Touch it's more powerful than we think

All the work we've been doing with K has been about moving at her pace while building trust with a variety of exercises that I've been blogging about.  She's made huge progress in the 9 days she's been with us.

Day 8 - I'm on my belly and you can see K is starting to think maybe this touch stuff is kinda fun.  She heard my husband come home thus her moving on.

 

Day 9 - K seeking me out for touch.  I was on the computer so this was interesting since most of the touch has been with me on the floor with her.  Notice I'm not "petting or patting" her.  My strokes are long and deliberate.  She likes to have her ears stroked as well.  What I want to do with K is to give her enough touch that she comes back for more.  I do not want to flood her with touch. 

 

You will see that K does give us stress signals - the sneezing, yawns and I would say the licking is also stress based.  These are low levels of stress signals but, they are important to notice. When K is done - I'm done.  She's taking huge risks with all of this work and with each passing day the stress will diminish again as we move at her pace.



Day 10 - this was from today and I'm sitting on the ground in front of her.  Notice how K makes eye contact with me.  She chooses to move forward with allowing me to touch her.  Again, she likes the ear strokes and the slow touches at the base of her ears.  I use the back of my hand and after watching this realize I should have been moving my hands slower with my touch and there are errors in this video by me - having my hand over her head. You can see she moves away from that.  Lucky for me K is pretty forgiving with my errors. I take deep breaths as I'm working with K around this touch. 

 

 

This was about 3 minutes later and watch how playful she's becoming.  Her face and body are softer and I'd say she's relaxed and engaged.  At any point had K wanted to move away that would have been just fine.  At the conclusion of these video's we went and found a yummy bully stick for her to chew on while she relaxes. This was a lot of work for K and she's pretty amazing!

For anyone who wonders about the power of touch you've see the difference it makes for a under socialized dog like K.  Again I cannot stress that we are moving at K's pace and because of this that's part of why she's doing so great. 

 

You saw D'light in these video's... he really wanted his turn for touch.  Funny boy here's where he was a the end of the above video.  Not sure he could give me a clearer message of "Please touch me".

I actually never thought that much about touch before we fostered (and later adopted) D'light. Many know of D'light and his history - he was under socialized and abused thus we had an under socialized/fearful dog. He didn't want touch because touch was never used in a positive way with him, in fact touch physically and emotional damaged him.  We began a journey of  TTouch work and he's a very different dog today and I'm a very different person because of our touch journey.

Here's D'light this past weekend.  This bed is next to the computer and this is often what happens when I'm on the computer.  As you can see we now have a dog who not only enjoys touch but, actually asks for it. I love this and I've reinforced D'light's asking for touch!  Times like this I call him Mr. D'manding and I love him dearly.