Dog Pure Awareness blog

On Labor Day weekend Shiro and I went to camp, Camp Unleashed in the Berkshires, and had a wonderful time. Some of you know that 4 years ago Shiro came close to dying of a tick paralysis. As he slowly recovered, I decided to just let him do whatever he wanted for the rest of his life. Because although we are often unaware of it, we can get stressed by performing, and our dogs tune into our stress and resonate to it. And his illness was within his nervous system, and I wanted him to feel as little stress as possible.
But at Camp, which as its name suggests is a place to run free, explore and deepen the human-dog connection, I decided to try agility with him. And after 4 years he remembered every obstacle except the dreaded weave poles, and he loved it. The instructor was extremely perceptive: just before the dog walk (high and narrow off the ground), I hesitated – it couldn’t have been more than a second – and he picked it up and asked me if there was a problem. I told him, and he said calmly and quietly to try it. Then Shiro sailed up the ramp, trotted across the walk, and calmly descended the second ramp, a perfect dog walk.