How do you start your day?  Do you take a moment to plan, to center yourself?  Or do you just dive in to the chaos of your to-do list and your daily musts?  Perhaps you think that the “planning” option sounds nice on paper (and would look nice on paper) – but you just never seem to get around to that crucial step of creating a vision for your day before you get carried away in the current.  Well there’s an easy way to get centered any morning, and it has benefits to your physical well-being as well as your mental clarity.  Take a walk with your dog.

There are a few items that you’re going to need:

1. Your dog.
2. Yourself.
3. A food pouch or a Tug Toy (depending on whether your dog is motivated more by pushing or by tug).
4. A small notebook and a pen.

Dress appropriately for the weather, so you’ll be comfortable walking at a reasonably brisk pace.  Also, give some thought to your route – particularly, can you think of some places that are more “natural”?  A walk that leads you past trees, streams, something green is preferable to one that’s pure concrete, asphalt, and traffic.  Leash up your dog, and head out.

You’re on a walk with your dog

You might want to review this article on how to walk WITH your dog.  Being with your dog helps you stay in the moment, but it shouldn’t keep you from enjoying the scenery, the air, the smells, the weather.  When your dog takes a break to sniff, let that be a break for you as well, an opportunity to simply look at what’s around you.  What do you notice about the things you sense?  How old is that tree?  What’s the view like from that person’s window?  How many dogs have peed on that rock?  You get the idea.  Ask yourself questions as a way to provoke your curiosity about your surroundings.

In between sniffs, pick up the pace.  Usually moving faster will help guide your dog to your side.  Vary your speed, from powerwalk to jog to meander – with an occasional sprint thrown in for good measure (look out for ice though!).  Your goal should be to get your heart rate up, as the pumping of oxygenated blood throughout your body will add to the clarity that you experience.  At the same time, you can use the varied pace as a way to keep your dog engaged with you – until it’s time to sniff again.  Let your heart rate slow down as your dog sniffs, and go back to observing your surroundings.

You have the food pouch (or tug toy) as a way of redirecting your dog’s energy should you come across something really distracting.  But the purpose of this walk isn’t to practice redirecting your dog’s energy, so you should feel just as fine about avoiding encounters (crossing the street if you see another dog approaching, for example) as you do about the redirection practice.  Sure, this walk is good for your dog, and for your relationship with your dog – but it’s also good for YOU.

How about the notebook?

As you observe, and get oxygen, and move your body, and stay in the moment with your dog, a funny thing happens.  You start to think more clearly.  And the jumble of what might have been your day starts to take shape.  You’ll get new ideas about projects that you’re working on.  You’ll figure out how to prioritize items on your list.  You’ll get visions of the future, of what’s possible for you.

So use your notebook to write these things down!

Once you’ve captured an idea in your notebook, your mind will be free to move on to another problem.  The act of writing things down prevents you from looping – which is essentially thinking about the same thing (even if it IS a great idea) over and over again.  Let your notebook be a repository of your good ideas, your inspirations, your insights, your observations.  And then keep walking.

If you can take ten, twenty, or thirty minutes in the morning to walk outdoors with your dog in the manner described above, I guarantee that you will notice a difference in your productiveness, in the quality of your ideas, in the clarity of your thoughts.  And, best of all, you’ll notice a difference in the camaraderie that you experience with your dog.  My times with Nola have been responsible for some of the key insights of my adult life.  Not only will I always have the memory of the insight, I will also treasure the fact that she was there with me to commemorate the moment.

Down the hill, over the river, up the hill, and back again

Here in Yarmouth, Maine it’s a balmy 40 degrees (F), the sun is shining, and it’s the middle of February.  This morning I walked down the road from our house, past the 13-foot diameter stump of “Herbie” (who up until a few weeks ago was the oldest Elm Tree in New England), and down the hill towards where the Royal River meets the ocean.  I noticed for the first time a house perched right at the waters edge, with a foundation that had a huge arch in it – presumably where a small boat could row right up into the basement of the house (good for smuggling things in from the ocean, maybe?).  As I crested the hill on the other side of the river, I noticed a house, sun streaming in the windows, that must really enjoy its wintertime views of the harbor, especially on a sunny winter’s morning.  Then back again on a different street, a different hill, a different bridge – a little loop that brought me back to the place we now call home.

This morning’s walk also brought with it ideas for five different blog articles, two different workshop ideas, a renewed passion for my life’s mission, and some quality time with Nola, who found many a newly-uncovered (snow is a-melting) spot to sniff.  She’s getting older (13 this spring), so our sprints were shorter, our sniffs a little longer.  By the end we were both feeling the effects of a mile or so of getting the blood pumping – with her settling down to a morning’s snooze, and me sitting down to a day’s work.  With a surge of optimism for the days ahead.

Have something to add, or a question about this article?  Come over to the naturaldogblog forum to join the discussion.

One of our basic human needs is stability.  Sure we learn, and we grow – that’s happening all the time.  And it’s good to take some time to process new knowledge and skill, to feel like you really OWN the material.  But it can be all too easy to hang out in your comfort zone for too long.  When you’re training your dogs (or training yourself, for that matter), you have to honor another paradoxical need: Variety.

I’ve received several e-mails from those of you who are working with the DVD set (Natural Dog Training: The Fundamentals) that have reminded me of this issue.  The first DVD is a thorough treatment of how to do the pushing exercise, how to rechannel your dog’s energy with redirection, and how to use Tug-of-War and Fetchtug to reinforce your mooseness in your dog’s eyes – along with lots of information about the hows and whys.  I’ve been hearing stories of amazing changes in your relationship with your dog, just working on these exercises alone.  And I know that pretty much everywhere I say that the key to your success is to be gradual, be gradual.

What does it mean to be gradual in your approach to dog training?

When I talk about being gradual, what I really mean is that you shouldn’t try to do everything all at once.  That you should take your time, gaining familiarity with the techniques, owning them in your muscle memory, letting the work that you’re doing with your dog register with the way that you feel.  While the mechanics are certainly important, the new awareness of your dog’s interactions with the world and your interactions with your dog are the true nuggets of understanding that will carry you through all levels of the training.  So when I talk about being gradual, I’m talking about going easy on yourself and your dog, feeling free to take time with the material, and soaking it up into the fabric of your experience.

That being said, you should resist the temptation to give into your need for stability, which can trend towards perfectionism.  You don’t have to have everything “perfect” before you move onto the next technique.  Your dog doesn’t have to have the hardest push in the world before you start working on heeling, or sit/stay/down.  As you start to feel like you “get” what you’re doing on an intuitive level, even if you haven’t “mastered” it – that’s a sign that you should try something new.

I know, I know – I made TWO DVDs.  And one is called “The Basics” and the other one is called “Mastering Obedience”.  Surely you need to perfect every basic technique before you’re ready to master obedience, right?  Wrong!!!

Remember that “obedience” work is not separate from becoming the moose.  It is PART of becoming the moose.

When you use basic techniques to put your dog into the right emotional state, obedience behaviors flow naturally as long as you know how to elicit them.  That’s what the second DVD is all about (and the writing on this site about, for instance, box work – Sit, Down, Stay).  The DVDs also cover heeling, which so far I haven’t written about in any detail on this site.  Now that you know how to elicit your dog’s attraction, how to work WITH your dog’s emotional energy – in fact how to attract it, then you are ready to start working on the obedience techniques that I talk about here on this site and on DVD #2.

As you work through THOSE exercises they will also reinforce your mooseness, because your dog will be responding to you in a way that honors the deepest forces in their emotional makeup.  When you taught your dog to sit BEFORE they might have experienced it as an interruption of the flow, but this different way of teaching sit will actually increase your dog’s flow and attraction to you.  And since basic techniques like pushing and tug free up a lot of energy in your dog, by working on obedience you are actually reminding your dog of the best ways for them to channel their energized attraction to you.  In this context, being “obedient” actually helps resolve the energy within them.

Plus, variety really is the spice of life

In order to keep moving, to keep growing, and to keep your dog engaged in the process, you have to fill your need for variety as well.  As you learn more and more of the techniques, you will feel comfortable enough to  improvise during the time that you spend with your dog.  This improvisation will teach you how to switch fluidly, in the moment, from one technique to the next, until they just become “the way” that you interact with your dog.  At that point, you start to forget that there are “techniques” per se, and “obedience” – you just have a relationship, with all the natural give and take of any successful relationship.  You won’t get there tomorrow – and that’s what “being gradual” is all about.  But please, feel free to embark on that journey TODAY.

After all, the variety will keep things fun for both you and your dog.  And if it ain’t fun, what’s the point?  Actually, let me rephrase that.  If you can’t MAKE it fun, then what’s the point?

All my best to you and your dogs.

Zella Smiles At You