So I heard something terrible at the local dog park the other day. Some dogs just don’t trust their humans all the way! What?? What are these doggos thinking? That humans are somehow dangerous or something? I trust my human with all my heart. I believe he’d do anything for me.
Buuuuut, after hearing all this, I thought it would be cool to put this trust to the test. All the time, I see humans doing something called “trust falls”, where they fall backwards with their arms crossed and trust that another human will catch them. My mind was blown the first time I saw that! You have to have a LOT of trust in someone to believe that they’d catch you even when you’re not able to catch yourself.
And that’s when I knew that that’s how I’d be showing off my trust in my human.
Practice Does Make Perfect
Well, I wanted to make sure that my human could do it. Imagine doing a trust exercise that my human COULDN’T do. Talk about embarrassing and totally against the point I’m trying to make! No, I knew I had to make sure my human was 100% ready to do this exercise.
So what I did was that I first did some very gentle practice falls. Stumbling, collapsing into my human’s lap, stuff like that. I got my human accustomed to catching me – though it did result in a quick trip to the vet, because my human was worried about my legs.
But I knew that once my human was used to catching me, we were making progress. Time for step two.
I Had to Psyche Myself Up
When I knew the big fall was coming, I had to mentally prepare. I trusted my human, but what if he wasn’t fast enough? Okay, now I see why other doggos didn’t do this. I know what you’re thinking. Why not just stop, right? Well, I didn’t want all that hard work to be for nothing! I wanted to see this project through to the end.
So I took a few days to pick a good soft spot, and find a good time to do it. At night, before he ate seemed to be best, since he always got so sleepy after dinner.
And what do you know, it was a success!
My Dad and I Do Trust Falls All of the Time
Turned out, my dad really liked the exercise and wanted to do more! I’m sure he was just relieved that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. The vet said I was okay, but now that I think about it, he was probably still worried that I was sick in some way. I shouldn’t trick him like that anymore.
But now, we do trust falls like every week! It’s a fun trick to do for guests, and ocassionaly we’ll even try in public areas. I can’t WAIT to try it out at the dog park, and show all of my friends who thought I was crazy.
I’ll have to find new trust exercises to do with him! We could start a whole skit doing all kinds of trust tricks for people. Or better yet, we could teach a class! Help dogs learn to trust their humans more, and see them as someone who will keep them safe.
I can’t wait for what we do next!
