid talk about making connections. But for some reason I simply hadn't thought it might apply to anything else. The difference between setting off the first time off-lead and the second time was the connection between me and Benji. First time I had waltzed off without even bothering to check in with Benji. Not exactly surprising that he did his own thing then ! If I wasn't offering leadership, why should he follow ? Second time I connected - maybe not perfectly but certainly more than before.

In the meantime I am trying to tidy up my office and found some notes from a previous clinic of Mark's that I audited in November 2006.

"To get softness

boundaries come first
then exercise
then affection"

Oh my - doesn't this sound like Cesar Milan's "discipline, exercise, affection" ? I guess it should be no surprise that it works for both horses and dogs