Once a dog owner's expectations have been shattered it often becomes difficult to move forward.  Knowing how to find the calm center within the pack relationship is the first step toward creating a happy follower role for your dog.  Context is everything when it comes to understanding behavior.  Balance creates balance.  Calm creates the same.  The mind is a powerful thing and can challenge, strip away power and create role change without ever using a choke chain, remote collar, gadget or device.  Devices often shift the focus and interfer with the most important part of creating role change.....the power of your mind.  The owner's personality, dog's temperament and overall interactions all play a part in the role changing process.  Dogs have a special connection to humans through pack.  Certain thoughts, feelings and interactions link to the type of pack energy which can force our dog to take the vacant dominant pack role.  Dogs live in the moment.  To understand Pack is to know that hope exists regardless of the past.  Pack is about moving forward and beginning again as if waking up to a new day.  Over the years dogs have taught me more about myself than the other way around.  Only with the loss of my first Police Dog, in that moment, did I truely understand this.  In the end finding the calm center of the storm and moving forward is really more about looking inside ourselves before beginning the journey with our dog.                

   

              Author Dale McCluskey