Now, if any of you have seen any of my previous facebook posts, you know how I feel about keeping your energy in check around your dog. Raising your voice may temporarily disrupt the behavior, and may even stop it, but in the long run, it doesn't really do any good.
That being said: We're all Human.
I talk with a lot of Humans. Patient Humans, Lazy Humans, Humans that seem to live at level 11 all the time, Humans who don't seem to be aware of anything, Humans who are hyper-aware of the wrong things, Humans who fix on One Little Thing, Humans who want it "NOW," Humans who have thrown up their hands, ...and Humans who can only be "big-picture" instead of in the moment...But they're all human.
We are all Human.
Humans react. We yell. We jump. We twitch. We accidentally place ourselves in postures that exacerbate tense stances between our dogs. We see a huge dog coming at us, and we stop breathing. We 'open' our faces when we see that cute puppy. We are tall, so we bend over these creatures to pet them on their least favorite places. We don't respect their body space, and then we are surprised when they don't respect ours. In short, we screw it all up.
But we can learn.
The beautiful thing about a dog, is that he is the most forgiving thing I know. You can mess it up 99 times, and that's o.k. The dog will remember the one time you got it right (he won't forget the 'wrong' but he'll forgive you for it). You may have to spend some frustrating hours teaching him the new way that is right, but forgive yourself for the other 99. Being kind to ourselves, and realizing that we are so very, terribly Human sometimes, can be the missing "thing" in how our dogs respond to us.
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