TRUST

Trust - reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person; confidence.  

Does your dog trust you?  Is there a trust that is unbreakable within your relationship?  Trust is huge, in fact it is everything.  

Trust takes work and it can take a long time to truly trust, depending on the dog and of course the human.  Are you trustworthy?  Does your dog easily trust?  Many dogs do not naturally trust, they are suspicious by nature and to win their trust can be a great deal of work.  But it is well worth it because once your dog trusts you, the two of you move onto a higher connection.

Luke was a worry wart type of guy so it definitely took work to get to a point where he trusted everything that I did.  He never questioned what had to be done, although he occasionally had to check in to make sure that we were still good.  If I accidentally pulled his hair or bump into him he worried that perhaps we weren't good.  He'd reach his face up with a need to touch mine; once we connected physically he would stare into my eyes, just to be sure.   

If he got hurt while playing or messing around somewhere he'd immediately come to me to show me what happened.  Once I gave him some "you'll be okay" reassurance, off he went on his merry way.  He was quite the guy.  Earning his trust was not easy so when I did, it was something that was never broken.  Even when I had to do things that he didn't enjoy, he trusted me.  

Trust is everything.  I tried to explain the trust factor to someone the other day.  They were explaining to me how they attempted to house train their dog.  They would yell and scream when they found pee or poop on the floor.  What does trust have to do with this?  Everything.  Dogs don't associate pee or poop in the house with something wrong.  So when you start to yell and get mad you are actually breaking trust which means ruining the bond that you have been trying to build.  A trust filled bond is amazing.  

When I had to give Luke his Vitamin needle, I knew it might hurt, but he trusted me.  I did my best not to hurt him and he never even winced.  He did trust me fully.  

Building trust means never lying to your dog.  It means always meaning what you say and never doing things out of anger.  This is one reason that positive reinforcement training is so very important.  The old yank and choke'm training is done through much anger, it is alpha ruler driven.  

Dogs deserve our best and trust is #1.

Really Listening

Are you a good listener?  I try very hard to be a good listener and am constantly working on it. Many articles are written on listening, yet so many people really don't listen.  There are lots of reasons why people don't listen:

• Non interest
• They would rather talk
• Distracted
• Don't want to listen

I started this blog today in one direction but it changed mid-way; that happens a lot when I am writing as my thought process is redirected.  So this is going to be a two part listening blog with this being Part #1.

I read a great article on listening in Psychology Today and pulled a section from it which is below.  

 Just because something has always been done in a certain way in the past doesn't mean there isn't an equally good or better way to do it.

Again, this change of attitude is not an easy feat to accomplish. Change is hard. There's a reason the saying, "Why fix something that isn't broken?" is so popular. In addition, doing something different adds an unknown risk to a venture.Yet, there also is risk to closing your mind to new ideas. If you always take the position that you know what's best, you will miss opportunities to discover something better. 

Taken from Psychology Today article, The Art and Value of Good Listening, Sherrie Bourg Carter, Psy.D.,

After reading this section of the article, my direction changed for the blog.  This made me sit back and think about all things that people have done for years and years that are now done without thought.  Let's take training techniques as an example.  Many trainers (myself included) are called crossover trainers.  Trainers who started out using one type of training and after learning about another better way, they crossed over, never to return to the old ways.  This is all about listening.

I started training in the old conventional methods that were the only way available when I was 13 years of age.  Then in my twenties I discovered the positive reinforcement method and never looked back.  But there are trainers who will never evolve, grow or change.  Listening is not what they do.  They are stuck in their knowledge base, considering their way is the only and best way.  Sad.

I am not saying that people all have to agree, far from it.  I strongly believe in people standing up for what they believe in.  Integrity.  But never listening, really listening and looking at facts, pondering on information given and not being afraid to change or evolve, that is really listening.    

We could also use docking tails or cropping ears as well.  It has long been done and breeders continue to do it for no reason.  They do not want to listen to the new and better way; like the trainer stuck in his old outdated training methods the breeder will not evolve to what is better for our dogs.  And yes of course not chopping off body parts is better for our dogs and that is a fact.

Listening is far more than hearing words spoken to you.  Listening is about hearing and then pondering.  Once you have considered what you have heard, you can then chuck it or store it in the evolution file.  I hear a great deal of information that I consider and then chuck.  But I also hear a lot of great and important material that is stored in my evolution file. 

Funny how this blog started in one very certain direction but upon reading and listening to what the article said, it changed.  Next blog will be the original blog that I started to write this morning.  Stay tuned.  ;)

“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.”

I love this quote by Dalai Lama.