I will tell you what this philosophy teaches. I have found it to be true on many occasions. First if we think of dogs of past times.
When they had to work,whether it was to move a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle, perhaps there was time to give a command to
start. Perhaps the farmer or shepherd would have smiled and said "Good Dog" at the end. Perhaps not.
If we think of dogs
in battle and not just the wars of the 20th century, but those of the 15th and 16th, we would come to a place where extreme
stress was alive. I can guarantee in the heat of these battles there was no thought, let alone a command, of stress release. If you
were alive and had your limbs and faculties, this was stress release. Our tug toys and rope pulls do not release stress as is
thought by many. Instead they put avoidance into the dog. There is alot more to this.
Natural form such as nature when
predators are under extreme stress. The release is the end. It is thought by many that stress is released in the bite. If I choose to
release my dog, I say "Free". This however has nothing to do with stress release. I simply know the exercise is over and so does
my dog. I wonder if we were in a real situation and when it ended, we got our dog tugging or chasing a toy and stress hit again,
what would happen.
Stress is as natural as breathing. We have been conditioned to think it is both bad, and dangerous. It is
not. How we deal with it is more dangerous than any stress.
İMike McConnery June 21, 2001
