Aratanka...

Aratanka...

Aratanka is a 3-day course to learn how to establish an honest and authentic relationship with your dog. It is with fairness, trust and respect on both sides that one finds an harmonious level of communication. This is something that Hans learnt from living with wild animals, mostly wolves (he lived with them for 1 year in Canada) who were his teacher.

This is difficult to explain as the point is to experience it but I will describe the first exercise: I would look at my dog from a distance while someone would hold him. Once I memorized this picture, I would close my eyes and Hans would blindfold me. Then the person holding the dog would take the dog somewhere else. Hans would then press a few so called ‘energy points’ on my body and I would have to stretch out my arm which would act like an antenna to search for the dog. Once I would find the dog I would have to make a sign and Hans would hold my arm in the direction where I was pointing and I could then open my eyes and see if I had found my dog or not. Amazingly enough, I had pointed exactly into the right direction. While I was searching with my ‘antenna’ I could clearly feel heat and some pressure in my wrist, where one of the energy points is located, when I was pointing into the dog’s direction. The important thing was just to ‘feel’ it and not to start thinking where the dog might be. When we did it a second time, I got confused; My arm would go around and around and sometimes I could feel the heat but it kept on moving. When I finally pointed into a direction and gave Hans a sign, I found out that I was pointing into a buzzard’s direction who was flying in circles just above us. Hans explained that those birds’s energy was much stronger than the dog’s and that this was the reason I pointed at him. Also Martina ended up pointing at the bird. Well, this should give you an idea on what I learnt today...I now decided to take it easy and am chilling in the caravan...Although we physically haven’t done much today, using your ‘mental energy’ is even more tiring as we are not used to this anymore, always relying on our rational thinking instead...