What does every Game start with?
Sincere Question and a bit of foreshadowing… You got it yet? If you want to think about it, don’t hit the button… Once you hit the button you’ll have the answer you’re looking for…
Play is a self-directed engagement with novel, consequent opportunities—driven by curiosity and the intrinsic joy of exploration.
Ron Watson
What is Play? | Play+, 2025
A game begins with a question…
A game is a structured, dynamic system of consequent opportunity and interaction that aligns opportunity, expectancy, and achievement within a shared flow, fostering the intentional coupling of actions and skills to produce emergent, meaningful outcomes.
Ron Watson
What is a Game? | Play+, 2025
What? … Exactly!
All games start with a question. A Face Off is a question of who starts the game with the ball (Initiative). Jump Ball? Same thing. The Coin Toss, the Starter’s Pistol, etc.
Do you know what questions to ask?
Just as all games start with a question, so do all the Primal Games of Play+. Asking, answering, and embodying the questions that are the building blocks of learning, engagement, and interaction simply to see how they play out is the point of Play in the first place.
The Primal Games have no purpose, they’re not about anything, they’re playful interactions that teach you how to handle and your dog how to be handled. They teach you and the dog to read one another and adapt Skills to the current environment.
If this stuff isn’t on your radar, you might want to ask why?
Why? In Deed
We might not have all the answers for your team, but we’ve got tons of questions… questions are what you and the dog have while working. This dialogue between dog and handler is critical, it is the process layer that typical +R and modern dog training pretend doesn’t exist. Why the dog does it is important. Why the handler does it is too.
How did what we do affect the dog and how did the dogs actions affect us? Doing a thing and doing it with clear intent and purpose and doing so successfully sets up a functioning process layer. This is what we call the Aim; the dog, handler, and Team each have an Aim. Your Aim is to do the deed. Your dog’s Aim is to do the deed. When your subjective Aim’s are attuned & harmonized, your dog becomes a team mate who helps the play succeed.
Dogs that are not clear: too high, frustrated, fast, or scattered, NEED this process layer. They need to know what’s happening and how it happens. Handlers that are not clear or that take their skills and interactions for granted need this process layer as well; at least some tuning.
Where? In Flow
Play is not a proposition; it’s not something you “set up”. Setting up a Play session, with a plan of action and scripted responses is not going to work. It might here and there, it might all the time for you and this dog in the places you’ve played, but as a method it’s all but guaranteed to break and fail.
Play happens in the moment, it’s spontaneous, it’s about flow not the Plan™. How do you do that? How do you become Opportunity? How do you teach the dog to recognize the opportunity for play? You certainly don’t do it by walking over and getting your treatbag. Or purposefully walk out to practice under performance constraints.
Primal Games are dropped into the environment in flow, and with a bit of practice, towards purpose. Your training and handling are gonna go through the roof, as will your connection with your dog.
When? Are You Ready?
Are You Ready!? is a critical question and a totally stupid one. It’s OK to ask stupid questions, it’s not OK to ask them when the answer is staring you in the face — literally.
When the dog is in position giving eye contact they are coupled with you; hooked up already, giving you eye contact, Mark it and Let’s Go! The dog has just given you the initiative. When you ask if she’s ready, you just give her the ball.
Play is spontaneous. Opportunities for Play require Awareness, as well as Attention. Awareness of place and space is key. “We could never do that here… could we?” is one of the more common questions that is often asked by the dog and ignored by the handler.
Primal Games can and should be done anywhere and anytime; they’re great warmups and pressure releases.
How? Process is Prophecy
Primal Games lay out the Process of Play: Awareness, Attention, Opportunity, Expectancy, Action and Satisfaction. All the mechanics of the process: Triggers, Initiative Transfers, Enriched Marking, Handling, Position, Pressure, etc get exercised as well.
20 seconds to 5 minutes per game, or insert them into your traditional interaction with your dog; Primal Games deliver embodied experience and an understanding of how successful Play is achieved. This happens for dog and handler.
This understanding of process is used by dog and handler to center and ground the team and as a life preserver or the key to success in tough or challenging situations. When dog and handler know the process, reading and responding in time with the intent to achieve is the default mode of interaction.
Who? Handlers and the Handled
Who needs Primal Games? Anyone who handles or is handled; all dogs and handlers can benefit from Primal Games and the Skills & Mechanics they shape and hone.
For experienced handlers, nothing need change except for a little shift of perspective, some tuning of your marking & communication timing, and the clear separation and understanding of Attention and Awareness. Dogs, new and old, get embodied experience as well with this shift, gaining knowledge, Skills, and increased action capacity for performance. The dogs learn to be handled.
For newer handlers (and dogs) the Primal Games of Play+ offer embodied experiences of successful, cooperative play with low stakes and tunable mental and physical challenges, allowing the Team to not only progress quickly towards their goals but to tune, shape, and hone all the rest of the skills required to play together as a Team.