The Tellington Touch is actually a variety of touches that help with dog behavior or health problems. It’s not massage really, though sometimes people think of it that way. You can have sessions for your dogs with TTouch practitioners or you can learn a lot yourself.

Tests that have been done with brain wave machines have shown that the Tellington TTouch activates the Beta waves in the animal’s brain; as I recall, these tests were run with horses. The Beta waves are the ones that stimulate thinking. In a nutshell, the dog or other animal may create new pathways in its nervous system so that learning can occur in new ways.

The results can be very dramatic, as I’ll describe further on.

The Tellington Touch was first developed with horses, by Linda Tellington-Jones. The work gradually spread to many other animals, and now she spends her time traveling widely doing and teaching the TTouch, writing books, and creating programs.

That’s where my husband and I come into the story. We used to raise llamas and we created a line of llama books and videos. I met Linda Tellington-Jones at a llama conference and was deeply moved by watching her demonstrations there. Once home, I tried out the methods on our llamas and loved them. We made a video on using the TTouch with llamas with Linda, and later we produced The Tellington Touch for Happier, Healthier Dogs, Featuring Linda Tellington-Jones, and a companion cat program. (That’s our dear old Rhodesian Ridgeback, Cider, on the cover with Linda.)

That dog program is the bestseller of all the twenty-some video programs that we have produced over the years. Why? Because the methods are effective and they work. People sometimes call or email us with their stories. I wish I had kept better track of all the things that people have told us.

Here’s a dramatic email I received from a woman who had just bought this program from us:

On Sunday night we had a severe thunder and hail storm with high winds and that all happened while my husband and I were watching the program [for the first time]. What luck!! A true test…

Since I was especially worried about Shirley and her fear of winds, storms, loud noises, etc…, I worked on her with the circular touches while watching the program. (I’m going to watch the program again a couple more times to learn the others.) It was truly amazing! She normally shivers like crazy and paces constantly during a storm and no matter how much I comfort her, there is no change. While giving her the touches, she laid on the couch next to me with such a look of love in her eyes. She even kissed me on the face, which she never has done before!! She was totally relaxed, not wanting me to stop! She especially liked the ear work.

—Robin Tassone, North Huntingdon, PA
(quoted with her permission)

The Tellington Touch has helped dogs with arthritis, dogs who were overly aggressive… you name it, some dog has probably been helped by it!

You can click to read more on another of my websites, hartworks.com, that describes a page about The Tellington Touch for Happier, Healthier Dogs, Featuring Linda Tellington-Jones with a lot more detail on how it helps dogs. If you wish, you can order it from there.

Even though I am not very good with my hands, I found I could easily learn these simple methods. I’ve used the TTouch on all our dogs and cats, and I tell a few stories on the other website.

Shortly after we got a rescue dog who didn’t like to cuddle, I tried the Tellington TTouch with him quite a bit. One evening, Kelly and I were on the sofa in the living room, when the jumped up between us (yes, that’s allowed in our house!) and curled himself around Kelly.

“He’s never done that before!” Kelly exclaimed. The dog stayed about five minutes, to our delight.

Note that the Tellington Touch is beneficial with a variety of dog behaviors, such as not liking to cuddle ore being afraid of thunder, and it also often helps with a variety of canine health problems.