I have had this implanted in my head for a long time now and is really why I wanted to start the blog. The whirlpool effect popped into my head while doing mostly off leash work with dogs either on hikes or in a daycare setting. For a hike, imagine a creek. In a daycare setting, imagine a pond. This pond has whirlpools scattered throughout of varying size, speed and depths. Imagine a crispy, dry leaf floating in the pond. This leaf is your dog. The leaf gets swept up into a whirlpool, and spit out only to get swept up again.
The whirlpools are other dogs, horses, birds, squirrels, strangers and friends, and other curiosities. As your crispy, leaf dog floats through this environment, they are swept up into these situations.
For the love of your dog, you have to become the biggest whirlpool in the pond. In the eyes of your dog, you have to hold the highest velocity, and be able to sweep them up into you at moments notice. In other words, you have to become the most important and valuable being to your dog. You want to be their right hand man, their #1.
The way you become their #1 is actually going through these whirlpools with them and using your resources and information about them to float through that whirlpool. The way you do that is by prioritizing safety and communicating love. As I continue my off leash journey with dogs, this is how I do everything. It’s how I diffuse escalating tumbleweeds of dog, calm an ambush of a stranger, and summon my dogs out of a bird chase.
But, I will also do the opposite. I will make my whirlpool so small that I fade into the background and become invisible in the moment a shy dog greets a soft spoken stranger. I get small when a dog on their own, regulates his temper back down from a startle and puffing his chest out to a soft body and happy tail. I do this so that dog can lean into that moment on their own and take that accomplishment as all their own. That is where lasting confidence comes from. Set them up and let them have that all for themselves. Let them get swept up in that whirlpool. It’ll do them good.