Here’s something that might surprise you: Really Real Relaxation (RRR) isn’t something you create for your dog—it’s something you share with your dog. Dogs are masters of social referencing, constantly reading our emotional states and adjusting their own accordingly. Your dog’s ability to truly relax has a lot to do with your nervous system than any environmental setup you could devise.
Think about how emotional contagion works in humans. When you walk into a room where everyone is tense and stressed, you feel it immediately—your shoulders tighten, your breathing changes. If you’ve ever been out and about with a friend who was tense and not enjoying the outing, you know that it affects your experience and can even lead you to say, “Shall we just go?” On the other hand, being around genuinely calm people is wonderful, and can naturally settle your own nervous system. If you’ve ever had a great massage, the calm, quiet movements of the masseuse go a long way to helping you relax.
Dogs experience this phenomenon too, and depending on the dog, possibly even more intensely than we do.
Research on emotional contagion between humans and dogs shows that this sharing of emotional states strengthens with the duration of the relationship. The longer you’ve shared life together, the more attuned your dog becomes to your internal state—not just your behavior, but your actual physiological arousal levels. There is such value to both dog and human in this, and one of the great joys of sharing many years with a dog.
Social modeling means your dog learns by watching you. It’s what social animals do: they take hints from others in their social group. Research in interspecies interactions show us that dogs and horses and other social species are tuned into the human’s emotional state. Remember that animals believe what we show them, not what we say or pretend. When you are genuinely settled—not performing calm but actually experiencing it—your dog can let their guard down too.
And yet, this is where many well-meaning handlers miss the mark entirely. They focus on teaching cues and behaviors or managing the environment while remaining internally wound up themselves. But dogs are masters at reading body language, and they believe that what our actions tell them, not what we say or how we pretend. Your dog isn’t going to achieve RRR while you’re checking your phone, chit chatting, worrying or in so many other ways being disengaged from the moment and from your dog.
Relationship Centered Training recognizes this fundamental truth: dogs are social learners who take their emotional cues from their trusted humans. Really Real Relaxation is shared experience, not a cued behavior.
The most powerful tool for helping the dog achieve genuine relaxation isn’t environmental—it’s authentically modeling the state yourself. Stop trying to engineer relaxation from the outside in. Start embodying it from the inside out.
Be present. RRR is a “we” thing, after all.
This post is based on concepts from Suzanne Clothier’s Really Real Relaxation. Did you know you can learn Really Real Relaxation online?
Really Real Relaxation Quick Course is designed for the pet owner who wants to help their dog relax.
Really Real Relaxation PRO is designed with the dog trainer or serious dog owner in mind. It takes your understanding of the skill deeper, delving more into the whys, helping you teach it to clients, or incorporate it into classes.
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