Prioritizing the emotional connection of their dogs allows everyone in the household to have safe and kind interactions with their dogs.
Catharine is the mom of 4 kids (toddlers to teens) and 2 adolescent dogs!
A busy and sometimes chaotic house, but one that’s filled with lots of love and compassion.
Witnessing them through some ups and downs and seeing how they are heart centered and prioritize their relationships over everything else not only melted my heart, but continued to reaffirm for me, being empathetic and understanding what’s going on “underneath” the surface of how not only their 2 legged, but their 4 legged kids are expressing their feelings is the embodiment of a benevolent leader.
Catharine modeled this relationship style, by guiding her middle child into learning about what their youngest dog, Dustin was feeling too in a non judgmental and curious way.
This extends further as Catharine and her family took their time in bringing their dogs together. They recognized what each dog needed (sometimes different than the other) and did greetings and short periods of time together.
They took time to observe body language, arousal levels and what each one was communicating (they shared that they experienced a brief moment of resource guarding and immediately took action to trade up, lovingly redirect, remove the item and allow for resume of interaction).
Catharine also shared her toddlers, Remi and Logan may not have seen eye to eye with Dustin, but with Catharine’s gentle parenting, she provides her dogs and kids options.
Both Logan and Remy were empowered to make the choice to go into the x pen on their own when they wanted a break from Sean-C and Dustin’s play time antics.
What clever kids and for them to feel they can take action to feel more comfortable when things became more raucous with the dogs.
This family integrated the learning they did through their program with me while making it their own.
Focusing on how everyone feels and guiding all the family members into feeling, safe and loved because they all trust their mom to be the kind, gentle and loving parent to all of them all at once.
If you are desiring emotional connection over “who is the boss” dog coaching, set up your Discovery Call with me.
Four Paws & You Dog Training 