Pulling

Tadaki started pulling me yesterday. It was awesome! He was born to pull and is most happy when he's doing something energetic. Below is his pull harness. It fits over his chest and tightens tight like a saddle. The handle is the strap at the left and can be configured to a comfortable orientation. It clips to the D rings so it can go crosswise, diagonal or straight like it is shown here.



I hold the handle with my left hand, but he is trained for both sides.

You hold onto the handle lightly with two or three fingers for a straight pull. If you pull backwards with resistance, he will pull tight to the right or towards you. If you twist your wrist outward he will turn left in a wide turn.

This is cruise control. I'll have a video taken and add it when I can.

Yesterday's pull was very successful. Today was a little difficult. Seamus, one of the instructors took us out to the road in front of the campus. T kept turning to the right and I kept running over his feet. You always set up a command to make it successful if you've been having trouble with it. After about 20 minutes of that, I finally did a straight pull for a few feet.

We took a break and went back out with Todd. He immediately saw the problem. He is such a great instructor and he's spent a lot of time pulling with Tadaki. He held me like I had training wheels for a couple feet and coached me to relax. I had started out tired so I was hanging on tight and TaDa could tell I was stressed. It's like my frustration travelled right down the jacket and he got stressed too.

I have to remember to breathe and have fun with it. He goes FAST and it is so fun.