Agility. Barn Hunt. Parkour. Nose work. Urban Ratting — which she still does, and does with everything she has.

She has always been the dog who lights up the moment the game has rules. Who finds the rat, reads the course, adjusts her body in the air. She is the most handler-focused dog I have. When we work together, there is a quality of attention between us that I don’t have language for except to say that it feels mutual in a way that still surprises me.

She’s at an age now where she’s developed arthritis in her shoulder and wrists.

She also has Intervertebral Disc Disease (IVDD), a spinal condition where the cushioning discs between vertebrae bulge or burst, pressing on the spinal cord; it can cause severe pain, nerve damage, and potentially paralysis. Managing it so she can live her life fully has become a daily practice.

She also, being my unstoppable spice girl Brontë, has the particular difficulty of being a dog whose mind is entirely willing and whose body has started to ask questions her enthusiasm hasn’t caught up with yet.

When a dog has IVDD, the conversation you have with every sport is a risk conversation.

Agility involves jumping, landing, twisting at speed; it was out the moment she was diagnosed. Parkour asks the body to do things that are hard to predict, improvisation we have quickly walked away from. Barn Hunt has her scrambling over and through straw bales, body low, spine flexing. Due to her smaller size, she had to give up that particular hunt.

The fear with IVDD is always the same: the disc that herniates, the morning she can’t use her back legs, the decision you don’t want to have to make. Managing it means managing arousal, managing impact, managing the fact that she doesn’t want to be calm unless it’s on my lap. She genuinely does not have much interest in living a quieter life. On her worst days, that quality is what makes her impossible to protect from herself.

Which is why dance has been such a lovely outlet; it does not ask her to be calm; it asks her to be precise.

That distinction matters more than I expected when I first started thinking seriously about it.

Brontë has been dancing with me for a long time — in the way that all of my dogs dance with me, in the informal sense, in the kitchen, in the gaps between the structured things. She has always responded to music. Always tracked my body with a specificity that, in retrospect, was already choreography waiting to be given a shape.

But she has never had a title in this sport. I honestly haven’t considered titling her in anything but Urban Ratting since her diagnosis.

She has titles in all the other things we’ve done together. She has ribbons and records and the kind of earned credibility that a dog accumulates when she’s been doing this sort of structured play for years.

What she doesn’t have is a canine freestyle title, because dance was always the thing we did for love. Much of the time, she gets too amped up for in-person events, and giving this girl an audience? Forget it. She was made for centre stage and there’d be no holding her back.

Brontë’s body can dance.

That sentence is not nothing. With IVDD, “her body can do this” is something you never take for granted. Dance doesn’t require impact. It doesn’t require the forces that load a spine the wrong way. It requires her to move with me, to hold attention, to turn and transition and offer the behaviours she knows that don’t involve jumping, twisting, flipping. To be a little calmer than she’d perhaps like to be.

So yes. Brontë and I are going after the Veteran title, a title made for senior dogs who don’t or can’t move the way younger dogs do. I’m doing the thing I’ve been asking everyone else to do. But I want to be honest about what tipped me from I should into I will: it was watching my students become their own thing.

I teach dog dance. I ask my students to consider titling.

I talk about what it means to step onto the floor, to let the work be witnessed, to make something real through the structure of a submission. To spend the time, to stretch towards what feels uncomfortable, or maybe scary, and show up anyway. That experience offers so much more growth.

When I built the Building Your Own Dog Dance Routine webinar, I expected people to come away with a framework. A process. A clearer sense of how to match a song to a dog, how to map skills to music, how to stop staring at a blank floor and start building something.

But it became so much more than that. Students arrived not only ready — they arrived with fully formed dances. Good ones.

Not outlines. Not “I have some ideas.” Whole dances — structured, intentional, specific to their dog in ways that a group class simply cannot manufacture, because a group class doesn’t know your dog the way you do. It doesn’t know the spin she offers when she’s happy, or the way he slows down and gets deliberate when the music drops, or the particular quality of attention this one dog gives you and no other.

They knew. And they built from that knowing.

But here is the part that stopped me cold: they hadn’t just choreographed for their dogs.

They had choreographed themselves.

They brought their own movement. Their own rhythm. Their own joy — actual, embodied, in-the-body joy — into the floor space alongside their dog.

They had chosen songs that meant something to them specifically, not songs that seemed like “dog dance songs,” whatever that means.

They had made decisions about who they were on the floor, and those decisions were confident and specific and entirely, unmistakably their own.

I have been teaching long enough to know that this is not a small thing.

Most handlers, when they begin, are so focused on the dog that they forget they are half the team. The dance lives in the space between two bodies — and both of those bodies have to actually be there, present, moving, bringing something. Watching my students walk in having figured that out on their own, having decided to take up space on the floor as themselves?

Forget it.

That’s the whole point.

That is exactly, precisely, the whole point of this sport.

You do not have to wait until you feel ready. You do not have to wait until the routine is perfect or the dog is perfect or you have figured out what kind of dancer you are.

My students hadn’t fully figured it out either; they figured it out by doing it.

Brontë and I will do the same.

Each person backs up towards a centre where we’d collide. Everyone throws their hands in the air in surprise.

And the dogs come running.

That was the choreography — my first piece of canine freestyle choreography, ever. “The Pink Panther Theme,” an exaggerated sneaky backstep, and a sit-stay that had to hold until the moment it didn’t.

I was terrified Kirby would break it early. That he’d drift, or decide the audience needed him more than the music did.

(That last part, to be fair, was always a genuine risk. Kirby had a gift for soaking in audience adoration at moments that were choreographically inconvenient for both of us).

He didn’t.

He held his stay across the floor, watched me back into the other handlers, watched us throw our hands up — and came running like he’d known every part of the dance already.

I want to tell you something about Kirby before I go further.

He was a Jack Russell Terrier. My first dog. I got him for my thirteenth birthday and we were, from the beginning, each other’s entire world.

We were also, by every objective measure, a disaster in obedience class.

He was terrible. I was worse. And one day the instructor looked at us — really looked at us — and said the class wasn’t right for us. That we needed agility and canine freestyle instead.

She pointed us toward a practice barn.

The next week, I walked into the barn with a dog who had an attitude, a history of flunking structured work, and now no leash between him and every distraction the room offered.

I was braced for the version of Kirby who couldn’t hold it together. The version who’d break his stay, zoom around the room, yell at the other dogs and their people, all the while ignoring me entirely.

But “The Pink Panther Theme” asked something different of him; it asked him to hold still and watch me. And he did.

When I threw my hands in the air, he came like he’d known every part of the dance already.

Solo work builds partnership. There’s no question about that.

But synchro — dancing as part of a group, a team within teams, multiple handlers and dogs moving together inside a shared piece of music — tests skills solo work can’t manufacture.

It also raises the stakes in every direction at once.

Your dog has to stay in relationship with you while another dog works nearby, while the room fills with the particular energy of multiple partnerships moving in coordination. The distractions aren’t hypothetical; they’re right there, breathing and moving right beside you.

And you have to subordinate certain elements. Not your partnership — but certainly some of your instinct to manage it privately. In a group piece, you can’t adjust on the fly in the ways solo work allows. You’re part of a shape that belongs to everyone. Your timing isn’t just about you and your dog. It’s about the human you’re about to back into.

Which means you have to trust your dog to hold their end while you hold yours.

That’s the thing synchro reveals that I didn’t expect: not how well-trained your dog is, but how genuinely they’re oriented toward you. Whether, in a room full of competing information, you’re still their primary signal.

Kirby answered that question in the first run-through of the first dance we ever learned together.

He wasn’t watching the other dogs. He wasn’t working the room. He was watching me, waiting — and when the cue came, he came.

I think about that barn now when I’m teaching.

I run classes where dogs are off-leash in a shared space, and there’s always a barrier — always another dog on the other side of it, always the possibility of a pull toward that edge. Every dog in the room could go. Most of them don’t.

They come back to their person instead.

And what strikes me, every time, is how natural it looks. How little it costs them. No visible struggle, no heroic act of self-control. Just orientation. The person is where they belong, so that’s where they go.

I sometimes wonder if they know it’s happening.

Discovering a new move together changes a partnership — deepens it in ways that are hard to name but easy to feel. Each new moment of shared language, each time you ask something your dog has never done before and they find a way to answer, adds another thread to whatever it is that holds you together. The connection doesn’t announce itself. It just quietly becomes more weight-bearing.

The handlers don’t always see it in the moment. They’re too busy managing the worry — will my dog hold it together, will they break, will they run. They haven’t yet considered the possibility that their dog isn’t even tempted.

So I let it happen first.

I watch the dog make the argument, clear and unhurried.

Then I point it out.

For most of my life I treated these as separate loves: the dogs I lived with, the writing I returned to, the visual work that taught me how to see. But they were never really separate. They were always asking the same questions: What makes something alive? What makes you feel it? Where is the moment that earns everything around it?

Dog dancing was the place they finally collapsed into each other.

Learning to see

One of the things art school teaches you — slowly, sometimes painfully — is that you don't learn to make something by making it. You learn by looking. Really looking. At light before you learn composition. At the edge of a shadow before you understand why it earns the brightness beside it. At the single brushstroke before the whole canvas.

You develop an eye by training it to catch the moments that matter.

Dog dancing asked the same thing of me. And I wasn't ready for that.

The tricks show with a soundtrack

Most beginners watch a routine the way you watch a fireworks show: the whole thing at once, dazzled by the spectacle, uncertain what you actually saw. You finish knowing it was impressive, or that it wasn't, but you couldn't tell someone why. You couldn't point to the moment.

It's the same feeling as standing in front of a technically flawless painting that leaves you cold. You can see the skill. You can admire the control. And you feel absolutely nothing.

A routine can do the same thing. Technically precise, relentlessly busy, movement stacked on movement — and somehow hollow at the center. Not because the handler isn't talented. But because the music isn't doing anything except providing a tempo to work against.

The fastest way I know to find out whether a routine has genuine flow — or whether it's just a tricks show with a soundtrack — is to take the music away entirely.

Watch with the sound off first.

I know. It feels wrong. But silence is the fastest way to see what's actually there.

With the music gone, you're looking at a handler and a dog moving through space together. You see whether the transitions are earned or just tacked on. You see whether the dog is genuinely in it, or waiting to be cued. You see the shape of the relationship — whether it has breath in it, or whether it's held tight, managed, performed at.

Try it with Roni & Rhythm here. Dance starts at 2:25, remember to mute.

It's like looking at a painting in black and white before you see the color. Suddenly the structure is visible. The composition either holds or it doesn't. The light either falls where it should or it was the color doing all the work.

Then turn the sound back on.

Now you're not listening to the music instead of watching — you're listening with the watching. You're asking: does this movement earn this phrase? Does this pause belong here, or is it just dead air? When the handler stills and the dog stills with them, does it feel like punctuation — or like someone forgot what came next?

Have at look at Karin & Joya here. What do you think of the music shift at 2:26 and how it matches Joya’s movement change.

What I look for, once I can see.

Connection over performance. The dog’s joy, visible — not because the dog is performing for the crowd, but because you can see them in it. Choosing it. Arriving at each moment instead of being placed there. In a painting, you know it when a figure looks alive rather than rendered. The difference is almost impossible to explain and completely impossible to miss.

Stillness and contrast. The pause that earns the movement that follows. Anyone can fill four minutes with motion, the same way anyone can fill a canvas. It takes something else to know when to stop — to trust that white space, that silence, that held breath before the next phrase.

The music actually matching the team. Not just the genre, not just the tempo — but the feeling of the music matched to the feeling of this particular dog, this handler, this relationship.

Have a look at Irina and Unkas here and look at what’s working.

When it’s right, you don’t notice it, the same way you don’t notice perfect color harmony in a painting that moves you. When it’s wrong, nothing else lands no matter how precise the execution.

The question worth asking.

After a routine ends — sound on, the whole thing — ask yourself not was that good but what made me feel something?

Maybe it was a single transition. A moment where the dog looked up and the handler looked down and something passed between them that wasn't a cue. Maybe it was the three-second stillness before the final phrase. Maybe it was just that the dog looked happy in a way that had nothing to do with the audience at all.

My art instructors taught me to stand in front of a painting and wait. Not to evaluate it. Just to notice what pulled your eye first, and then again, and then again. The pull is the beginning of taste. The vocabulary comes after, to catch up and explain what the eye already knew.

That moment in a routine — whatever it was — is your taste, starting to speak.

You don't have to build a style from someone else's highlight reel. You just have to learn to catch the moments that already move you.

Watch for those.

Build toward those.

Everything else follows.

The first is slow. A dog who begins to move more carefully. Who sleeps longer, eats less, whose muzzle goes silver in a way you try not to measure.

You start to notice everything — the particular weight of them in your arms, the small sounds they make, the way they still look for you when they wake up. Knowing sharpens you. Grief arrives early, quietly, and it teaches you to pay attention while you still can.

The second way is fast. Three days. Lungs that were fine on Monday, destroyed by Thursday, beyond any repair. No warning. No preparation. Just the ordinary Tuesday kitchen dance, and then no more Tuesdays.

I have lost dogs both ways.

Thomas was 3.5 pounds of lazy alligator energy and cuddle requirement. Mobility was hard for him — dancing the way I teach it was never going to be his thing — but he wanted to be held and kissed and made warm and safe, and so we slow danced the only way that made sense: him in my hands, both of us swaying. I don’t recommend it as technique. But with Thomas, it was exactly right.

He died in his sleep last June, of old age and, I believe, readiness. My heart has not been the same since. But it is only able to break the way it does because he left it so full.

Wilde was a different kind of dancer.

He had no interest in formal training; all my dogs get to try everything, to see what fits, and what fit Wilde was pleasure and friendship and the freedom to move through the world on his own terms. He was wildflowers and sunshine and a feather on a warm breeze. Secure. Confident. Never worried.

He was my shadow.

He was never far from me, and in that proximity we learned each other — the rhythm of each other’s footfalls, the shift of weight that meant a turn was coming, the small idle moments that were actually, it turned out, invitations. He’d catch me in the kitchen while I waited for my tea and something would change in him. He’d get lighter. More playful. One of us would offer a movement and the other would follow, and we’d spend thirty seconds in a kind of shadowplay that had no name and needed none.

That is dancing. It doesn’t require a floor or a song or a routine. It requires two beings who have learned each other well enough that even waiting for the microwave has a rhythm.

He also loved to dance with Brontë, my dog who loves to dance in every way. The two of them were soul-besties in a way I have rarely witnessed — a particular love between two animals that is its own complete thing, that you feel lucky just to have been near.

Wilde died last April of ARDS. His lungs were gone in three days. We had no window, no preparation, no last dance we knew was the last one.

Every kitchen dance was the whole thing. I just didn’t know to hold it up to the light.

This is what I want to say about dog dance, underneath all the technique and choreography and titling pathways: It is a practice of noticing.

The music asks you to be present. The choreography asks you to feel what your dog is doing — not just execute the next move, but read the body moving beside you, the weight, the pace, the offer. You cannot be somewhere else in your head while you are dancing with your dog, because the dance falls apart if you are.

The presence isn't incidental; it's the whole practice.

I am working toward becoming an end-of-life companion animal doula. I have accompanied many deaths, held many lasts, sat with many people in the impossible weight of it, and held myself together when my whole world fell apart. Again and again.

And what I know — what I keep learning — is that the antidote to anticipatory grief is not distance; it is presence. Intentionality. The decision to be in the moment you are actually in, with the dog who is actually here.

Dance teaches that. Formally, in a ring with music and choreography and a routine you’ve spent months building. Informally, in a kitchen at 7am while the microwave runs.

The archive will close. You don’t get to choose when. What you get to choose is how full it is when it does.

Wilde’s yahrzeit is this month.

Thomas has been gone not quite a year.

I am still learning what they taught me. Still holding all the dances we had together. I suspect I always will be.

That’s my thirty-second answer when I’m asked what dog dance is. I cringe when I say it. I say it because it’s fast, and because people nod when I say it, and because a quick blurt of information is better than nothing, or an over-explanation, when you’re trying to explain a sport most people haven’t heard of.

But I know every time I say it that I’ve just described the ingredients and left out the meal.

A tricks performance is a real thing, and it can be genuinely spectacular. Watch the AKC Elite Performer videos sometime: the precision, the theatrics, the sheer number of behaviours a dog can execute in a short period of time. It’s impressive in a way that deserves to be called impressive. Each trick is the point. The performance moves from one to the next, and the dog’s skill is the show.

Dog dance uses some of the same ingredients, but the trick is not the point.

The flow is the point.

What makes something a dance rather than a performance is what happens between the moves — the way a handler’s body leads and a dog reads the shift in weight, the way a transition travels through space instead of snapping from one position to the next, the way two bodies develop a kind of gravitational pull toward each other so that even distance becomes a conversation. You can feel when you’re watching a dance whether the dog is executing a sequence or moving with someone.

That’s the constellation I’m always trying to describe: a guardian and their dog in orbit. Not doing tricks at each other. Not even doing tricks together. Moving in relation to each other, so that the whole thing has a shape: a breath, a direction, a return.

Which is why I want to gently push back on something I hear a lot: “I don’t have enough moves yet.”

If you’re waiting to build your first routine until you have more tricks, you may be waiting for the wrong thing. A dance isn’t a tricks list that gets long enough to perform. It’s a map of how you and your dog already move together: what you have, what feels natural, where the music wants you to go. The heelwork you already have. The spin your dog already loves. The way your dog glances up at you when you change direction.

That’s already a dance. It’s just waiting to be given a shape.

The webinar I built — Building Your Own Dog Dance Routine — is about that process: taking what you already have and finding the conversation inside it. Song matching, skills inventory, choreography mapping, all of it. If you’ve had a half-formed routine living in the back of your head, this is where it becomes real.

And I can’t wait to see that dance.

The extrovert.
The performer.
The naturally coordinated.
The dog who already knows everything.

But most of the teams who walk into my classroom on the first night are none of those things.

They are people who love their dogs.

They are thoughtful guardians.
Curious handlers.
Sport competitors who care deeply about their dog’s emotional experience.
Pet parents who suspect there is something more available in their relationship.

They are building something.

They just might not have words for it yet.

Who Dog Dance Is For

Dog dance is for the guardian who watches their dog’s face. The one who notices weight shifts, tail carriage, breath.

It’s for the one who cares not just whether a cue is executed, but how it feels while it’s happening.

It’s for the sport handlers who want excellence without sacrificing their dog to get there.

For the agility competitor who realises that speed without joy feels hollow.

For the obedience handler who wants precision rooted in clarity, not pressure.

For the rally team who wants focus that is offered, not extracted.

Dog dance becomes a laboratory for that kind of work.

A place to practise intensity without overwhelm. Drive without frenzy. Accuracy without fear.

It builds the muscles that matter: attention in distraction, recovery after mistakes, arousal that can rise and fall without breaking connection.

In a room with other dogs, music, movement, and novelty — your dog chooses you.

Again.
And again.
And again.

That choice changes things.

The Side-Effects No One Expects

A few weeks in, someone will say: “He paid attention to me on our walk.”

“She recovered faster when another dog barked.”

“We went to agility and she felt present instead of scattered.”

“He asked me for help instead of spiralling.”

Because what we rehearse in dance is not just choreography.

Dogs practise checking back in instead of spinning out.
They practise offering behaviour instead of defaulting to chaos.
They practise feeling excitement rise — and letting it fall again.

And guardians practise meeting them there:

Clearer cues.
Softer shoulders.
Better timing.
The discipline of noticing.

Confidence grows quietly. Dogs who hesitated begin offering. Dogs who blasted through cues begin thinking. Dogs who shut down begin asking.

And that learning travels.

It shows up at the vet. On the trail. In the agility ring. In the middle of an ordinary Tuesday walk.

Especially for the Shy Ones

It is especially powerful for shy dogs. For the ones who hang back at the edge of the room, who startle, who need time.

Dog dance offers predictable structure inside novelty: clear patterns, small wins, a familiar human body as anchor.

I have taught deaf dogs who follow the shape of their guardian’s shoulders.

Blind dogs who map the room through repetition and trust. Dogs with mobility challenges whose choreography is adapted to honour their bodies instead of pushing them to perform beyond them. Sensitive dogs. Busy dogs. Aging dogs.

The dance adjusts to the team.

And in that adjustment, something steady forms: “I can succeed exactly as I am.”

Why Begin

Some people join because they want something fun. Some because their dog is clever and needs an outlet. Some because they are chasing titles. Some because they are building an international-calibre partnership rooted in relationship, longevity, and joy — not pressure.

And some join because, quietly, they know this dog will not live forever, and the way you spend an hour now matters.

The spins.
The laughter.
The first clean transition.
The moment your dog looks at you when the music starts.

Those moments become memory — not just of what your dog could do, but of who you were together.

Beginning doesn’t require perfection; it requires willingness.

To play. To notice. To move together.

For guardians building something meaningful with their dogs, that is more than enough.

Your dog loves class. You love class. You’ve found something joyful, steadying, connecting.

You know the patterns. You know the room. You know what success looks like there.

And honestly? There is nothing wrong with that.

Not everything needs to become a bigger goal. Not every joyful activity needs to turn into a title chase, a performance plan, or a test of nerve. Sometimes the class itself is enough. Sometimes the good thing is already the good thing.

But sometimes, somewhere in the middle of that comfort, another feeling appears too.

Curiosity. A flicker of possibility. A quiet wondering: could we do a little more?

Not because what you have is insufficient. Not because you need to prove anything. Not because your dog only “counts” if there’s a ribbon attached.

But because growth can be joyful too.Because sometimes stepping slightly beyond what is familiar lets us discover a new layer of ourselves, a new layer of our dogs, and a new layer of our partnership.

That is the space I’ve been thinking about lately when I talk to my students about Musical Dog Sport Association video submissions, titling, and performance.

Not pressure. Not perfection. Not “go big or go home.”

Just this: What might happen if you tried the next thing with support?

The comfort zone is not the enemy

I want to say this clearly, because dog sports can get weird about ambition. Your comfort zone is not a character flaw.

There is so much value in having a place where you and your dog feel good together. In fact, I would argue that one of the great gifts of dog dance is that it can become exactly that: a place of mutual enjoyment, expression, and connection. A place where your dog learns that working with you feels safe and rewarding. A place where you learn to notice, to soften, to laugh, to recover, to try again.

That matters.

Especially in a world that is always asking for more. More skill. More intensity. More polish. More output. More proof.

So no, I am not interested in treating titles or performance as the thing that makes your work valid. I do not think your partnership becomes more real because someone else watched it. I do not think joy only matters once it is public.

But I also think we can be careful not to swing so hard in the opposite direction that we become afraid of challenge itself.

Because challenge is not the same thing as harm. Stretching is not the same thing as pressure. Trying does not have to mean hardening.

Performance reveals things practice cannot

There is something useful about performance, even gentle performance.

When you film a routine for submission, or enter a titling class, or let yourself be witnessed in your work, you learn things.

You learn where your nerves show up. You learn which parts are truly fluent and which parts are still held together by familiarity and hope. You learn what happens to your timing, your breathing, your body, your criteria, your dog’s confidence, your dog’s clarity, when the context shifts just a little.

That information is valuable.

Not because it gives you a reason to judge yourself, but because it gives you a fuller picture of your team.

Sometimes a submission shows you that you are more ready than you thought. Sometimes it shows you exactly where you need more support. Sometimes it simply gives you a concrete moment in time you can look back on later and say: look at us. Look what we made. Look where we were then.

Having adopted and danced with many senior dogs, I can't tell you how much each one of those records means.

There is tenderness in that too.

A title can be a goal, yes. But it can also be a marker. A snapshot. A little flag planted on the path that says: we were here together.

Titling does not have to mean becoming “competitive”

I think one reason some people hesitate is because titling can feel like crossing into a different world. A more serious world. A more polished world. A world where everyone else seems braver, more experienced, more prepared, more naturally suited to performance.

But titling does not have to mean becoming someone else.

It does not require you to turn into a high-pressure handler. It does not require your dog to become a flashy, extroverted performer. It does not require perfection. It does not require that you stop being tender, thoughtful, or human about any of this.

For many teams, titling is simply a structure that helps them try something new.

A deadline can help you finish. A category can help you focus. A submission can help you commit. A title can help you celebrate.

That is all.

You are still allowed to be the team who does this because it is fun. You are still allowed to be the team who chooses softness. You are still allowed to laugh, reset, simplify, and build in a way that honours the dog in front of you.

In fact, I would like to see more people do exactly that.

Sometimes “why mess with a good thing?” is really fear in a sensible coat

This is the part I find most interesting.

Because sometimes the question is truly a values-based one. Sometimes you genuinely are happy exactly where you are, and there is no deeper longing beneath it.

But sometimes “why mess with a good thing?” is not really about preserving joy. Sometimes it is fear, wearing the language of wisdom.

Fear of being seen.

Fear of not doing well.

Fear of changing the emotional texture of something you love.

Fear that once you set a goal, you will ruin the magic.

Fear that you and your dog are not “that kind of team.”

Fear that performance belongs to other people.

That fear makes sense. Truly.

So many people have experienced performance spaces as punishing, perfectionistic, or quietly humiliating. So many handlers carry old stories about not being athletic enough, polished enough, coordinated enough, confident enough. So many people worry that if they bring nerves into the picture, they will let their dog down.

But avoidance does not always protect joy. Sometimes it also limits it.

Sometimes staying only where we already feel competent means we never get to discover how capable we actually are.

Support changes everything

This, to me, is the real point.

I am not interested in shoving anyone out of their comfort zone and calling it growth.

I am interested in support.

Support is what makes stretching possible without making it brutal. Support looks like breaking the process into manageable steps. Support looks like choosing an entry level that fits your actual team. Support looks like talking openly about nerves, logistics, filming, criteria, and what “ready” really means.

Support looks like office hours. Practice runs. Feedback. Filming opportunities. Gentle coaching. Space to ask silly questions. Space to change your mind. Space to try.

Support means you do not have to make the leap alone. And that matters, because stepping outside your comfort zone is very different when you are held while you do it.

Not pushed. Held.

What I want for my students

I do not want my students to feel they have to perform. I want them to feel they *can*.

I want them to know that titling is available to ordinary, lovely, imperfect teams. Teams with real dogs. Teams with complicated dogs. Teams with quirky dogs. Teams with handlers who get nervous, forget sequences, overthink, laugh in the middle, and love their dogs deeply.

I want them to understand that performance is not only for the naturally confident. Sometimes it is for the quietly brave.

I want them to feel the possibility of saying: This feels a little scary. This also feels exciting. I do not have to be fearless to do it. I just have to be supported enough to try.

Because that is where so much of the good stuff lives. Not in relentless striving. Not in staying small forever. But in that beautiful middle ground where joy and courage meet.

So, why mess with a good thing?

Maybe you don’t.

Maybe class remains the thing itself: a weekly ritual of connection and play, and that is more than enough.

But maybe, if the timing is right, and the support is there, and some part of you is curious…

…you let the good thing grow.

Not because it was lacking, but because it was alive.

And living things are allowed to deepen. Allowed to expand. Allowed to surprise us.

Sometimes titling is not about chasing legitimacy.

Sometimes it is just a way of saying yes to the next small adventure you and your dog want to take.

Together.

If you’ve been watching recent routines, especially at the international level, you may have noticed a shift in what teams are experimenting with.

For many years, freestyle choreography stayed largely close-range. Dogs and handlers moved together as a tight unit: heelwork variations, spins, weaves, transitions, tricks layered into patterns. The partnership was visible through proximity.

Now the dance floor is getting bigger.

More and more teams are exploring distance work: dogs moving independently across the floor while the handler remains still or travels a different line.

Dogs circle the ring, hit marks across the space, perform behaviours away from the handler, then return in perfect timing.

Sometimes the handler and dog move in synchrony on parallel paths across the ring.

Sometimes they mirror each other from opposite sides of the floor.

Instead of the choreography being built entirely from closeness, the dance begins to play with space itself.

Distance work requires an extraordinary level of skill from both members of the team. The cues have to be crystal clear. The dog needs a strong reinforcement history, confidence working independently, and a deep understanding of the choreography.

The handler has to think like a stage director as much as a trainer, using the whole ring as a canvas. When it comes together, it’s breathtaking.

But for me, the moments that still make my heart catch are the small ones.

The glance.

The check-in.

The shared beat where the dog turns back toward their handler and you can see the two of them meeting each other inside the choreography.

Those moments of interaction have always been my favourite element of dog dance.

The trick might be impressive.

The distance work might be technically brilliant.

But the moment that stays with you is often the quiet one: a dog choosing to reorient toward their person, a moment of eye contact that lands exactly on the music, the feeling that the two of them are not just performing a sequence but sharing an experience.

Distance choreography doesn't have to replace that.

In fact, when it’s done thoughtfully, it can actually highlight those moments even more. The dog moves away… and then comes back. The choreography stretches outward… and then returns to connection.

The dance breathes.

Dog dance is still a young sport, and we’re watching its vocabulary expand in real time. Teams are experimenting with new ways of using space, new patterns of movement, new layers of complexity.

The floor is getting bigger.

And yet the heart of the sport is still the same place it has always been: that moment where the dog and handler find each other again in the music.

When you're ready to start dancing…

If this makes you curious to try dancing with your own dog, there are a few opportunities coming up.

Our current in-person classes continue exploring choreography, musical phrasing, and some of the newer elements appearing in the sport, including distance work.

For those interested in titling, the Musical Dog Sport Association video submission deadline is May 31st, which makes a wonderful goal to work toward.

I’ll also be offering office hours and filming time for established students, along with upcoming online dance sessions where anyone can come learn, experiment, and try new skills with their dog.

And if now's not quite the right time, that's okay. Sometimes the best way to understand dog dance is simply to step onto the floor together and see what you and your dog make of it.

.

Not because it was technically perfect.
Not because it was elite.
Not because it was at Crufts.

But because it was unmistakably someone’s joy.

The handler didn’t just choose a “good” song. They chose their song — their nostalgia, their fandom, their playful, slightly nerdy delight — and they brought it unapologetically onto the floor.

And the dog looked like they were in on it.

That’s the part that caught me.

The routine didn’t feel like imitation. It didn’t feel like someone trying to replicate a polished professional team. It felt like a person saying, “This is what lights me up,” and inviting their dog into that world.

That is dance.

And that is what I want this space to hold.

When we talk about dog dance, it’s easy to drift toward the elite: the world teams, the international finals, the precision under lights. I love watching those routines. I study them. I learn from them.

But if that’s the only image we hold, it can quietly shrink the floor. It can make people believe there’s a threshold of technical perfection required before they’re allowed to step out there.

The Pokémon routine reminded me of something simpler: the floor belongs to anyone willing to bring their joy.

Not their résumé.
Not their titles.
Their joy.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I’ve started gently talking to my students about submitting videos for May’s Musical Dog Sport Association’s event.

Because the question isn’t “Are we impressive enough?”

The question is “Are we dancing in a way that feels like us?”

Share

For me, dog dance has always been about expression first.

Yes, I care about collection.
Yes, I care about musical phrasing.
Yes, I care about clean cues and thoughtful handling.

But underneath all of that is this question: does this routine feel like us?

Not “Is this impressive?”
Not “Would this win?”
But “Does this feel like us moving together?”

When someone brings their passions — whether that’s Pokémon, James Bond, disco, or a love song — onto the floor, the choreography stops being a checklist of tricks and starts becoming a shared language.

And shared language is what lasts.

This is what I hope Field Notes from the Dance Floor becomes:

A place to document the long rehearsal.
The technical refinements.
The ethical questions.
The practice sessions in imperfect rooms.
The ambitions that stretch us.

But also: the joy that makes it worth stretching at all. If we lose that, we’ve lost the point.

What We’re Practicing

This month, I’m thinking a lot about transitions. Not just how to move cleanly from one trick to the next, but how to keep the feeling intact as we shift.

Playful doesn’t mean chaotic. Precision doesn’t mean tight or tense.

I’m working on phrasing that allows a sequence to breathe. A spin that lands softly instead of snapping. A release that feels like an invitation instead of a demand.

Joy still needs structure, and structure just doesn’t need to suffocate joy.

On the Floor

There is a difference between dancing to impress and dancing to express.

One chases approval. The other builds partnership.

One burns bright and fast. The other grows steady and deep.

If I’m going to aim high — and I am — I want it to be built on expression first. Because when excellence grows out of joy, it lasts.

Mark Your Dance Cards

I’ve started gently inviting my students to consider submitting videos for the May 31 MDSA event.

Not because we’re chasing ribbons. Not because we’re “ready.” But because sometimes stepping onto the floor — even virtually — is an act of claiming space.

MDSA has a beautiful way of holding both playfulness and seriousness. There’s room for the polished teams and the joyful Pokémon routines. There’s room for growth, experimentation, and showing up exactly where you are.

If you’re dancing with me right now, consider this your soft nudge: you don’t have to be perfect to participate. You just have to be willing to move.

🗓 MDSA: May 31
🎶 New choreography coming to my site soon

✨ What song would you bring to the floor if you didn’t worry about being taken seriously?