Ever fought change?
Been at that fork in the road and felt your stomach flip at the thought of it?
Or not known what it was until you moved through it looking back thinking dam is that what had me feeling/acting that way.
It’s instinct to resist change, it’s no mystery as to why people sit on my emails or phone number until something bad happens.
A bite, a near incident or just one of the worst days they have faced with their dog and they feel like they just can’t do this anymore.
We will always want and seek for the environment around us to change before we have to change, it’s just easier, or at least FEELS easier.
And look in an ideal world it would be great to get the work in before hand but I know you guys don’t intentionally do it to me, it’s just how humans are.
In fact, it’s how mammals are, yep your dog goes through resistance as well, right now some of our clients are going through hell with their dog as he resist and tantrums all over the place for so many things, he isn’t happy about the changes.
and it’s so wonderful watching my other clients rally around them like yep I’ve been their with mine you’ve got this that gives me the warm fuzzies.
because when changing some pretty serious behaviours, you know you’re digging in deep and making ground breaking change when it gets worse before it gets better. They are at the top, at the worst spot and they are about to come sliding down into a much easier life with their dog BUT they had to do that initial climb.
Dogs feel resistance too, they will manipulate the environment around them, they will avoid change if they can, quick fixes simply supress a particular behaviour but it never gets to the core, it never makes ground breaking change.
This is one of the elements that makes changing behaviours so dam difficult and why people will give up just before they gain a result from there work, because sometimes the work looks and feels like it’s not working.
Dogs don’t understand that they can’t choose whether to resist, or go after it when they resist, they don’t and wont ever have that level of self awareness, one of the biggest points that makes us so unique as humans.
And I get it, I feel the empathy for what dogs AND owners face around this because I come up against resistance almost daily with my work, to be the best that I can be it requires self-awareness, self-evaluation, growth, and change.
Because I want to give my clients what they deserve and you know what it goes down the line, my clients go through the work, no matter how hard and bumpy it can be at times because they want the same for their dogs.
THIS is what makes me so dam proud of them, its when they show up on the hardest days, on the days when other shit is falling apart and the do the work and the results are showing massively as we catch up and they randomly go shit, you know what my dogs doing xyz and I didn’t even realise that we were achieving that.
Like when it was noticed that the room they had avoided for months with the dog was now a nice relaxing place to be because he was no longer slamming into the windows something they hadn’t specifically trained for, because when you dig deep the results start trickling into other areas and some things start to simply heal themselves.
If you’re afraid of hard work, if you’re not into learning to understand your dog on a MUCH deeper level than we aren’t the trainers for you.
But I tell you what if you made it this far and your stomach getting that flippy feeling, and your torn between I want that and “oh, maybe I don’t need that help, surely I could just sort it out myself”
That’s resistance baby and you have two choices, follow resistance lead and dance away from the problem until you are backed in a corner and can’t resist any more which does makes going through change all the more harder.
OR realise you are stronger than resistance and you can persist with getting the help you need, you deserve and giving your dog the life you have dreamed of and you know with his big ol’heart he absolutely deserves.
“nothing thats worthwile is ever easy, remember that”