Achieving Balance – Awareness Through Movement

Learning Objectives:

• Identify several leading configurations that involve two handlers leading one dog.
• Understand the rationale behind leading a dog with two handlers

When dogs have very ingrained habits in their behavior, whether it be balance or reactivity, one of the fastest ways to change this habit is to interrupt it with a very different, non-habitual experience.

Feldenkrais is a human based method, developed by Moshe Feldenkrais in the 1960’s that suggests that the nervous system can learn in one lesson if there is no pain, fear of pain and if it is done in a non-habitual way.

These principles are the basis for many of the Tellington TTouch Method leading exercises for all animals.  To change a habit, we need to replace it with a more useful one by doing an exercise completely unfamiliar to our nervous system and the subconscious.  This is the principle behind many of our leading exercises using two handlers, since it asks the dogs to do an “easy” exercise that is completely unfamiliar—this requires the brain and nervous system to “pay attention”.