MISTAKE #9: FAILING TO TAKE A PROACTIVE ROLE IN YOUR DOG’S LIFE
Are you a Re Actor or a Pro Actor?
Have you ever knocked over a glass of milk? You know what happens, it goes everywhere. It’s sticky and messy. Sometimes the glass breaks and then you’ve got sticky and messy, with dangerous little finger slicing glass slivers hiding in the white goop.
And oh no, what if your dog gets into it? Or your child?! What if somebody slips in it, or tracks that mess all over the place?! Yuck.
You’ve got a choice now. Most of us jump right into upset. Who’s to blame? How did it happen? We fuss about the mess it made. Honestly, we can let it ruin our day, leaving us resentful and feeling upset....
A funny thing happens while we are doing all that fussing though... the mess doesn’t get cleaned up very quickly or easily, and can actually expand in size and trauma for everyone concerned.
It’s been said that there are two types of people in this world. The first kind we just talked about. BUT, you could turn the obstacle into an opportunity. Deal with it cheerfully by grabbing a towel, cleaning it up quickly and easily, grabbing a new glass plus the milk jug and voila!
You’ve got a fresh glass of milk and life moves on. You might even have a little cleaner space than you did before, and you could have used the experience to bond in a healthier way with your family, and even practiced some obedience work with your dog.
So what does this have to do with your relationships -- with yourselves, your animals, your family and friends?
When your dog friend (or life!) ‘makes a mess’ -- does something that you don’t like, causes a problem in some way, doesn’t react or respond in the way you wanted - you can fuss about the spilt milk, OR, you can move to find the solution.
The point of the spilled milk story is that when we have a challenge, we can use it as an excuse to get upset and stop forward movement, and wind up wasting a lot of energy and time on it without changing anything for the better. Or, we can use the situation to help us, turning the obstacle into a challenge we can use to our advantage, learning what we need to learn, ask for help dealing with it in a healthier way.
It has been said that there are two types of people in this world. The Re Actors and the Pro Actors.
I want to encourage you to be a Pro Actor in your own life’s drama. Your Co Actors will thank you for it.
Consistency is the first of our most important foundational needs.
Dogs simply can’t thrive in an unstable, chaotic, or unpredictable environment. Individual dogs have different tolerant levels for inconsistency, of course, so you have to evaluate what works best for your dog.
However, in every case, too much unmanaged chaos will cause them a great deal of stress, discomfort, nervousness and anxiety, which then leads to many undesired behaviors coming from unhappy (and unhealthy) canines.
Sometimes we thing our dogs are doing ok with our hectic lifestyles… but are they really? What I often find is an underlying chronic level of anxiety and fear that they can mask or hide to a certain point… but it eventually makes them ill. And then we wonder why they got sick.
With training, always start with a consistent reward for action taken at your request. Then when they have the idea, you can vary the reward (for example, give them a treat one time, then another time just a verbal reward, and so on). In this instance, it’s okay to be predictably unpredictable!
However in lifestyle, stability goes a long way to create certainty, relaxation and confidence. Only then can you offer variety in their routine and have it work well. It’s because you are then building on a basic fundamental need that is already established.