How does dances with wolves end

Dances With Wolves Ending Explained: The New Old West

MGM

By Anthony Crislip/Updated: July 13, 2022 3:24 pm EST

Kevin Costner's 1990 directorial debut, "Dances With Wolves," creates a new Western legend with majesty and sophistication, even as it reinforces some familiar stereotypes. It also resurrected the Western, which had been buried for over a decade. The release of Michael Cimino's 1980 immigrant saga "Heaven's Gate" — notoriously long, expensive, and demanding — had effectively killed the genre for real. According to the LA Times, industry insiders had a nickname "Dances With Wolves" prior to its release: "Kevin's Gate." With its classic status now well-established, industry skepticism around "Dances With Wolves" sounds ludicrous. But it was a gamble for Costner, who'd turned down a plum role in "The Hunt For Red October" to ensure he could produce, direct, and play the lead of this movie.

Costner made the most of the role, and turned the gamble into a massive hit. We're introduced to John Dunbar (Costner) as a wounded Union soldier on a Civil War battlefield. When he chooses a suicide run against Confederates over having his leg amputated, he strikes a messianic figure with his arms spread wide as he bounces on his horse. He survives and his battalion gains ground. As a reward, he gets the choice to be reassigned wherever he likes. He picks the frontier, as he wants to see it before it's all gone.

Duty-bound and ready to die

MGM

Dunbar's journals form the basis of a voiceover that's necessary for the man, who's quiet and taciturn, hardly willing to speak to anybody, let alone provisioner Timmons (Robert Pastorelli), Dunbar's guide and "the foulest man" he's ever met. We get a sense immediately of why Dunbar wanted to go to the frontier, as cinematographer Dean Semler crafts painterly, golden-hour images of the plains that gives the movie its spectacle. It makes the most of its widescreen imagery, just as much as Raoul Walsh's John Wayne Western "The Big Trail" did 60 years earlier.

While the film is largely quiet and intimate, the grandeur of its landscapes, with figures small on the horizon, is one of its major treasures. As if to undercut that, Timmons farts at bonfires and bugs Dunbar constantly. The two arrive at Fort Sedgwick, wrecked and abandoned, and Timmons takes off. It's not long before he's shot to death by Pawnee arrows.

Meanwhile, Dunbar takes on the arduous task of rebuilding the fort, plank by plank, slowly but surely drawing the attention of the local Sioux. They observe him from a distance and discuss him over their fires. Wind In His Hair (Rodney A. Grant) is a young, hotblooded warrior who dismisses Dunbar as a lost "fool." The tribe's holy man, Kicking Bird (Graham Greene), thinks differently, that this newly-arrived white man may be the key to their problems.

The buffalo hunt

MGM

One of the joys of "Dances With Wolves" is its easy, unhurried pace, which patiently emphasizes the difficulties of cultural exchange. If Dunbar really wants to help the Sioux and learn their ways, he needs to listen. The tribe struggles with the threat of incoming whites, the Pawnee, and a lack of buffalo. Their dialogue with Dunbar is nonverbal but generous, as he makes them bad coffee and they all try to find a common word for buffalo. Another joy is how much of the dialogue is subtitled: the actors are speaking the Lakota language, although according to Notes From the Frontier, it was incorrectly gendered.

As he arrives at their camp, Dunbar sees Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonell), a white Sioux who was taken in as a young orphan, her family killed by Pawnee. Her long-lost English is necessary, according to Kicking Bird — it will give her the chance to be an interpreter to Dunbar. Of course, they have a hard time nevertheless.

He notifies them of a buffalo herd. The buildup to and demonstration of the buffalo hunt is filmed wonderfully. A long journey, filled with disappointment and challenge, rewards the tribe once they finally find the buffalo and descend. It's epic, immersive filmmaking, and the pride on Dunbar's face shows he feels comfortable. The film may not have rewritten the rules of filmmaking like Sergio Leone's Westerns, but it cherishes its people, and the sense of community they forge. It represents a fantastical ideal of what could have been.

Nothing I've been told about these people is true

MGM

The young people in the tribe take to calling Dunbar "Loo ten tant," but the adults have their own name for him: "Dances With Wolves," after the close bond he's formed with a wolf called Two Socks. Dunbar's journal says that "the only word that came to mind was harmony," reflecting the same arc that James Cameron borrowed for his 2009 sci-fi take on the story, "Avatar." Dunbar falls in love with Stands With a Fist, and their love scene is interrupted by threats of Pawnee.

Dunbar's rifles give the Sioux the upper hand on the Pawnee in the big battle scene. While the film is notable for its compassionate and complex view of Natives as people, scenes like this, which linger on the white man's heroic murder of "bad" Indians feel passé, nor do they fight the allegations that the movie was a white savior piece.

Dunbar's heroism gives him the chance to marry Stand With a Fist. As the tribe talks of moving to their winter camp, he realizes that he needs to pick up his journal from Fort Sedgwick, or it'll leave a trail for the U.S. to follow. Dressed in Sioux wear, Dunbar's thought to be an Indian when he returns to a newly-populated Fort Sedgwick. The cavalrymen, shot at grotesque low angles, look nearly inhuman. He's beaten as he watches crows pick apart his horse, and is hardly able to defend himself.

Western reversal

MGM

In classic Hollywood, the arrival of the cavalry was signaled with bugles as they saved the day. Here, they're brutal, stupid, and ready to kill a Civil War hero. The arrival of the Sioux to rescue Dunbar is a reversal of expectations — when they emerge suddenly around the pond where Dunbar is kept, the staging is similar to the arrival of cavalry in older Wanesterns. The day is saved in the nick of time, but by Natives, who are fighting for their own.

"I don't like them, because they don't feel organic, or witty enough," said Costner of the Western genre while promoting his 2004 film "Open Range." It's easy to see why something like "Dances With Wolves" would appeal to him by comparison — its gentle pace and complex characterization of (some of) its Native characters marked it as a fundamental shift. On a $19 million budget, it made nearly $200 million domestically, showing that audiences were ready for a movie like this as well. It might not have made our Top 20 Westerns, but it succeeded financially by demonstrating heroism as well as complexity, and a bittersweet ending.

It ends not with Dunbar's rescue by Sioux, but with him volunteering to leave the tribe so as not to turn them into targets of the U. S. Army. As the epilogue notes, his plans would have been in vain anyway. In 12 years, the "last band of free Sioux submitted to white authority."

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The Sunday Conversation: Kevin Costner

It’s hard to remember that the 1990 western “Dances With Wolves,” Kevin Costner’s maiden voyage as a director, was derisively dubbed “Kevin’s Gate” because of filming difficulties before earning him an Oscar for directing, one of the movie’s seven golden men, including best picture. To mark its 20th anniversary, MGM Home Entertainment this month released a newly restored version on Blu-ray for the first time.

At the end of “Dances With Wolves,” your character, Lt. Dunbar, leaves his home with the Sioux to meet the U.S. Army, which wants to hang him as a traitor. What do you imagine happened to him after that?

Captives never assimilated very well back into white society, so he would have taken her far away. That was the beauty of the West, that you could create a whole new identity 100 miles away because we didn’t have telephones or faxes. It’s also what made the West very scary, because you never knew who you were operating next to. And coming out of a very violent war, the Civil War, there was a lot of bloodletting and vengeance. That fed into whatever sociopathic tendencies they had. So the West was a very difficult place. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it; [screenwriter] Michael Blake did. He wrote a book about it called “The Holy Road.”

You didn’t have CGI when you made “Dances” 20 years ago, right?

No, we didn’t. We did one special-effect shot, and it was a very dissatisfying experience for me. You can’t hold wild animals, so we decided to augment our buffalo that were just grazing. There are estimates that 90 million buffalo roamed the United States. So I wanted to show a really large herd in a static position grazing before the big buffalo hunt, so we added [animatronics]. It was archaic. It wasn’t cave drawings, but.... And then the special-effects guy said, “See that one up there moving?” We had one moving out of 3,000, and I remember saying, “I see the effect. I’m just looking for the special.”

I read that the film cost $22 million.

No, it cost 16.

Even with inflation, that’s nothing for a film epic these days.

When I tried to make it, I thought the budget would be $15 million. Every time I tried to make it, they’d say, “We’ll make it, but can you make it for 12?” Then they got afraid because I wouldn’t get rid of the [Lakota] subtitles, and I told them it would be long right up front. Everybody says, “Get ‘em pregnant and then you can do whatever you want.” I didn’t want to be arguing about something I knew was going to actually happen. So we got $9 million overseas. The first people who believed in the movie were the international community. I went to Orion — I had just made “Bull Durham” for them — they gave me $4 million, and I eventually put in $3 million, so it was $16 million.

Westerns have died many deaths in popular culture but never for long. You’ve done several westerns.

I’ve done four.

And this year “True Grit” is considered one of the year’s best films. Why do you think Americans seem to be so ambivalent about the genre?

Because mostly they’re not done well. It was a very complicated time, and filmmakers tend to simplify them with the black hat, white hat. When they were enjoying their largest acceptance back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, [filmmakers] just got lazier and lazier. When they’re done really well, there’s a lot of dilemma because the way you and I live, if someone threatens us, there are three or four different layers that we can go to — the police, our politics, our PR person, our agent, our lawyer — to arbitrate our problems. Back then you had nobody to arbitrate your problems, and very often you found yourself even against the law because it’s not a cliché for the lawman to have been bought back then. If somebody came and wanted your property, you had to make up your mind quickly. Very few of us have those instincts now about how we would behave. And so if you can create those in your story — the dilemma that men and women faced — then they can be incredibly entertaining.

You mentioned that “Dances With Wolves” got financing from abroad and your band, Kevin Costner and the Modern West, does a lot of touring in Europe. Is there more interest abroad in the American West than there is at home?

No, I just think they have a longer view of film than we do: “I believe in you. I’ll make a film with you.” They didn’t run the models and go, “I don’t know, no one has gone to see a western lately.” That’s what you run into in America. Certain auteurs go, “I’m going to make a western, and if they happen to be supported by a studio, it will get made.”

Tell me about your script for “A Little War of Our Own.”

“A Little War” is [about a sheriff] set against World War II, so it’s something I want to direct. I’m not a very in-vogue person in Hollywood by any stretch of the imagination, so rather than wail at the moon I’ve spent the last four years writing and stockpiling what I think are really good commercial movies.

Do you have financing for “A Little War”?

No, I don’t. I will make it because that’s who I am. I will find the right person, and everybody will be happy at the end of the day that that movie was made.

When you do make that, it will be only the fourth film you’ll have directed since you won an Oscar for directing “Dances With Wolves” your first time out. Why is that?

It’s so hard to direct. [As an actor,] you get to come into a movie and you get to leave, and the director is just stuck with this thing. I do love it — “Open Range” and “The Postman” and “Dances” — and I probably will direct as I play out this part of my career.

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Dances with Wolves | Articles

It would seem that the unsuccessful experience of cooperation with Limonov and his banned NBP during the "strategy 31" showed the futility and danger of such alliances. However, Nemtsov, Milov, Navalny speak enthusiastically about representatives of organizations banned for extremism as "sane nationalists. " The liberals are looking for allies in the old, well-known places - the National Bolshevik Party, the Slavic Union, the Movement against Illegal Migration.

Blogger Alexei Navalny, in his recent interview with The New Times magazine, for example, stated that "he went and will go to the" Russian marches ". Which he does - regardless of whether these" marches "are legal or not. Meanwhile, the main participants The events attended by Navalny included such now banned nationalist movements as the “Slavic Union” of neo-Nazi Dmitry Demushkin, the “Movement Against Illegal Emigration” of Alexander Potkin (Belova), who was conditionally convicted for the riots in Kondopoga, and the Russian Obraz, whose representatives appear in the case about the murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova.There are also followers of the leader of the banned National Bolshevik Party, Eduard Limonov. "Parteigenosse, party comrades, friends! Let historical examples inspire you: the history of the Bolshevik Party, the history of the Italian fascists, the history of the German National Socialists. They could do it, and so can we," the leader of the NBP inspired his comrades-in-arms at the time.

In an interview with The New Times, Alexei Navalny recalled that in 2007 he created the socio-political movement PEOPLE, the ideological platform of which was declared "enlightened nationalism." At that time, the press actively discussed his ties with nationalist organizations - the unregistered Great Russia party and the DPNI. Collaboration with the nationalists cost him his membership in the Yabloko party in December 2007. However, Navalny then told the Political News Agency that he did not repent of anything: “Yes, indeed, I argue that only the rejection of the dead-end, narrow-minded left-liberal ideology and the transition to the creation of a national democratic movement can be the way to revive the democratic movement.” nine0003

Navalny proposes to abandon the "narrow-minded liberal" ideology together with the founder of the banned "Slavic Union" Dmitry Demushkin, who, on the one hand, called Stalin's repressions against small nations justified, and on the other, openly called Hitler his teacher in the national question. Alexander Potkin, another "sane nationalist", according to Navalny, once "joked" that to join the "Movement Against Illegal Migration" headed by him, "it is enough to bring the ear of one Tajik - and you can join." nine0003

But Navalny has a long history of relations with ultra-Nazis. In 2007, they even agreed to star in his talk show "Only at Night" on TVC. The program was attended by skinheads Maxim Martsinkevich, nicknamed Tesak, later convicted of extremist activity, and Dmitry Rumyantsev with a support group. In the process of filming, the guests shouted the fascist spells “Heil, Hitler!”, “We will cut the blacks!”, “Russia without fur coats!” For about ten minutes with their arms thrown up. The recording was not released, and the program was closed. And in 2008, Navalny participated in the New Political Nationalism conference. Opening the conference, he was literally full of compliments for DPNI and its leader. Closing, he said, meaning "SS" and DPNI, that "Russian nationalists are a completely sane political force. " Immediately after that, the recently deceased Galina Kozhevnikova, one of the founders of the SOVA Information and Analytical Center, told Navalny in an open discussion: “You will not win under nationalist slogans. DPNI and other organizations tend to devour their associates, who are weaker. eat." nine0003

Little has changed since then. In his recent interview with the Sobesednik newspaper, Navalny said: “Nationalism is dangerous only when driven underground. neo-fascists. And what, a lot of pogroms in Rome?"

However, readiness for alliances with banned nationalist organizations has been repeatedly demonstrated by other representatives of the liberal camp. For example, according to his own assurances, Boris Nemtsov became sympathetic to the nationalists after he spent 15 days in a pre-trial detention center with DPNI activist Vladimir Tor. "We had a normal conversation with him. We could have a normal discussion with him in parliament. Now, if we had a civilized country, then there would be a democratic position in parliament, and liberal, and nationalists, and leftists," Nemtsov said. nine0003

It is not very clear what Nemtsov was talking about with Thor, because in general this figure became known for statements such as his assessment that Nikita Tikhonov and Evgenia Khasis were found guilty by the court of the murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the author of the New newspapers" by Anastasia Baburova: "Well, what can I advise the judges, prosecutors, investigators and other Gestapo officers - say hello to Chuvashov, if anything ..." Eduard Chuvashov is a judge who, for his adherence to principles, was sentenced to death by the Nazis and killed on April 12, 2010 . nine0003

The leader of the "Democratic Choice" movement, Vladimir Milov, is also convinced that "Russian liberals have lost the national agenda in the last 20 years", and therefore "a liberal national project is needed in general for Russia." Recently, in Moscow, the Yabloko party tried to "lead" an action of football fans in memory of the murdered Yegor Sviridov. A similar event in St. Petersburg was organized by Democratic Choice in alliance with the nationalists.

Dmitry Orlov, head of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, explains: "The motives for an alliance between liberals and nationalists are connected with the fact that they need to attract additional electorate, cannon fodder for mass actions." And the director of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy Problems Maxim Grigoriev notes: “A paradoxical situation is emerging when some people with a pseudo-liberal worldview are ready to form coalitions with radical nationalists in order to destabilize the political situation, while the other purposefully flirts with anti-fascists who organized an attack on the administration of Khimki. This is a completely unprincipled position. They are ready to enter into alliances with anyone, just to damage the power." According to Grigoriev, the anti-fascists who smashed Khimki were not much different from those who smashed Manezhnaya Square: "The authorities must equally protect society from both, regardless of their views." nine0003

Moreover, Grigoriev does not believe that recently "the attitude of the authorities towards nationalists has softened to some extent": "I see just the opposite situation, when pseudo-liberal structures maintain relations with ultra-Nazis. Here we can mention the same Navalny, who calls for people to come to the Russian Marches and, in fact, was expelled from Yabloko precisely for supporting nationalist movements and trying to organize a structure of this kind a few years ago. The expert also recalled that quite recently, non-systemic liberals were in a temporary alliance with the nationalist-minded Limonov, and the authorities, unlike them, strongly oppose radical nationalists. An example is the recent verdict in the so-called case of Tikhonov and Khasis. Recall: Tikhonov was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Khasis was given 18 years in prison. nine0003

By the way, Tikhonov's friend and one of the leaders of the Russian Obraz nationalist movement, Ilya Goryachev, in his testimony spoke about a certain Simunin, who presented himself as "the curator of the Local movement from the presidential administration." On this basis, some liberal-oriented media hastened to conclude that the government and extremist groups are "cooperating".

After the materials of Goryachev's interrogation "leaked" to the Internet, a series of high-profile denials followed - I must say, much louder than the accusations. Thus, the "Local" movement stated that they had never heard of any "Simunin from the Presidential Administration", and did not cooperate with the "Russian Image". A similar statement was made by ... representatives of the "Russian Obraz", since Goryachev's location by that time was already unknown, and no one there is clearly eager to bear responsibility for his words. nine0003

Well, the most significant was, of course, the refutation of the presidential administration, which answered: no Simunin, no matter who he presented himself to, was never listed in the presidential administration.

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Security Committee Dmitry Gudkov is convinced: "Imposters are always and everywhere, how can one answer for them?" According to him, the authorities are not "friends" with radical nationalists: "Special services are already working here, including by creating agent positions. " The idea was developed by his colleague in the State Duma, a member of the security committee, Alexander Gurov: “It’s completely absurd when they say that the authorities are flirting with them, and even in the presidential administration. With whom to flirt? The authorities are fighting them. All nationalist groups are registered. Serious operational work is being carried out with them, including by the FSB." The rector of the Institute of Law, retired police colonel Vladimir Vershkov, warns: "Possible consequences of mass riots can be very serious. Protecting society, the state, all special services, endowed with the right of operational-search activity, use unpublished, closed forms of work, sources of information in order not to allow serious consequences. Without this, it is sometimes impossible to stop extremist manifestations. This is a legitimate way to obtain information." nine0003

Parliamentarian Gurov notes that the authorities' efforts are not in vain: "The number of crimes motivated by nationality has significantly decreased. " Here we can recall the recent arrests of those suspected of organizing the riots on December 11 at Manezhnaya Square. Moreover, among them were an activist of the banned NBP, a member of the "Strategy 31" movement Igor Berezyuk, members of the liberal "Other Russia" Kirill Unchuk, Ruslan Khubaev, Leonid Panin, Alexander Kozevin. The loudest trial of recent times is the trial of the murderers of Markelov and Baburova. In March, the Cherepovets World Court sentenced "red skinheads" Pavel Tvorogov and Igor Lebedev to one year in prison for fighting. On the same list is the April verdict for another extremist, Rinat Sultanov, who was sentenced to two years in a penal colony. In April, the Moscow City Court banned the activities of the DPNI, recognizing the organization as extremist. According to media reports, DPNI was liquidated for involvement in violence. And on May 13, the Supreme Court upheld the third verdict against the nationalists Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, convicted of a crime on ethnic grounds. They were sentenced to ten years in prison. According to investigators, they committed a murder motivated by racial hatred. And two days earlier, in Omsk, a court found guilty of the ethnically motivated murder of members of the informal youth movement "Skinheads" - Andrei Prokoptsev and two of his underage acquaintances. nine0003

In all these lawsuits, as in a mirror, one can see a collective image of the nationalist underground, with which representatives of the liberal opposition are trying to interact. But it seems that the nationalists themselves are not particularly inclined to trust liberals, such as the same Alexei Navalny. Thus, a member of the presidium of the "Congress of Russian Communities" Alexander Bosykh recently told reporters that the nationalist statements of the blogger Navalny are nothing more than populism and will not add to his authority in the relevant circles. nine0003

Nevertheless, Mikhail Remizov, president of the National Strategy Institute, warns: "For ultranationalists, an alliance with liberals is much more profitable, but the alliance is temporary and not at all what the liberals would like. Nationalists are interested in getting out of the information 'ghetto', general demarginalization." They cannot do it on their own - odiousness does not let them, the expert believes. "And the liberals have a pool of media that are traditionally friendly to them. They, and not the" new allies ", are what the ultra-Nazis need." Mikhail Remizov sums it up: "The liberals have nothing to lose in this story. They are simply being used, as has happened more than once." nine0003

The events of recent years show that there can be no "enlightened", in the terminology of Alexei Navalny, extreme nationalism in Russia - the ultranationalist movement in its radical forms always ends in blood and broken human destinies. There is a lot of evidence for this, from the murder of 9-year-old Khursheda Sultonova by skinheads in St. Petersburg, the recent pogrom on Manezhnaya Square, to the double murder of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, which we mentioned. nine0003

Read Dance with Wolves online.

How to raise a dog and stop training yourself”, Evgeniya Marchenko – LitRes

I dedicate this book to my beautiful animals. It is they who bring amazing people into my life who give me so much trust and warmth, and for whom I want to perform feats and brandish a sword!

Editor Alla Vagner

Editor Marina Tyulkina

Proofreader Ekaterina Fedorova

photographer Dina Zhilinskaya

Layout, design Sergey Pronin

ISBN 978-5-4496-0721-8

CREED CREATED in the intellectual publishing system Ridero

Foreword

Elena Martynova, Candidate of Sciences in Psychology, Director of the Higher School of Psychological Counseling, Moscow

I came across the idea for this book when it was just beginning to appear as text on white Word pages. I must say, at first it was not clear to me how it would differ from books of similar subjects, and what main idea the author wants to convey to his readers. But what immediately captured me, made me read and re-read individual chapters, was the amazing author's style and sparkling humor. More than once I crawled from laughter under the table from the jokes and metaphors of Evgenia Marchenko, admiring her ability to laugh, first of all, at herself. This ironic and sincere style immediately fell in love with me. I was looking forward to the next chapter, enjoying every sentence, every line of this text. I watched with regret how ruthlessly Zhenya edits her sketches, sometimes blacking out the funniest if, from her point of view, this does not sufficiently correspond to the main idea of the book. nine0003

Just at this time, I was going through a crisis with one of my dogs. Our young golden retriever Marty is completely out of hand. From the very beginning, he was not distinguished by an obedient disposition, but now it has become impossible to walk with him even in our deserted village. He pulled the leash so hard, running out into the street, that after falling several times and driving along the asphalt, I began to throw the tape measure to the ground with all my strength as soon as the tape was pulled tight. Attempts to let him go always ended in an escape, after which, of course, he returned home a few hours later. But where he was running all this time remained a mystery to us. nine0003

Hitting him was useless. No incentives worked. Finally, I became afraid to walk with my dog. But I had to manage a small pack of four pets! All my thoughts about what is happening and who is to blame for it, invariably came down to ... Yes! To Marty! The dog was to blame for everything: he was naughty, he didn’t want to endure his toilet chores at night, didn’t ask if he needed to go out, stole food from other dogs and cats, and once even bit my little grandson’s hand ... It’s a sin to hide: more than once I caught myself regretting that I decided to get a second retriever ...

In the midst of this relationship crisis, I began to get acquainted with the book A Dance with Wolves. The first thing that Evgenia Marchenko did a great job was to show how the psychological characteristics of the owner turn into problems in the behavior of their dogs. Self-doubt turns into an uncertain call, and now your dog does not hear you, does not run to you, does not react to you. You are afraid of contact with other people or dogs, and your dog hides behind your back or even snaps at those who accidentally become interested in it. Full of aggression towards the world, and your dog bites, rushes, tears, destroys... So, if my dog does not obey me, then I am not an authority for her. This is such a disappointing conclusion I made for myself, as soon as I started reading Zhenya's book. nine0003

The second revelation came to me when I read the chapter on the four components (“four taps”) of a harmonious dog life. The idea that a dog needs a job surprised me immensely. I don’t even know how the image of a happy dog appeared and firmly settled in my head, lounging on a couch and licking its greasy bowl, but I really believed that in addition to delicious porridge and a bone, a warm booth or a soft bed, an affectionate owner and leisurely walks for a dog nothing is needed... But how?! How could I, a professional psychologist-consultant, think so, while talking again and again in my trainings about learned helplessness, which, by the way, was revealed for the first time in dogs?! nine0003

And at some point, everything suddenly came together in my head: Martin Seligman's experiments with dogs; my sad golden, with all his indefatigable energy, lying on the porch all day; my thoughts about why I need dogs; my fear of taking our small pack of dogs for a walk; and even the little Vovochka bitten by Martin... It was as if the disparate puzzles finally formed into a coherent picture, but only at the moment when the person composing them saw the necessary connections. And Evgenia Marchenko's book helped me to discover these patterns. nine0003

My dogs in their life were largely deprived of both physical activity, and social communications, and games, and business. Realizing this was unpleasant, but infinitely useful. And when I learned about dog freestyle from the next chapter, I realized how much not only my dogs, but, first of all, myself are deprived of ...

This thought seems to me now the most important, most important, most valuable in the book "Dance with Wolves": if you get a dog, then it can enrich your life to the maximum, but only if you decide to diversify the life of your dog. nine0003

And then in my life there was a cynological camp in the Crimea, meeting amazing people, cynologists and animal psychologists, professional breeders and just dog lovers with their equally wonderful four-legged friends. I saw the dog dances that Zhenya wrote about, and it turned out that it is amazingly interesting and not so difficult if you and your dog understand each other.

I visited the canine athletics competition, where dogs of different breeds jumped in length and height. I watched how dogs overcome obstacles, how they jump after a flying saucer or a ball, how they detain an intruder on land and in water, day and night ... And their happy owners were always next to their pets - cheerful or concentrated, excited or calm, but always loving their four-legged companions. Before that, I had no idea how the business of a dog could enrich the life of its owner...

And there, in Crimea, one day I experienced the real happiness of the owner of a companion dog. On a warm evening, we were sitting on the sandy shore of the sea, and for the first time my Marty lay next to me, exposing his ears, then his head, then his stomach, then his fluffy back to my hand ... For the first time he did not run away from me, and I did not catch up with him. I called him to follow me into the sea, we swam side by side, and he always came back to me when I called him. ..

I owe all this to Evgenia Marchenko's wonderful book "Dance with Wolves". It is trite to say that a dog can become our true friend. We often do not know that a dog can share with us a lot of things in our life, if only we help him fill his own life with care and affection, games and affairs, sports and real work. nine0003

From the author

Who would have thought that this particular part would get stuck in my computer, slowing down the publication of the book for a whole month. I already have eight options for addressing the reader, and from each I want to run away with a howl.

There is a version with a long biography, there is a version similar to a school manual, there is a sentimental and tearful one, and there is also some kind of clown. It's just not in the verses. But today one of the editors wrote to me: “Zhenya, usually no one reads From the Author, don’t slow down the process!” And it became easy for me. In this part, I will just say hello to you, Reader. I would like to thank you for deciding to donate your time to my book and I will give you a short navigation so that you do not get confused in the names of people and names of dogs. nine0003

The book turned out to be a hybrid of a diary and a women's series. All stories are real, I just changed the names of my students and their dogs, afraid to hurt someone to the quick. We are all impossibly vulnerable, right? With their names in the book, my coaches remained, and I carefully collected their advice, which turned my life around!

Most of the dogs you meet in the stories are White Swiss Shepherds. Naturally, I am writing about them because I am a breeder, a puppy school mentor and owners, and, most importantly, the mistress of three girls of this breed. Harty is the eldest, Asya and Bays are her daughters. They are my main teachers, and now I can say for sure: if you get a dog, you will change constantly. There is no "constant" when I put it on the wheels - and the car drove off.