Quote Originally Posted by recycling goddess View Post
no touch, no talk, no eye-contact - that's how people meeting her for the first time should behave. if they sit with their back to her... it allows her to smell them without feeling intimidated by their eye-contact.

I totally forgot that point...and I can hear Cesar's voice saying it in my head now. :-P

When I meet new dogs who are unsure of me, I often turn my back on them to allow them to come up to me unthreatened. I think that would work great for strangers meeting your girl.

A lot of the Horse Whisperer stuff about body language and round pen work applies to dogs too. You can use your body language even from a distance to "push" or "pull" a dog. Leaning in and stepping forwards will back the dog up, and leaning backwards and turning away will draw the dog towards you. The first time I saw this demonstrated, we had a guest lecturer and they brought in one of our class horses that he had never worked with before. Without ever touching the mare (she was loose offlead in the round pen), and only using body language, he was steering her through figure eights in a just a few minutes by "pushing" and "pulling" with his body language.