Being a puppy means that you are also a human being at the same time. You will never be completely transformed. However, as a human being, you have a wonderful tool to help you become a puppy: your mind. Using your imagination and empathy, you can embrace your animalistic urges and focus them into a puppy experience often called a pupspace or pupzone. Puppy zone is not easy to achieve and needs practice and work like any other puppy skill. Here’s your first exercise to help create space for pups and then I’ll explain some common misconceptions about it.

This first mental practice is called the “Curl up thinking” technique. This exercise is first done alone in a quiet room. Afterwards it can be great to do it with another pup under the supervision of its trainer. Undress or even stay in underwear. It’s important to feel naked, but not get distracted by arousal. Curl up in a fetal position, making sure you are comfortable. Relax your breathing and close your eyes.

Become aware of your physical sensations. You may feel itchy. Be aware of your itch. Think to yourself – “itching”. He repeats the word, thinking it out loud, without saying it, over and over again, letting it hum until it fades away. You will find that your mind will immediately notice something else. Do you need to scratch? Repeat “scratch” in the same way. Be aware that your body wants to move. Repeat the word “move” when that happens. You start to get the idea, which is to train yourself to focus and immediately respond to what you are aware of and make it disappear. With time and practice, you will be able to perform this exercise on a noisy public street. However, right now, stay alone and calm. This is a mental muscle that you are training, and it will need workouts to strengthen it. What you are doing is creating a bridge to the puppy space within you.

This type of meditation is of course relaxing and helps you deal with stress as a human being. It’s also a default mode that you can go into when you’re confused or overwhelmed like a puppy. Unfortunately, many people who come to play puppy games don’t understand what puppy space is all about. They just attribute being submissive, wearing a hood, and barking like they’re in the pup zone. That’s fine if you want to do that sort of thing, but the good old human cub isn’t a gamer. He is a doer.

Practice Curl up thinking every few days, at a quiet time and place. If you find that after a while he is winding down and drifting off to sleep, take a puppy nap.