- [Announcer] This is Canine Freestyle, a competitive sport where dogs and humans dance.

Following gestures to find food is one thing, but in freestyle, each partner observes and interprets the other's body language to move in perfect harmony.

In a short, semi-improvised routine, thousands of years of evolution, boiled down to three to five minutes of intense interspecies connection.

Meet Trish Koontz and her canine partner, Boone, they're two of the best.

(jazzy music) Why do you like freestyle so much?

- Oh gosh.

Because of this connection thing, we're equal partners.

Dogs have a tremendous capacity for creativity.

We allow dogs to really fully invent movement and that's where we get our movement vocabulary.

This is going to be our phrase for today.

So you could come down - [Announcer] Trish teaches a class in canine freestyle at the Durham Kennel Club.

- When you move from here, towards the spectators, that's the most powerful movement you can do.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Freestyle truly is a dance.

With the flick of a wrist, the point of a finger, the subtle lift of the chin, the dogs move exactly as instructed.

No other species can communicate with us so effortlessly.

What are the cues that you think he is keying in on today?

- First is always body language with dogs.

- Okay.

- 100%, it's more powerful than anything.

I just lift my chin.

He like, backs up.

That subtle.

- [Announcer] At the end of the class, Trish let me try it out with Boone.

Even though Boone and I had just met, I moved my body and hands the way Trish taught me, and he understood exactly what I wanted.

But how did this unique relationship get started when wolves first became part of our lives?

- [Trish] From the opposite side- - Beastmaster!

Because, I'm no anthropologist, but I don't think cavemen were out there dog dancing with wolves.

(wolves howl)