Calming Cord™
Slip Harness
- Custom-fit to your dog
- Fingertip and gentle control
- Provides calming core pressure
- Included with The Well Heeled Way® Dog Training
Calming Cord™
Calmly Walk Your Dog
with Fingertip Control
and Instant Results
*Included with any dog
training EXCLUSIVELY from
The Well Heeled Way®
Results — TWHW Calming Cord™ Applies Core Pressure That Instantly Calms
Before
- Pulling, jumping, and struggling against a standard leash and collar
- Physical signs of anxiety (harsh breathing, panting, shaking, whining)
- Inattentive and distracted behavior making walking very difficult
After
- Instantly responds to the calming pressure caused by TWHW Calming Cord™
- Reduced anxiety with calmer breathing and no barking / whining
- Improved walking behavior due to the shared pressure caused by pulling
Willie is just one of the hundreds of human-canine teams that have benefitted from The Well Heeled Way’s training in Leash Behavior and Handler Leadership.
Concept — Lead Your Dog with Soothing Core Pressure
“Deep pressure is a calming sensation for just about everyone”
I remember watching and being intrigued by a brief interview of Temple Grandin promoting her latest book, Animals in Translation (Simon & Schuster, 2005). The tagline on the cover states: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior.
Okay, THAT had my attention, and Amazon had my order!
Animals in Translation was a very educational and fascinating read.
I vividly remember on the bottom of page four, Temple wrote about the cattle squeeze machine. Naturally, you would think that a machine squeezing their bodies would scare the cattle. But, in fact, it had quite the opposite effect — they became calm.
She stated, “deep pressure is a calming sensation for just about everyone.”
Think about it:
- A deep tissue massage feels good.
- Newborns are swaddled tightly.
- Scuba divers have described the pressure sensations they feel underwater, they like it
While Temple’s words made a memorable impression, I was not yet in the correct mindset to use her discovery. Later, the impact of core pressure truly absorbed…
History — TWHW Calming Cord™ Makes its Debut in 2020
Fast forward 15 years later (after reading Animals in Translation).
In July 2020, the Covid high water tide was rising! My wife Teri and I always spend our anniversary in our happy place, with five days on Kelley’s Island in Lake Erie. We always stay at the same beautiful property. It was a cloudless hot sunny day lounging by the pool, listening to great music, enjoying a few cold beers, and enjoying each other.
Now, the pandemic had an unfortunate impact on our boarding kennel and my private training business. Few people were traveling (as during that time, if you traveled, there was a 14-day isolation period), and no one was inviting some old guy to their home to assist them with their dog when they couldn’t safely visit Grandma and Grandpa. Like perhaps every other business owner, we were hurting.
Then BOOM, Temple’s paragraph on the bottom of page four was in my head again, 15 years later.
I excused myself for a short while and went to the room to get my journal, a couple of pencils, and (I’m not going to lie) a few more Budweisers. I didn’t want to lose my good creative buzz! When I returned, Teri asked me what I was up to; I told her to give me about 15 minutes to sketch my idea, then I would explain.
“It was inspired and designed after decades of dog training and remembering something in a book I read in 2005” — Jerry Barnes
When we returned home, I pretty much lived at the hardware store for a few days,
The Calming Cord™ has gone through many prototypes to arrive at the version we use today. The c-disc was the latest improvement that Jerry made to prevent the (leash) loop from slipping down through the bale of the (collar) hook.
Then, one of our long-term boarding clients brought over his silver lab for us to keep for a few days.
This maybe-18-month-old was my perfectly wild and crazy test dog. His young mind maintained in overdrive, continuously panted like a machine gun, and was in business for himself.
I measured, assembled, and installed his harness. When I brought him out of his kennel, I stood still with him on my left side near the kennel fencing and perpendicular to his chest, and held steady upward pressure with the leash and harness. I remember clearly how his panting began to subside, his rapid breathing slowed, and I could sense him beginning to relax his perpetually tense body. As these metrics improved, I slowly reduced the tension on my hardware to the point the cord was loose around his chest. I walked a few steps and commanded him to wait as I lifted the leash to snug the cord again. The instant the cord tightened directly above him, he immediately stopped again. I clicked and calmly offered him a treat.
Signs of anxiety — panting and tensing — immediately lessened by adding core pressure.
I’m not going to lie, I was thinking, how the heck is this possible? All I had was the truth that Temple articulated in that watershed behavioral book. For a while, I simply walked him around the kennel, working on heeling, stops, turns, etc. But it quickly came to the point where I decided to take him out for a walk down our road.
Once again, I was so surprised at how quickly he complied with his task of walking with and honoring my lead. I called Teri and asked her to bring her phone, come to the end of the driveway, and film us as we crested the hill. I continued to work him back and forth in front of our house, and when we returned to Teri, she was trying to wrap her head around what she had witnessed!
The next day when the owner returned, he was dumbfounded. With me coaching some handling pointers, that crazy silver lab gave the same astonishing results as he took another calm walk. And again, the following evening, we received the same results when we used the ultimate test — a walk in a busy development with all the distractions of a July summer day.
The Well Heeled Way® Calming Cord™ had made its debut.