03/10/2026
Personal play (play without food or toys) is something I’ve struggled a LOT with. It’s taken me months to get to the point where I am at now, and I still have lots to work on and learn. Thanks to the help of and .social.approach , I’ve made some great progress.
You probably look at this and just see personal play. When I see this, I see:
-Proxemics
-Pragmatics
-Angling of my body
-Mirroring
- responding to the dog and the dog responding to me
- a conversation
- joking with the dog and the dog joking with me
You may be wondering what all of that means, and how it applies. Check out more from and .social.approach to learn more. But know that there is a lot of nuance to play, and this is a far from perfect video.
Play done right can be therapeutic for dogs in so many ways. Learning to play without toys or food has been an incredibly difficult journey. It’s taken a LOT of failure and it will continue to. But it’s made me a better trainer to dive deep into play for months to move beyond just transactions relationships with dogs, my own dog included.
The hard work has paid off and I’ve gotten quite a few comments from people surprised at how I was able to get their dogs to play who normally don’t want to. I’m so grateful to my mentor brett for pushing me on this journey as much as he has. Onwards!
