My dog is a **@%*$ and so am I

It always makes me sad when I see someone who thinks they’ve reached the limit of their potential.

It saddens me because they have put these limits on themselves. They may have got the idea from other people that they should stay in their box, keep quiet, not rock the boat. Or they have more pernicious beliefs to keep themselves under wraps - like “Who do you think you are?” “Who asked you anyway?” “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

If people say these things to you enough times you can actually come to believe them! It may have been the throwaway comment of an exasperated teacher - but it burrowed deep into your soul and has festered there for a lifetime.

It can happen so easily to us. A casual remark, a quick snipe, a condemnation born of frustration . . . and it has this desperate and lasting effect on our confidence.

What’s this got to do with dogs?

So how about your dog? Was there a time when you cursed him? (You’d be unusual if you’ve never wanted to!) Was there a time when you spoke dismissively of him? Have you ever called him insulting names, even apparently in jest? A nickname which was expressed in the moment and has somehow stuck? 

You see, I find that people who refer to their dog by rude names, even fairly mild ones, colour their own perception of their dog. They may not realise they’re doing this, but it’s a pernicious drip-drip of scorn and derision that is damaging for everyone concerned.

What we call something matters because it shapes how we think of it. Karen Overall

It’s essential to clean up your thinking!

These thoughts you may be having - of insufficiency, guilt, shame, or your dog’s hopelessness - will all become embedded in your mind, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

What you focus on is what you get.

What you think about most becomes your reality.

Whether this be “I’m useless,” or “My dog is stupid,” think about it hard enough and it will come to pass.

All change!

But it doesn’t have to be like this! You can start monitoring your own thoughts and the words you use in relation to your dog. Stop yourself when you’re talking to or about her, and check whether what you said was actually helpful, will help you move forward.

But the deep ingrained beliefs we have about ourselves may need a bit more digging to get the change you want. To be able to spread your wings and achieve what you know you really can in life. To do all those things you wanted to do - but just never felt ready for.

What dreams have you been stifling?

I’d love to help you with this, as I have helped others in the same predicament! Contact me and let’s open a conversation about how you can change things and have a brighter future - whether for your dog or for that very important person: yourself.

The winding path - for our dogs and for us!

Wandering footpaths are a feature of my photos. And they're a feature of my life too, as well as yours. We are all on an endless journey. And we all have choices to make.

Our dogs take everything in their stride. They put their noses down and they explore their surroundings. They find what they like and they discard what they don’t like.

We can do the same!

We can look at our surroundings, our circumstances, and we can pick and choose. We don’t have to take everything life throws at us, or what gets thrown at us by other people, governments, natural and not-so-natural events!

We can decide what we want to keep in our life, and we can discard what we don’t want.

If you are burdened by expectation, guilt, or a desire to fit in, you’re not going to be able to make the choices that are right for you!

You have to choose yourself, from your heart, what aligns with your values. What is acceptable to you, not to society, family, colleagues …

What does the future hold for us?

We have no idea!

No-one can know what will happen tomorrow, next year, later today . . .

The best we can do is to keep our minds open, and explore - just as our dogs do - and find the hidden delights that are strewn across our path, but which we so often trample over in our hurry to get . . . somewhere else.

I love finding surprises on my walks. And I’ve been finding lots of hearts recently! Here’s a nice one that Coco is inspecting.

You may think it’s just a stone.

Aha! Nonono!

It’s a sign that love is everywhere. Beauty is everywhere. But it’s easy for us to miss it in our hurry through life.

Driving through the Burren - a magical limestone pavement in Ireland, full of flowers which grow nowhere else - a friend asked of a farmer on the road where he may see the flowers.

Slowly and deliberately, the old soul replied, “You’ll not see anything, hurtling through at thirty miles an hour.”

So true!

The beauty of the world is there for us. Our task is to look beyond the humdrum and see it.

Am I on the right path?

You may have been racing along your path for so long that you’ve forgotten to check that it’s the right path for you!

Does it fill you with joy, every day? Does your heart sing when you wake in the morning and see what your day holds? Or do you get a sinking feeling, a feeling of dread, as you contemplate your day?

Sometimes we need a little nudge in the right direction, to ensure we don't go off track. Sometimes we can give ourselves that nudge. And sometimes we need someone else to do it for us.

Do you have a safe someone? Contact me if you are still searching.

Learn a new way to interact with your dog which you will both love!

Your dog and hot weather

It’s not that hot in England right now. But it is June, which means there is the possibility of a hot day. And the trouble is, we’re not that used to the heat.

Friends in the US and the Far East and Australia tell me that their heat is frequently up in the 90s, so they’re adept at managing their homes and their lives to accommodate this.

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But it can be very easy to think that how you experience the heat is how your dog will experience it! How wrong can we be?

You’ve met young Coco Poodle … well, he hasn’t time to stay still and rest. And he certainly doesn’t have time to think in the moment! So if Cricket the Whippet, with her thin coat, huge heart and lungs, and lean form specially adapted to losing heat as fast as possible takes off after a rabbit, Coco will hurtle off with her!

He’s very, very fast - which is why so many miniature poodles do well in agility competitions - but he can’t clock 35 mph like Cricket can without something going amiss.

A cautionary tale

Recently - on a pleasant, sunny but not particularly hot, day - this is just what happened. They took off after a rabbit.

They both came back soon enough - a quick chase is what they enjoyed. (Don’t worry! They don’t do anything with the rabbit when they overtake it, they just leave and come back, knowing the fun is over.)

Cricket panted lightly for a minute or two, but Coco was panting heavily, his tongue a large spoon shape that showed just how much heat his body was trying to lose. Back on lead again I expected him to recover quickly as usual.

But this day, over the next few minutes, he gradually got worse.

As we headed homeward I was looking out for waterways without blue-green algae, and which were accessible.

Coco started to hang back and plod.

I hunted more urgently.

Coco’s legs started to splay, he was gasping, and he became unable to walk.

So I had no choice but to scoop him up and race to clean water as quickly as possible. Once I found some we could scramble down to, I attached 10 feet of lead to his harness and lowered him in at the edge. The water was over his ankles, the harness holding him upright.

Gradually I moved him further into the water, in stages. I knew it was important not to rush this bit.

Eventually the water reached his ribs. After standing him shoulder deep in the water for about 5 minutes, he became perkier, slowed his panting and took a drink.

He was able to do the last part of our walk back to the car on his own four feet.

Phew! What a relief!

The cooling episode could have been speeded up a bit if I’d been able to reach him and splash some water on his head and back, to accelerate heat loss through evaporation. But slowly does it is the way to go.

Is your dog like Coco?

It’s important to know how to manage your individual dog. While Cricket recovered with absolute ease from her burst of speed - this is, after all, what Whippets are brilliantly designed for, and also why they feel the cold so much - Coco naturally has a warm tightly-curled coat. I keep it short most of the year, and take care to shear him more frequently in the summer months.

The other two dogs who hadn’t taken off chasing were fine. In fact they’re older and more sensible than Coco and can manage their body-heat pretty well.

But Coco … aaahhh … Coco! He’s in too much of a hurry to think a lot of the time. So I have to manage things for him. Now that I’m aware of how easily he can get beyond himself heatwise, I can ensure it doesn’t happen again. As my students know well, one of my maxims is “If you don’t want something to happen, don’t let it happen!”

So if it’s warm or close and there are rabbits about, young Coco stays on lead till it’s safe. Though I always stay aware of where we can find water, just in case!

What to do?

There are some useful suggestions here to help you manage your dog in hot weather.

Always remember that what seems ok for us may absolutely NOT be ok for your dog! Err on the side of caution. Things can go wrong fast.

The answer lies in prevention, management, and knowing what to do.

Of course, as that article shows, heat can also affect your dog’s mood. Learn how to access and influence your dog’s state of mind easily in our free Workshop

Watch our free Workshop and learn how to communicate effectively with your dog or your new puppy, right from the start!

What can our dogs teach us about life?

We seem to think it’s up to us to teach our dogs everything. I get questions all the time along the lines of “How can I make my dog do such-and-such?” “How can I stop my dog doing xyz?”

But how about looking at what our dogs can teach us?

One of the greatest realisations in my time on this planet is that

It’s not about us!

We see things through our own individual set of goggles. And those goggles have very smeary, scratched lenses!

They’ve been smeared and scratched by years and years of our life experiences, what we’ve been taught, what’s acceptable in our society, how we think we ought to behave.

Often we have felt that life is happening to us, without us being able to do a thing about it. We may have accepted everything we’ve been told or taught without question.

Where is the truth?

But, you know, the only thing you can be sure of, can trust, can know is truth, is your own reaction. Your own thought. Your own feeling.

For some of us, even those spontaneous thoughts have been crushed and buried because we thought they didn’t fit in with what we’re meant to think. It can take a little digging to find out what your true values and feelings are. We can cast aside the interpretations we put on the things that happen, we can stop meeting trouble halfway by our assumptions,

And this is where your dog comes in.

Our teacher - our dog!

When did he last read the paper, watch the news? When did he last ruminate over what someone said, asking himself endless questions, whywhywhy? Does he worry whether he is good enough?

(I’m talking here, of course, of the companion dogs in our homes, who are being given the Five Freedoms.)

Dogs are truly spontaneous - when we allow them to be so. They experience something, and they react. Or respond. Or ignore.

They don’t analyse it. They don’t ask endless questions - “Why did she look at me like that?” “What can he be meaning?” “Is it something I said?”

They just experience - and react.

So, as dogs live entirely in the present, this keeps their lives comparatively simple. For example, they see something new on the ground:

“Can I eat it?”

“Can I climb on it?”

“Will I roll in it?”

“I’ll pass by …”

Nowhere do they say,

“What is the meaning of this thing?”

“Is this to do with what happened last week?”

“This means the world as we know it will disappear.”

“Why do these things always happen to me?”

Listen and learn from our dogs

So how about taking a leaf out of their book? When something happens, take it at face value. No need to let your imagination run riot when something goes slightly amiss, “This means the end of everything I value!” or “I will end up dead in a ditch!”

As Confucius apparently said, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

Uncomplicate yourself. Be a dog. Live in the now.

And if you’d like to learn just how you can approach your life with pleasure and not trepidation, just ask me!

Want to learn more how to relate to your lovely teacher, your dog?

Watch our free Workshop and learn how to communicate effectively with your dog or your new puppy, right from the start!

Dog Separation Anxiety after Lockdown?

I received this request recently from a long-time follower,

“How about some advice on separation anxiety? Coming out of lockdown is going to be hard for many of our dogs. They are so used to us being around all the time. I’m ready to work on the problem.”

Advice? We-e-e-e-ll. That depends whether you want advice for your dog or advice for you!

The dog part is easy!

First, read the post Puppy Socialisation in Lockdown which will give you a greater understanding of what’s going on.

Note especially this bit: “One thing that will need careful attention while you’re at home is teaching him how to cope with your absence without distress. This is hugely important for any puppy - especially now, if you’re isolated. So short absences - even to the next room - must be built in from the start, and gradually extended.”

These absences should be incorporated as a normal part of any dog’s life with you, lockdown or no. So be sure to add them in daily.

When you need to go to the shops you can leave your dog safely in her crate, maybe with soft music and a chewtoy to help her settle. If you have two dogs, be sure to walk them separately some of the time (you should do this anyway!) so one is getting your full attention and training on the walk, while the other is learning to manage absence back at home.

Return calmly. Certainly greet your dog of course, but avoid mega-long-lost-greetings that make a big thing of it all, instead of just another aspect of normal life. Ignore any hysteria coming from the crate!

The more you do this, the faster it will all go. You owe it to your dog to teach her how to manage being alone. Just as we teach our babies how to be alone. Fortunately dogs, like babies, spend much of their day asleep anyway, so it’s pretty easy to utilise this zzz time for a bit of absence practice.

Most of what people fear as Separation Anxiety is simply an absence of this gradual training. There is a big difference between a bit of discomfort at being alone, and clinical “Separation Anxiety” which may need the help of medication as well as a structured desensitisation program to work through. I recommend Patricia McConnell’s “I’ll be Home Soon” book.

But what about the owner part?

Have a look at these two statements from that reader:

“Coming out of lockdown is going to be hard for many of our dogs.” 

“I’m ready to work on the problem.”

In both cases, this is perceived as a problem. What’s more, it’s a problem that doesn’t yet exist! This is popularly known as “meeting trouble halfway”.

Not only are you worrying about something that hasn’t happened and may never happen, but by focussing on it you are actually making it more likely!  

Yes, that’s true. Worrying about something that may never happen is opening the door to it and saying “Come in, do!”

If you don’t believe in the power of manifestation, you can look at other parts of your life where your awareness is heightened for something relevant to you. If you’re thinking of buying a red car, you see red cars everywhere! If you’re pregnant, suddenly every second woman is pregnant!

So if you think your dog is going to be anxious when you go out, every little thing he does will confirm this for you.

What you focus on is what you get

So what is my advice to you?

1. Ensure you get your dog or puppy gradually used to your absence, and used to being alone, right from the get-go. Starting now is better than not starting at all! The resilience he learns will be valuable for every aspect of his life.

2. Stop worrying! Worrying helps no-one. If you perceive something as a problem and dwell on it, that problem will grow. If you realise that for every problem there is a solution, and you just have to find it, you’ll be able to instantly stop worrying while you search. Would you rather be pro-active or a helpless victim of circumstance?!

 To change your dog you need to change yourself first!

Watch our free Workshop and find out how to transform your “deaf dog” into a LISTENING DOG!

How can I get my dog to Listen?

This is the single most frequent request I get from readers: “How can I get my dog to listen?”

Sometimes it arrives in the form of “My dog doesn’t listen to me,” “He never listens,” “You’d think he was deaf!” and so on.

But in every case it’s the owner complaining about her dog’s fault.

How about turning that around????

How about looking at what you’re doing first, then look at what your dog is or isn’t doing in response?

You actually have to teach them first!

I find that folk arrive with me, complaining that their dog doesn’t listen, then they’re surprised when I ask them how they have taught their dog to listen.

They haven’t, of course. They expect the dog to arrive with Listening-to-Owner installed. They don’t realise they have to make it worth their dog’s while to listen to them - every time!

We spend a lot of time with our friends, family, even a prospective spouse, teaching them how to listen. We all want to be heard. And there are different levels of listening. We want the very best!

Your dog is the same! He needs to learn that listening to you is good, listening to you is worth his while, listening to you always results in good things.

And there’s a very real danger that if you don’t teach him what you like, then he’ll teach you what he likes!

In every relationship, one person is shaping the other. Sometimes it gets horribly one-sided, like in an oppressive marriage, or an unequal friendship. But that isn’t necessary. A little careful groundwork can start a relationship off right. True choice in a relationship comes when both parties can express themselves fully..

And that’s what we want with our dogs too.

We want a companion dog who enjoys our company, chooses to hang out with us, is alert to our needs, and eager to please. Note that this doesn’t imply slavery, grovelling, or self-abasement! We want an honest relationship with our dog, the same as with everyone else.

I know the frustration your dog’s apparent ignoring can cause - when you do your best to do what you’ve been told in training your dog - only to find it doesn’t work. It causes the opposite of what you want! Antagonism, distrust, loss of love.

There is a better way. A way which works.

And, importantly, a way which does not involve any force, coercion, or intimidation. The same way as you choose to treat your family and friends.

I love my dog, but he just doesn’t listen!

Would this be you? Have you got a dog who simply doesn’t listen to you? Well, you’re in luck! I’ve just made a new training workshop with exactly you in mind!

You can find it here - it’s free, by the way, as is so much that I give you.

Why do I give so much away for nothing? Some suspicious people even say “What’s the catch?”!

Well, there are two reasons:

1. I am passionate about changing the lives of dogs, and this means changing how their owners are with them. Getting these folk to dip their toe in the water of Choice Training is a great start!

and

2. I know that a number of those people I help will want more - they’ll want to work with me in person, through one of my programs. Hooray! Now I get to help them in depth! That’s the fullest expression of my passion to help dogs be understood.

Understanding leads to harmony.

As Carol, one of those students, put it just recently,

“I’m amazed at how much me and my dog have changed, and what we’ve now become. A proper team.”

Don’t lose another minute!

Register for this free Workshop here and get stuck in! You’ll come away with solid strategies you can put into practice TODAY, to change things in your life with your dog, remove that conflict and frustration, and build an unbreakable bond.

Start the change with your puppy or dog with our free Workshop packed with ideas and strategies -

all force-free!