Well, tell me how I can best help? Well, it's more of a, I mean, I know that
they're essentially content but I don't know where to start really with Donut because he's,
I've never met a dog quite so scared. What I might do is I might just approach him normally
so I can actually really see what he's like before we start working with him. Obviously,
when you work with any pack if you work with the most nervous
it brings everybody else down because just like us humans when we've got somebody who is really
over the top, it affects everyone. Yeah so just any approach is very, very threatening. This is going to
be really lovely because obviously his mind is very, very busy and what the Trust Technique
is all about is reducing thoughts and feelings. The two aspects that I need to make this
work is that I go into a non-thinking state and I have the animal's attention. Now, it's very easy
to have the animals attention when they're nervous because it only takes one tiny little movement so
I'm just going to start from about here, going to get present. I'm going to, when an animal is aware
of you and you go into that present state, just like if we're in an emotional state,
they will pick up on it, they react to it and the more nervous an animal, the more reactive they are.
Just like when there's a problem if we've got an emotional problem, our animals usually reflect that.
They pick up from us and they react to us and then we see a problem. When we react to their problem
or it's, you know, the other way around if the dog genuinely has a problem and we actually go why,
why, why, all of these things. Well, what I'm doing is it's the same principle but I'm on the other end
of the scale of the thinking level so I'm right down into a non-thinking state. It's what we would
call a peaceful state because there's nothing going on up there and if there is peace of
mind, this is what this young guy needs to learn is peace of mind around people. Yeah, precisely. So I'm
going to see how far I can get with him, how much his thinking is. Obviously, my present moment needs
to be stronger than his thinking and he is relaxed enough to be sitting down, which is great. You
know, he's not on level eight thinking that he's flying around like a complete madman so I'm going
to work with him. What I'm looking for is that when I get present, that his eyes will start going
and what will happen is that he will go through this process of going sleepy and then waking up
again going I can't sleep now, there's a person, there's a man in the room. Very like that.
And I just want to keep working through until we can get him into that sleep state.
When he wakes up from that then he will have a completely different feeling about who I
am because, well, a bit like driving being a passenger in a car. If you're a passenger and
you don't trust the driver and you start nodding off, you go, I don't know if I can go to sleep
but if you do then when you wake up, you're going to have a different feeling of the driver.
That's right, yes. So I'm going to work there now and then my role is I'm going to teach you
exactly how to do this. We'll both be working with him. There is stage one, which is
bringing their mind down and after doing it a few times, they soon realise that it's you who's
delivering this feeling. At the beginning, you might go why am I doing that but after a while he will
know that it's us that's delivering that feeling and then we can use it in different scenarios.
Scenarios being with him that somebody comes in and approaches him so then we come into stage two,
which is literally working with this feeling of trust or this non-thinking peaceful state.
So he was confident enough not to be looking over here so he might not have had his eyes closed
but that's certainly going to be an opportunity now
for me to be a little bit closer because he's not looking at me anymore.
And you see again, I've stayed there, very still, just focused on my senses to bring myself
into the present moment and I've stayed there. I'm aware of him because I can see
him with my peripherals but I'm not looking at him because that would be
far too threatening for a nervous dog and I stayed there until he put his head back down,
which for me says that he's okay with me sitting this close.
Now, my job here is to make sure that I go in small enough steps.
If we look at thinking levels from zero to ten, if I take him past six he's going to get up and move
and I know he's very sensitive so he might be on three at the moment but he could very
easily go to six so my movements have to be slow enough and I think these guys are all helping
in their own way aren't they because they're all getting closer and closer to him as well.
Often I find when I work for really nervous dogs, I try and have a confident dog in the room
at the same time because they completely get where I'm coming from yeah so there's a help. Yeah.
And you can see now how that's happening quicker and quicker. You know, before when
we first came in, his eyes wouldn't come off of us and now, we're in this lovely situation. I mean,
I'm a bit like a moving statue when you don't look at me, I move, when you look at me, I'm stationary.
Yeah this guy's picking up a lot on the present moment. I thought that I swapped dogs on
the way back actually from the kennels because when I'd met him in the kennels previously he was
as nervous as Donut and yet look at him now. Yeah and he's just lapping it up.
And for somebody new to come in and within five minutes be that close, you know, he's got a much
closer relationship with you so when you start working with him, you'll be literally teaching
him. You're going to be, you know, I really don't like the word pack leader because I think
the word leader is all the wrong way around. It's a very human connotation
but teacher so you're going to teach him but you're not physically going to teach him how
to be with everyone, you're actually going to just teach him to be peaceful and when we're peaceful
and we look at the environment around us, rather than like this where everything is such a threat
and of course, if we think everything's a threat then it will be. You know, our brain
will go well, see I told you, he's started to chase me. When we look at the world with soft eyes or
a peaceful outlook then suddenly we teach ourselves. We look in a completely different way.
We go well, actually, ah if I'm friendly and I go up to someone, they're just going to stroke me.
He hasn't got that yet but what you're going to do is I'm going to teach you how to be his teacher.
The idea is that we can have a nice sit command with him, which is a long way off yet.
So we're going to have to work with this stage one
and get closer and closer. I know that where we are now, if I was to move away
and if I was to come straight back to that same position, I know that he's going to
be okay with that because I went very slowly and I taught him to be peaceful
with me approaching like that so I know that we're gonna be okay with this, which is lovely.
You know, when you teach an animal to be peaceful and you do it step by step they get every step.
So I know I can move away and I can come back to this place. I know that if I move forward from here
then I have to reteach him to be peaceful with me that close.