When Phoenix came into my life so many years ago, I began in much the same way that most loving dog women do. I wanted to give her a strong foundation for a long and good life together, so we worked on basic life skills and cues while we built our bond, had fun, and enjoyed exploring the world together.
I imagined all the ways our life might unfold. We would be able to move through ordinary days with ease, but I also hoped we would share bigger adventures. For Phoenix and me, one of those dreams was becoming true partners while working sheep—and eventually competing together in sheepdog trials. Because she was a Border Collie, I expected that the connection and communication we were developing in everyday life would prepare us beautifully for herding when she was mature enough to begin.
I wanted to do all the right things. I believed I was helping Phoenix become ready for the life we would share.
Perhaps you recognize that hope. Whether you dream of agility, hiking, traveling, visiting friends, enjoying freedom in nature, or simply walking peacefully through your own neighborhood, you probably began with some vision of the life you and your dog would have together. You worked on the skills you thought you would need. You tried to make thoughtful choices. You expected that everything you were doing now would make that future easier when it arrived.
But that’s not what happened.
Phoenix and I had a loving, deeply connected bond, and that love absolutely came with us into the herding field. Yet the foundation I believed would prepare us for a successful herding partnership turned out to be almost the opposite of what we needed there.
In our everyday life, I had been the manager. I taught Phoenix cues, rewarded her responses, and expected her to be attentive and responsive to me. We loved one another, enjoyed one another, and had what most people would consider a very good relationship. But our way of navigating life still rested largely on my understanding of what should happen and Phoenix learning to respond.
That arrangement seemed to work—until the work became far more intense and complex. Suddenly, there were multiple individuals of a third species in the conversation. Phoenix needed to listen to me while also reading the sheep, balancing her instincts with my direction, making moment-to-moment decisions, and learning how all of us could move together.
All those carefully trained cues and expectations were no match for the complexity of what the two of us were now being asked to understand.
This bright, connected dog who had learned so much with me seemed to become someone else in the herding field. I would ask her for something, and instead of responding as I expected, she became faster, busier, and increasingly frantic.
Our time in the field was all over the place. One day, it seemed as though we had finally experienced a breakthrough. Phoenix was listening, our communication flowed, and the whole session felt smooth and connected. I would leave believing that everything was beginning to come together.
The next day, not so much.
Suddenly, it felt as though we were starting over—or worse, as though we had gone backward. The connection that had felt so clear the day before seemed nowhere to be found. Phoenix became rushed and disorganized, and I could not understand why the dog who had been so responsive yesterday appeared unable to hear me today.
This was our pattern for weeks: one step forward, two steps back.
Each good session gave me hope that we had finally figured it out. Each difficult one left me more confused and more frustrated. My thoughts swirled: If Phoenix could listen and work with me one day, why couldn’t she do the same thing the next? Where had we gone wrong?
When I thought about how much I loved her and remembered the wonderful beginning we had shared, my heart broke. I wanted to know:
What happened to my dog?
At the time, it truly seemed that the problem was Phoenix not listening, so I responded by trying harder to help her understand what I was asking. I gave her more information and became increasingly insistent on getting the response that I believed would bring us back into harmony.
Phoenix tried harder too. She moved faster and offered more behaviors, but none of it brought us closer to the thoughtful, connected work with the sheep that we were trying to find. Her growing intensity appeared to confirm my belief that she needed more input, so I tried to be clearer and gave her even more communication to process.
Around and around we went. We were two deeply willing partners, each responding to uncertainty by doing more and trying harder, while the possibility of understanding one another moved further away.
It took me time to understand what was actually happening. Phoenix’s willingness had not appeared on the good days and then disappeared on the difficult ones. She was not choosing to be my partner during one session and refusing during the next.
Her willingness was there all along. What fluctuated was her available capacity—and mine.
Willingness and capacity are not the same thing. Willingness speaks to our dog’s desire and effort to participate with us. Capacity speaks to what our dog can understand, process, organize, tolerate, and respond to in a particular moment, under particular conditions.
Phoenix wanted to work with me. In fact, much of the frantic behavior I interpreted as a failure to listen was evidence of how hard she was trying. But on the difficult days, she did not have enough available capacity to organize all the instinct, movement, excitement, pressure, and communication into the response I expected.
As she became more confused, she poured more effort into trying to find the answer. And as she became more frantic, I became more frustrated and more certain that she needed additional direction from me.
My capacity was changing too. I became less able to pause, observe, or reconsider the explanation I had formed.
I could not see Phoenix’s willingness because I was measuring it by whether she produced the response I wanted.
Once I began to understand Phoenix’s needs more clearly, I could see our wildly different sessions in a new way. The smooth days had not proven that the struggle was permanently resolved, and the difficult days did not mean our progress had disappeared. They showed me that capacity is living and changeable. It is influenced by what is happening inside both partners, outside in the environment, and in the communication and relationship between them.
But understanding capacity was only part of what needed to change. I also had to take responsibility for listening—and for not overtaking Phoenix’s part of the partnership.
One of the clearest examples came when I asked her to stop. From my perspective, I had given a cue she knew, and she should have responded where I asked. From Phoenix’s perspective, the sheep were not yet under control. Stopping in that particular place would have felt like leaving the work unfinished.
I tried harder to get her to stop. Phoenix tried harder to reach the place where she believed she could stop. The more certain I became that she needed to respond to me, the more determined she became to complete what she understood the sheep required.
For a long time, I was fixated on her behavior and her response to me while giving far too little attention to my own behavior and my response to her. I expected Phoenix to listen to my understanding of the situation without considering that her experience might contain something I needed to know.
So I began asking different questions: Phoenix, what are you telling me? What is true for you here? Help me understand.
That required humility. Not because humans are always wrong or because my own wisdom and responsibility no longer mattered, but because partnership could not truly exist while only one truth was being welcomed into the conversation.
Instead of insisting that Phoenix stop exactly where I had decided she should, I began allowing her to show me when the stop was right. I listened to what she knew about the sheep and let her experience influence our work. Her truth began to matter alongside mine.
I also began taking responsibility for what I was bringing into the field. When I felt frustration building, I returned to the simple practice that has supported me through so many experiences with my dogs: Pause, Breathe, Connect. I regulated myself instead of expecting Phoenix to settle the moment by responding correctly. Sometimes we took a break. Sometimes I offered less information rather than more. I stopped trying to convince Phoenix of my understanding and became genuinely curious about hers.
The conversation between us began to change.
Phoenix did not suddenly become a different dog. She was the same brilliant, willing dog she had been all along. But now there was room in our relationship for what both of us could see, feel, understand, and contribute. Together, over time, we learned to become brilliant partners in the herding field.
That realization changed far more than our work with sheep. It changed the question I brought to difficult moments with all my dogs.
Instead of asking only, “Why won’t my dog do this?” I became more curious about what might be affecting our capacity to understand and respond to one another right now—and about what my dog might know that I had not yet allowed to matter.
I have seen this same confusion in the lives of countless women and dogs. A dog walks calmly through the neighborhood one day and seems overwhelmed by every movement the next. She welcomes a familiar person on one occasion but is uncertain around them another time. He comes inside easily all week and then stops at the doorway as though something about this particular moment feels entirely different.
Often, these women have done all the things they were told would prepare their dogs for life. They have taught the cues, rewarded the desired responses, sought expert help, and tried every reasonable way they know to get back on track. They may have a loving, joyful relationship with their dog—except for the barking, the lunging, the visitors, the car, the grooming, or the one part of everyday life that keeps falling apart.
Because their dog has done the thing before, they naturally believe the dog should be able to do it again. When the dog struggles, they may worry that they have lost their progress, failed to prepare properly, or somehow returned to the beginning.
Then they do what I did with Phoenix. They try harder to help.
Sometimes more encouragement, information, or support is exactly what the moment needs. But sometimes our dog is already giving us all the effort they can access.
Adding more pressure or asking for more effort cannot manufacture capacity that isn’t available in that moment.
It may actually narrow the capacity available to both of us even further.
Recognizing this does not mean we abandon our responsibilities or wait for life to become perfectly easy. Our dogs still need to come inside, get into the car, move safely through the world, and receive necessary care. There will be moments when something genuinely needs to happen, even if our dog is struggling.
But we can meet those moments differently. We can stop interpreting difficulty as proof that our dog is unwilling. We can notice when both of us have begun doing more and trying harder, and interrupt that familiar cycle before it carries us further away from one another. We can become curious about what is happening inside both partners, outside in the environment, and between us—and allow what we notice to influence what happens next.
We may not immediately understand everything influencing the experience, and the adjustment we make may not produce the outcome we hoped for. But we are no longer standing across from our dog, believing they are withholding the cooperation that would make everything work. We can stand beside them as a willing partner, recognizing that we are having a hard time together—and that the way we meet that difficulty matters.
Phoenix was not giving me a hard time in the herding field. She was having a hard time finding her way through an experience she cared very much about. So was I.
When I finally understood that, the doorway to true partnership opened between us.
💖 Reflecting on Connection 💖
I’ve been reflecting this week on my own heart and on the mission that has grown through all these years with my dogs and the women I serve. I know what it is like to want something different—to feel pulled toward a way of relating that comes from the heart rather than from fixing behavior—and still not feel confident about how to bring that into the difficult, messy moments of real life.
So many dog women sense that there must be another way. They know their dog is not a problem to solve or a collection of behaviors to manage. They long for trust, connection, and a life that feels good to share. And yet when the barking begins, the walk falls apart, the visitor arrives, or the familiar struggle starts unfolding again, it can be hard to know what that different way actually looks like.
That is what I am reflecting on now: how I might share some of my latest insights and help more women see where another way forward could begin. A new workshop is coming into focus through my work with the women of Brilliant Partners Academy, and I feel called to share it with other women who resonate with this way of living with their dogs.
It is about meeting life differently together—seeing the larger pathway beneath reactive, distressed, or difficult behavior and discovering how a new pathway toward the life we dream of sharing might begin.
Would you like to learn how to do that with one of the real-life struggles you and your dog are experiencing?
If so, I would love to hear from you. Hit reply and tell me what feels most difficult in your shared life right now, or what you most wish could feel different. I will read every response and carry what you share with me as I bring this workshop fully to life.
In the meantime, I invite you to carry one question into the week ahead:
What might change in the way you meet this struggle if you knew your dog’s willingness was already there?
With love,
Kathy
📸 My brilliant partner, Phoenix, facing a stroppy ewe that didn’t want to cooperatively go through the gate. Of course, she did. Phoenix was not a dog easily dissuaded from what she knows is right. 😎
If you’d like to work with me and learn how to create a partnership lifestyle for you and your dog, you can request an invitation to join us in the Brilliant Partners Academy when the doors open for the next enrollment!
