Does your dog’s behaviour cause you stress? Does your dog turn into Cujo at the dog park? Maybe it is the opposite and your dog is over-friendly to the point that other dogs or people struggle to come up for air when your dog decides to share the love!

Problem behaviours, whatever they are, do cause us stress. Whether it is frustration and anger because your dog just won’t stop barking, or the anxiety and dread you feel each time a strange dog comes near your reactive dog. Our dog’s negative behaviour creates negative emotions for us. There is so much information out there explaining how to get rid of unwanted behaviours from a dog training perspective. The options can appear endless, but success doesn’t always follow. Why not?…..because YOUR emotional response to the problem behaviour plays a large part.

Let me give you an example. If your dog is anxious or reactive around other dogs it may be because it has been attacked in the past. This event will have affected you too, and if you now get nervous every time a new or strange dog approaches, you dog immediately picks up on your fear. Your dog will already be stressed, but your anxiety feeds this even more, confirming to your dog that an actual threat is present and therefore a very good reason to be scared. The reality is that both of you are reacting emotionally in the present day to an incident that happened in the past. It therefore makes sense that in order to get your dog through the problem you also need to fix your end of the leash too.

‘How do I do that?’ I hear you say. It always sounds like it is easier said than done, but sometimes it just takes a bit of ‘outside of the box’ thinking and considering a new approach. If your current approach was working then you wouldn’t still be in this situation, and you can’t just keep doing the same type of things and expect different results, right?
Animal Kinesiology is a natural therapy that has helped thousands of dogs and their owners overcome problem behaviours by working with them both together. We begin by finding the root cause of your dog’s issue. Using advanced testing of muscle feedback in the nervous system, we can determine which particular emotion underpins the problem behaviour. We know we have identified the correct emotions when we test the amount of disruption it causes in the nervous system. Often this is not the emotion you may be thinking and it puts a completely different spin on the problem – and of course, the solution!

Here are the three key parts to an Animal Kinesiology Balance:

Core Emotion

We find the real reason behind the problem. What is your dog actually scared of? Is it a fear of losing control? Is it a fear of being seen? Does it lacks confidence in its ability to handle the situation? Perhaps your dog has an issue with boundaries, either physical or emotional? Each of these emotions are very different and require a different approach. Interestingly, they will each show up in similar problem behaviours which means trainers will attempt to retrain all in the exact same way. This why the success rate is often relatively low, depending on the skill of the trainer. We use neurological kinesiology to determine which emotions or belief systems are running and how this is driving the problem behaviour.

You – The Owner

It is vital that we determine which emotion or belief system is running in your subconscious that may be either feeding the problem with your dog, by either making it worse, or merely by preventing it moving forward. Do you have a fear of handling a crisis situation? Do you have a fear of getting it wrong? Are you an anxious person in general – and if so, then why? Perhaps you also have a fear of being seen which means when your dog’s bad behaviour attracts unwanted attention your stress level rocket!

In order to help your dog overcome the problem it is imperative that we include you in the session to clear all of these stressful emotions. This part of the session is so interesting and teaches you so much about yourself and your pre-programmed coping mechanisms. The emotions which cause problems with your dog will undoubtedly be having an impact in all other areas of your life. Learning about yourself through your dog is one of the most amazing experiences!

The Fix

In simplistic terms, we reset you and your dog back to the factory settings, ready to re-learn how to handle life in a positive and rewarding way.

Using kinesiology and advanced energy medicine techniques we can reset the emotional centre of the brain to clear the emotions that trigger the problem behaviour. This also involves calming the fight/flight responses and restoring new neural pathways to allow for new positive associations to be made in a situation that was previously scary.

Training techniques are always vital in teaching our dogs how to behave appropriately in any given situation, but enabling both you and your dog to approach this with a new perspective sets you up for success. Is this approach unique – yes! Will you maybe need to step outside your comfort zone emotionally – yes! Will this solve your problems and improve the relationship you have with your dog – YES!