For nearly 20 years, I’ve been experimenting with visualization as a way of training dogs and other animals and communicating with them. I said early this week that I would be sharing this experiment here on the blog in the coming weeks, months, and years.

It is a fascinating and vital part of my experience living with animals. I do it with dogs and donkeys and with ewes several times during lambing.

I work with it all the time.

I haven’t written about it here very much because it is so difficult to articulate or was in the past. It is contrary to what trainers and others have taught us to believe about dogs and communication.

It seemed strange to me at first; perhaps that explains my reluctance to write about it. Temple Grandin’s work inspired me to go deeper.

I’m also wary of suggesting things that I do, but that might not apply to you.

I’m not urging anyone to do this; I’m just relaying what I have done and what I have been able to do with most of my dogs.

In the environment in which we live on the farm, our animals must stay away from the road.

That may not be a problem for most of the people reading this. Visualization is not just for road safety; I use it for calming and obedience training and other things like housebreaking.

I know every dog owner is quick to tell me what their dog is saying or thinking, and I hold my tongue. Nobody knows what a dog thinks because they don’t have our words or speak our language.

The best trainers and biologists explore what dogs are feeling – which is quite different, and I believe they are making progress.

In his excellent book Mama’s Last Hug, animal primate behavior researcher Frans de Waal wrote that “emotions are everywhere in the animal kingdom, from fish to birds to insects and even in brainy mollusks such as the octopus.”

De Wall takes the wood to the very stubborn notion that humans are the only creatures in the animal kingdom who experience a broad array of emotions.

When an elephant is banished from the circus or a carriage horse is sent out to pasture because animal rights activists think working is cruel, almost no one considers or talks about the devastating emotional impact on the animal of being torn from it’s safe and familiar life and human and sent off to drop manure for the rest of its days with no purpose, work or human attachment.

Elephants and horses and ponies need meaning just as much as we do, and they can’t find much on those mostly mythical “preserves” all these animals are supposedly sent to, but which rarely exist.

The ones on the few preserves are the lucky ones; most of those “rescued” animals are put to death.

I’ve witnessed how attached elephants were to their trainers and how connected the big horses were to their drivers. Animals love and need what is familiar, not what animal rights workers think is right.

This understanding- that we share our emotions with our animals – is the foundation of my amateur research with visualization.

I know animals have emotions; I have been exchanging them with mine for years now, all the way back to when my  Yellow Labs Julius and Stanley helped support my first years as a book writer working alone in a cold basement in New Jersey.

Maria and the dog exchange feelings every day, she visualized instinctively before she knew what it was.

When I sat down at my computer back in New Jersey as I took on my novel, both dogs dropped to the ground and didn’t move until I was finished.

Their support and connection made it easier and more comfortable for me to do sometimes lonely work. They understood just what I wanted and needed because I showed them without even speaking.

Let me offer one (of many, I hope) examples of how I have used visualization to keep my dogs from ever going out to the street, which is a busy state highway and thus quite probably saving their lives.

I will keep writing about visualization, but I thought it might be helpful to pick on one more minor example and walk you through it.

We live on a farm near a highway.

We have three dogs.

It is almost impossible to watch and contain our dogs so closely that one or more of them will never sneak out of the house or under a fence or bolt to the road if they see something on it they are interested in, from a deer to a human to another dog or coyote.

That would most likely be the death of them.

I don’t suggest that anyone test this in heavy traffic or close to traffic, or do it at all. This works for me; it may not work for you or your dog. I can’t decide that, since we don’t know each other. I am only writing about what I do, not what you should do.

But there are many ways in which visualization can help people and their dogs in other ways. I’ll get to them in other pieces.

I have trained almost every dog I’ve owned these past years on the farm to go only so far up the driveway, sit down and never go closer to the road.

I’ve never had one of my dogs run to the road (once, Fate did get close during an open house, she was much younger and got excited by the crowds and ran out to greet some of them. She’s never done it since.)

I’ve done this in seconds or minutes without shouting, raising my voice, or even speaking.

Zinnia is the most recent of the dogs I’ve trained in this way.

I started this by walking out in the yard with her when she was a puppy and giving her treats and praise. We went short distances and returned to the house. We never went near or looked at the road.

I got used to her exploring and being rewarded for just staying close to the house.

She will walk out with me every day now as I get the mail to sit down 20 feet from the house and wait for me to return to her before she moves. Otherwise, when we let her out of the house, she will never go to the road or get near it, even as she sniffs and explores all over the yard.

First, I make sure there is an emotional connection between the dog and me. There was with Zinnia from the first. Red and Izzy too.

With working dogs, this is pretty easy, as work connects them to us in a primal and instinctive way. So does food. Every Lab loves the person who takes them for walks, throws balls, and feeds them. Every border collie loves a human who brings them to work.

I haven’t trained Bud to stay off the road because he is too unpredictable and has intense prey drive. I love him, but I don’t trust him in this way if he sees a squirrel across the road.

I can save his life by not training him outside near the road.

Each dog has to be judged differently and realistically.

I have used visualization with Bud in other ways. Calm dogs like Zinnia pay attention, and dogs that produce attention work exceptionally well with visualization.

We know that dogs are masters at reading human emotions and behaviors; that is why they have thrived while half the species of animals in the world have vanished under the human heel and human greed.

If I trust the dog, and if the dog watches me closely to see what I am doing and thinking, I bring them outside.

The first time I tried this, I asked Zinnia to sit, and I showed her a couple of treats in my hand. This was to keep her focused on me. She was watching me closely. I was focused. The conditions were perfect.

To do this visualization, I need the dog to sit and stay reliably for up to three minutes. Not all dogs can and will do this—intelligent dogs with strong emotional ties to their humans’ can.

Zinnia has been rigorously trained for obedience in her therapy work.

I need to be confident and trust my dog, and the dog needs to trust me. I believe trust is the pathway on which visualizations travel. Trust is our substitute for words, the basis of our communications.

With Zinnia, I stopped and waited a minute or two to clear my head. If I trust the dog, I close my eyes. Or I have my foot on a long leash.

I picture precisely what I want to happen, which is really what visualization is all about. In this case, I showed her sitting still calmly and patiently, watching me walk out to the mailbox or anywhere in the yard.

Visualization, simply put, is imagining the outcome that I want.

I am very close to Zinnia; she anticipates my every move. We get one another, and that makes all the difference.

No matter where I walked, in my vision, she sat still. I  reinforced this by holding my hand out in the “stay” position and walking backward.

If she moves at all, which she did at first, I stop and start walking towards her, slowly and quietly, and tell her to sit and stay.

I reward her as soon as her butt hits the ground if she does.

Then I visualize what I want again after clearing my head and focusing.

Honestly, with Zinnia, a grounded, well-bred yellow lab who studies me like the Bible, this happened quickly, in two or three tries. Now it is automatic. She just never looks at the road or goes there.

I believe she understood what I wanted through the image I was imagining and wanted to happen and how I talked, stood, moved, breathed, smelled, and looked.

We know that dogs read our emotions instantly and thoroughly. I needed to have confidence and clarity; it just won’t work if I was distracted or my head spinning. The dog will not be able to read my intentions or wishes.

They sense our mood by smell, facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language. As they look at us, they make quick computer judgments about us, how we feel, and what we want.

These decisions are not made in words but feelings, instincts, images.

I think that’s enough for round one. I’m excited about sharing my visualization work; when I started writing about it, some people thought I had just gone bonkers.

I’m ready to share my experiences now. Thanks for coming along.