Most sessions in the agility yard are about building a dog's skills. But a recent Toowoomba Explore session flipped that around and our group of participants built an obstacle course for themselves instead!

This was a fun activity our Toowoomba participants took part in for their Explore module on problem-solving and decision-making. The Explore program is Happy Paws Happy Hearts’ (HPHH) capstone employment pathways program and complements the skill building and acquisition from our regular shelter based programs to set participants up with vocational skills and readiness to support their pathways forward.

Even in a program built around vocational readiness, the animal lessons never lessen; they're woven through as a way of harnessing transferable skills participants can carry into work and life beyond Happy Paws Happy Hearts.

This particular afternoon, the Explore group headed into the agility yard to design and set up an obstacle course, not for a dog to work through, but for each other. Taking it in turns, each participant had a go both at being blindfolded and guided through the course, and at being the one giving the instructions. This was where the real lesson lay: everyone communicates differently, and everyone receives instruction and listens differently too. Finding a way to be understood and to trust the person guiding you enough to follow them, took real communication, patience and trust from both sides of the blindfold.

On hand throughout was Tiger, a one-year-old Great Dane x Kelpie who thrives when he's surrounded by humans and loves being part of the action. This time, though, the course wasn't for him, and so he settled into watching the group work, taking it all in from the sidelines as a very good boy.

This trust and communication exercise draws directly on the animal care and training skills participants have already Just as a dog needs a level of comfort and trust before it can engage confidently with a new person, participants found the same in being guided by each other. The exercise built team spirit, trust and communication in a way that's hard to manufacture through discussion alone—participants had to actually feel what it was like to depend on someone else's instructions, and to have someone depend on theirs.

HPHH Senior Program Trainer, Emily, noted how well the group came together for this activity as it illustrated how new bonds and relationships were forming between participants.

After being such a patient and supporting presence from the sidelines of the sandpit, Tiger’s reward came once the problem-solving exercise wrapped up: free rein to explore and play in the very obstacle course he'd been patiently observing all afternoon.