I Never Set Out to Train Dogs

A remembering of what dogs have always known

I never set out to train dogs.

I set out to listen.

And somewhere along the way, they started showing me who they really were

when no one was asking them to be anything else.

The beginning

I didn’t have a plan.

I didn’t have a method, a model, or a system.

I had grief. I had silence.

I had a dog named Remi, who stayed beside me when everything else was gone.

And somehow, in those quiet moments where neither of us knew what came next, something opened.

Not a program.

Not a protocol.

A presence.

The shift

Over time, dogs changed. I changed.

They moved slower. Sat closer. And so did I.

There were no requests, no demands, just being with what was, despite the desperate internal pull to want life to be different.

In those moments, life was as it was meant to be: comfort and discomfort wrapped up together with the dogs.

Some chose to rest their heads in my hands, others chose to walk away.

Then there was a noticing.

What was different in those moments?

Me?

I didn’t ask for this.

I didn’t expect it.

I just stayed still.

And they came.

One after the other softened, relaxed, our breath and heartbeats settling together in the moment and in the unknown.

What I realized

This wasn’t training.

It wasn’t obedience.

It was relationship.

It was respect.

It was the kind of trust that can only be remembered.

Dogs were my reminder.

And that’s when I began to understand:

Most dogs aren’t asking for change.

They offer it when we stop asking for it.

And in that, I answered the same questions for myself.

No fixing.

No pressure to respond or react in a way other than what fit the reality of the moment.

Assumptions and predictions that once spun into anxiety, sleepless nights, and a constant urge to figure it all out…

shifted into moments of togetherness, trust, understanding, and letting go, in order to wander forward.

A space becomes a sanctuary

Remidi began as a space for dogs to be themselves.

But it became something more

a reflection and a remembering of what we’ve forgotten.

I didn’t train them.

They guided me.

And now, I try to hold the space, a space of presence, so that others might be invited into it as well.

✨ This is where Remidi begins. A remembering and an invitation back to presence, with dogs guiding us along the way.