Dog Training

My husband and I recently adopted a young dog (8 months old) from the local Humane Society that we called Tater. And Tater is a lovely girl, very affectionate, but completely untrained. So we decided that in order for us to have more enjoyment of the dog, and even for the dog to have more enjoyment of her life, that puppy school was the way to go. We’ve all heard the saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” so I figured we were good to go with our young dog, and expected puppy school to be a breeze.

Ha! Boy was I wrong!

Tater has a mind of her own, and even at her tender young age, she had certain ideas about how things should be done. She fought the lessons at puppy school every step of the way! Tater was not open to changing her habits, even though learning these new habits were going to make her life easier and happier. And twice over the course of her 6 week training she got so out of control that the head trainer used her to demonstrate “how to deal with a difficult dog”. (Very proud moments for me, gotta tell ya! LOL) Tater was stubbornly holding on to her ideas of how she wanted to behave and react, even those these ideas were detrimental. …she was missing out on the treats and praise that she would have received if she’d just let go of her insistence that things be as they were.

This got me thinking about how we hold onto our ideas about how things should be. How stubborn we can be in changing our habits. Even, if like Tater, this stubborness is causing us to miss out on even greater things.

And I am happy to report that Tater finally got over her resistance to learning, and she has a much better life as a result. We take her out more because she is better behaved. She gets more treats and even more affection because she finally “got it” that her old methods weren’t serving her. Her tail wags a million times a day now!

So I ask you, what are you holding onto that is keeping you locked in your overweight body? What is stopping you from incorporating new ideas and habits into your life that could be bringing more enjoyment? Whatever it is, it’s holding you back from your ideal weight, and perhaps even your ideal life. Make the decision to let go, and to move forward and just watch how much better everything gets!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 9:14 pm and is filed under The Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.