What dog obedience training has taught me about BDSM… :) Since a couple of months we have
What dog obedience training has taught me about BDSM… :) Since a couple of months we have a new puppy (yes, an actual dog). And, good intentions and all, I’m now going to a dog school with her, so she gets to play with some other dogs and learns some basic commands. Now, dog school isn’t as exciting for me as it is for the dog, so naturally my mind starts to wander. And as I got quite a pervy mind, it usually wanders straight into BDSM territory. A couple of weeks ago, the dog trainer tried to explain how you teach a little puppy dog the command “no”. The easiest way to do so, she said, is to “set the dog up” for correction. She placed a few pieces of dog food on a plate on the ground and had us lead the dog around it. If the dog tries to get to the food, you say a strict “no”, tug his leash gently, and lead him somewhere else. Now with a more stubborn dog, the little correction might not impress him at all. So the trainer got a bottle of water and every time the stubborn doggy tried to jump to the food, she sprayed it with some water. As soon as the dog stops going for the food, you praise it and lead it in a different direction. The important thing, she said, is to immediately reassure the dog that everything is okay and you still love it. You might not want it to have that particular piece of food, and it’ll have to listen, but everything else is still is perfectly okay in puppy land. And that’s what got me thinking. While you obviously can’t directly compare teaching a puppy dog to a BDSM scene with a fully grown adult, I still think the concept of “You did something wrong, you got corrected, everything is alright between us.” is important. A submissive places him- or herself willingly (and temporarily) into a somewhat dependent position. The better the scene works and the more she can let go, the more vulnerable she gets to praise and correction. If you tell her that what she did was disappointing, you better also give her a chance to set it right, and reassure her that everything else is still okay. I think that’s one of the things that I overdid a bit when we started out. Like a lot of subs, aria doesn’t usually want to play the brat – she really wants to do well. So if you keep increasing the pressure you’ll naturally get to a point where she’s afraid of making any more mistakes and further disappointing you. Sure, it’s a way to create tension. But I think there’s plenty of other ways to make it challenging and interesting. There’s a certain emotional connection between Dom and sub during a scene. And I think it’s important to reinforce that connection, instead of threatening to sever it or getting further apart. Some distance is good, but artificially making it larger probably isn’t. -- source link