I took Bella on a one-day T Touch workshop yesterday to learn how to do it a bit more properly (as I've just been working from books until now). It was a really lovely day - 5 of us with our dogs (a mini poodle, a greyhound, a lab and an old collie plus Bella). All the dogs had different issues, some were rescues who had been really badly treated, one had really bad separation anxiety, so a real mix. It was a really relaxed day, you had to learn how to do the basic touches by practising on each other, then we went outside with the dogs to watch them walking, standing and sitting to try and pick up areas of tension (eg are they stiff in the hips, do they stand with their weight more on one side to the other, how do they hold their tails etc). Then we did a flat hand assessment to pick up things like hotspots on the body or areas where they don't like to be touched (Bella's fine with everything apart from her front legs, and she tends to stand so that she ends up with tension in her shoulders).
After that we started doing t touches on our dogs and it was amazing seeing them all just really chill out - the greyhound ended up flat out on her side and the lab ended up lounging on top of her. The collie wound up snoring on the floor, the poodle (which had been trembling in fear before) curled up and went to sleep and Bella just sat there with her eyes shut and her head dropping lower and lower.
We did a bit of leading work in the afternoon (dealing with things like them pulling on the lead) and then body wraps (which they describe as a "portable hug"
) and a bit of work on their tails.
The trainer (Toni Shelbourne) was fab, really well informed and lots of suggestions for treating different problems.
Bella did her best to upstage everyone - there were times where you were doing stuff where you couldn't hold onto your dog and every time that happened, Bella would head off doing a round of the room, checking out bags, nicking biscuit wrappers and trying to reach biscuits off the counter
- thankfully everyone just seemed to find it very endearing. At one point she was doing her best begging face at the trainer and she said to her "yes Bella, you are VERY pretty, but I've been working with dogs for 20 years and I know what you're like and you can't have any of my biscuit."
Anyway I've come home feeling much more confident about doing bits of T Touch on our two and am planning to start on Zorro from today (I have a bodywrap now as well which I think will be really good for him as he's quite an anxious boy).
I'm hoping to start training as a practitioner in the Autumn - can't wait!
