Animals and humans share feelings. This affective connection is utilised when practicing the Trust Technique.

Animal-human interactions are often prompted by reacting to each other’s inner states. This interplay can be joyful and pleasant, mutually beneficial and deepening your relationship.

But what if your dog’s behaviour elicits dismay, anxiety, embarrassment, annoyance or fear in you? Or, likewise, your behaviour brings out apprehension, worry, agitation, frenzy or unease in your animal? Usually, this kicks off an escalating feedback loop of negative reactions between you two.

So far, I am talking about in-the-moment interactions. But often it is enough for you to just think about a stressful situation and your dog already reacts. Let me give you an example.

One morning when daycare puppy Pali was dropped off his human told me about her struggle with him sometimes when leaving his sight. He whines and barks. This behaviour really stressed her, feeling trapped in a Pali-controlled world, also feeling helpless and a bit hopeless. As she was talking to me, Pali who had been excited to go see the other dogs, started to scream and howl and pulling towards his human, clearly reacting to the remembered situation. It was easy for me to interrupt this by calling him in a cheerful tone and taking him inside where he was his happy self as always.

I wanted to make sure his human fully appreciated what had just happened there. I messaged her to give me a call when she had a minute and when she did, I could hear in her voice that she was worried, perhaps imagining that Pali had been upset this whole time. Although she has learned and is using the Trust Technique with Pali, it’s still a fairly new thing for them. When I pointed out what had transpired that morning she was flabbergasted yet also immediately recognised the truth of it.

In such a moment, people often start feeling guilty, blaming themselves for their dog’s behaviour, feeling awful and self-critical. Though perhaps a typical human reaction, it’s not helpful at all. The value of seeing the sensitive connection between ourselves and our animals is so that we can be mindful and change for the better any haywire interactions we experience with them. Becoming aware of our part in the struggles with our dog empowers us to behave differently. The Trust Technique opens a new door for us. Once we’ve stepped through it, what seemed impossible before suddenly can be achieved. Animals’ difficult behaviours that seemed unstoppable and irreversible in the past can improve, change and heal.

In this video, you can watch another example of shared feelings. It happened during my consultation with Winnie and her humans. Winnie, the dog, had been lying relaxed on her side while her humans and I spoke until one of them expressed the extend of angst she has been feeling in certain situations with Winnie. In this short clip we also talk about that it’s not about us not having feelings anymore around our animals.