Taming The Wild Side

I reshared this picture from our Saturday hike because it has great information for our clients in the confidence classes! They are building confidence in their dogs through sounds, motions and obstacles. However, we can also use other confident dogs to help our unconfident dogs push through stress and fear to accomplish a goal. Penny (the dingo) crosses bridges all the time. She started to cross this bridge but because it was an arched bridge and she could not see the other side, she froze, began to quiver and would not walk. Glacier, who is very confident, crossed the bridge but when he walked next to Penny she took a step and leaned her body completely against him and they crossed the bridge together. What a great moment of natural confidence building to capture! You can see in the photo Penny's ears are flat and she is walking close to the ground. Her back legs were still shaking. At the end of the bridge she was quite happy, almost as if she was proud of herself!