What I have learned from life with dogs - Part 1

 

Yesterday we came home with our own puppy, Nala.

Dogs have worked wonders in my heart.

And right now I am in a literal puppy heaven.

In this blog series I'm sharing some gold nuggets from my journey with dogs.

At first I'll take you to the winding dog life journey prior to owning our cute labrador girl.

It started early on, yet for several decades I only knew someone else's cute dogs.

While I was growing up my cousins' had several dogs.

My one cousin's family had first a male dachshund, then a male labrador retriever, a female bichon havanese with her puppies and finally a poodle.

I loved having the dogs around to play with and while going for walks.

I also saw what a powerhouse the labrador retriever was and still such a gentle hearted dog.

My other cousins had a beagle, later on a king charles cavalier spaniel and lastly a pack of three silky terriers.

It was so fun to me to compare the alert hunter dog type beagle to the ever friendly spaniel. And the dynamic within the tiny terriers' pack.

From a child's perspective I learned mostly about some of the differences between different kinds of dogs.

Yet being surrounded by several different types of dogs amazingly still taught me very little.

I had no clue what went on in a dog's mind.

My practical learning journey is still very much in the beginning.

But the last few years have been a most fruitful start for that hands on learning phase.

We were ruined for our old ordinary - life without owning a dog - when we said yes to being a holiday family for our friends' two adorable dogs.

We were living in Uruguay and our kids were eagerly waiting for the time when we would have our own pet.

We had hard time calming down our kids pet fever, yet we couldn't get a pet while in Uruguay.

What made it even harder was my own pet fever below the surface.

So we decided that being a holiday home for these furry friends, a mother and a son, was a perfect fit for us.

We fell in love with these two dogs and they seemed to enjoy time with us so 

much too.

Here are some useful nuggets I've collected from the last few years journey with dogs:

🐾 Learning about the basic instincts of that specific dog provides understanding and patience - the "I know why they…" kind of a-ha moments.

🐾 What does the dog love to do naturally? Is it driven to chase rabbits, drawn to water, loves to spend time with constant company or not?

🐾 My friends two dogs went into a high-pitched-crying-mode for a rabbit scent. Before we understood it was the unseen rabbits, we were like "what are they crying for on a walk?"

🐾 Dogs live in the moment. I've slowly learned how correcting and redirecting needs to happen in the now-moment.

🐾 Tone matters, and so does simplicity and clarity. I've started using simple clear vocabulary, focusing on how my voice sounds - friendly, firm or something else.

🐾 A dog trainer I love to follow, called Matt Beisner who runs a Zen Dog training facility, once said an intriguing fact, that a dog can learn 250 words.

🐾 Matt's series on rehabilitating dogs has been my favorite dog related program - it's on Disney streaming service.

🐾 A fun fact. My friend's dogs were used to being around several languages, the younger dog even learned to sit and give a paw in Finnish. Yet I loved talking to them in Spanish, since their major language was Portuguese.

What kind of story do you have with dogs?

I would love to hear!

Start small & recognize when you're ready enough

Can you remember the moment, when something in your now daily life was nerve wracking and new?

That weighty feeling when you first started in your current job?

That unsure feeling when you took your newborn baby to home?

When you saw your husband for the first time, on a sudden date?

The feeling of overwhelm with a full spectrum of emotions was flushing over you. 

And then there was that fear of you not being ready for what was about to unravel.

Going back in time might serve you now.

For when you're facing something brand new and scary, that reassurance of you being able to figure things out, is just gold.

And sometimes you and I might just fall asleep into that illustrated reality, where everything (and especially you) needs to be hundred percent ready before you take the first step to try it.

Yet in the real world we know what it takes to reserve the new territory for us.

It takes grit, curiosity, nerve, joy and the list goes on.

While fear would like to feed us with endless possibilities of bad endings, we just know in our gut that we are ready to take the step.

Sometimes to be able to start something new you're very afraid of can be found by a simple question.

What is the small yes I can say today?

And what is the big no, that I can say?

Recognizing things that try to steal your time, energy and other important resources is truly powerful.

After this week something totally new starts for me and my family.

But a few years back we started the journey, by saying one little yes after another.

What is your little yes today?