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My Story

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My dog Nikkie was just a few weeks old when we found her roaming around our home. She was one of the newborn puppies that our neighbourhood street dog had recently given birth to. Our hearts just melted and she was ours to be. She was so small that she would fit in our palm and look so adorable with her little tail wagging. Growing up with her was so much fun and she was a wonderful pet to have—playful and ever loving as all dogs are.

 

After a couple of years, I went abroad for work and she was at home with my parents. I would miss her a lot and see her in any dog that I came across. I was dying to see her, play with her and hold her in my arms again. I returned home a couple of years later, eagerly anticipating her warm welcome. When I entered, I found her growling and baring her teeth at me. I was hurt, disappointed and angry, and I felt sorry for her at the same time—a mixed bag of emotions, confused and lost. She continued to be dominant and aggressive with us. No one could go near her. She would come and take food from our dinner table and we could not do anything about it. We were afraid of her. This was not the Nikkie I had had before—she had sadly changed.

 

About 10 years later, when I was in the US and Nikkie was home in India, I was watching a TV show on dog psychology—The Dog Whisperer featuring Cesar Milan. As I watched it, I became aware of what had been happening with Nikkie and why she had been behaving the way she did. Everything started to make sense. It became very clear that we had not understood her and what she was trying to convey. We had viewed her as a human, and misinterpreted her actions and labelled her a dominant, aggressive dog. Not knowing anything about her psychology and her natural pack nature, we were totally disconnected from understanding her.

 

It wasn’t for a couple more years that I got to be with Nikkie again. She was an older dog now—16 years old—with the same issues. She would just lay in a corner and not move around much and was as aggressive as before. I applied the dog psychology I learned and approached her with a completely different mindset. The result was that she gave me the same aggressiveness for around 20 minutes; then, after recognizing that I approached her differently, she gave up and submitted. Her aggression was totally gone. What was different was that I approached her with calmness and compassion and understanding that her aggression was basically coming from a space of fear and trying to protect herself. Once she felt I had understood her, she just gave up her aggression and trusted me fully. We then went on a 2-kilometer walk that evening—something that had never happened in all those years. It was a joy to see such a powerful transformation in a matter of 30 minutes. It was very late in her life, but we did get our old Nikkie back.

 

Taking this powerful experience of mine, I started helping friends who had issues with their dogs. One of the early cases was a family who had got a dog to help their child cope with their autism. They were about to give up the dog, as they couldn’t handle his overexcitement and their child’s reactions to it. Understanding dog psychology helped connect this dog with their new family. Now, the boy and the dog have a wonderful bond.

 

For more than 15 years, I have been sharing this powerful knowledge with anyone open to understanding and bonding with their pet as they would want to be bonded with. Dogs are ready to live in balance. We humans unknowingly treat them in a way that is unnatural to them and we then face unwanted consequences. Dog behaviorism is the world that my Nikkie opened for me. You are most welcome to visit this world and have a deep, loving, and fulfilling relationship with your dog.

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