The Fork in the Road: Which Direction Will You Choose?

You’ve had dogs all your life.

One day, your dog is doing something you’re unsure about how to handle.

Fear creeps in.

You don’t know what to do, but you do feel uneasy about how life with your dog is now like a spinning top, wobbling around on its head.

You want answers.

You want things to go back to where the were before.

This is where your relationship journey with your dog begins.

You can choose to take the path led by fear itself.

Trapping yourself in the same limited beliefs of what you can’t do, how change isn’t possible and diminishing your own light of hope that shines within you.

Even choosing to listen to others who reflect back to you the negative labels that your dog is bad, troubled, stubborn or is otherwise broken in some way.

Only leading you to take action which is detrimental to your relationship with your dog.

Or, you can make a different choice.

You can choose to go down the path of actively acknowledging the fear of the unknown, face the limiting beliefs straight on and reclaim your own power in how you move forward.

You can light your way, by choosing how you want your relationship with your dog to be, how you and your dog are treated and what you envision for the future.

The fear never goes away, especially when you embark on a new path that you’ve never experienced before.

You don’t have the neural pathways of what this experience will look like.

That’s ok.

When you listen to your inner knowing of what is truly loving, kind, humane and safe for you and your dog, you will be guided to take action with this in mind.

You’ll be guided in the direction you know in your heart where you wan to travel.

One pet parent shared with me the other day is when she experienced her dog pulling and lunging on the leash and almost taking her down, she quickly knew she had a choice to make.

The hope illuminated her situation could be different, led her into not rehoming or returning her dog to the rescue.

She was then led on a path of seeking solutions of how to teach her dog to walk on a leash.

She even took the opportunity to observe how other professionals worked.

What she learned is the methods used by other industry leaders were confusing to the dog, the tools suggested she use she considered torture devices and refused to incorporate them into her practice.

Her desire in having a loving bond with her dog led her into making a choice for gentle and kind approaches.

Now, she’s creating a new routine and motivated to take action in teaching and guiding her dog.

Showing up and taking action, she’s creating a new habit and new understanding of how to handle the situations when her dog sees another dog while out on a walk.

Her confidence is soaring. When bumps along the way happen, she now sees this as an opportunity to learn, ask questions and try again.

The tears turn to smiles and she chooses to see each day as an adventure and the journey of learning and understanding what her dog needs guides her along the way.

Create ease and discover how to lessen the burden of what your dog is doing by finding the joy and fun in your relationship.

Click on the link to schedule a time to chat if you’re willing to get started!

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Experience Your Relationships Transform

Me and my sweet Bobbins (Jack)

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines a relationship as “the way in which two or more concepts, objects or people are connected or the state of being connected.”

You can be in a relationship with your landlord.

You are in relationship with family and friends.

You have work relationships.

Being in a state of connection is not solely between you and your partner or close family.

You even have a relationship with your companion dog.

Relationships are transcendent.

When we are open to giving and receiving kindness and care in any relationship, we deepen our compassion for ourselves and extend the same to others when there are highs and lows we experience together.

One pet parent I spoke with last week, had an “A Ha!” moment when she spoke knowingly about her relationship with her dog. She never thought to describe it in that way before.

The awareness that sparked this new understanding is that she has an undeniable connection with her dog, understands his needs and extends grace to herself and her dog when things don’t go well.

What she learned through her relationship with her dog, she also realized that she extends grace to her dog easily and freely and didn’t necessarily do the same with her family.

Now, with this new awareness, she can take action in deepening her connection with her family members too.

Through another coaching conversation with a business woman, I guided her into feeling more empowered in setting healthy boundaries within her partnerships at work.

Relationships are transformative.

I am a relationship coach and I guide people into deepening their awareness in how they can give and receive in the relationships they have in their lives.

I just happen to specialize in the human and dog relationship.

Dog training and behavior consulting is just a component of what I do and what I can utilize in teaching.

My offerings are designed in guiding people who are overwhelmed and frustrated within their relationships at work, with family and significant others and even their dogs and support them in taking action so they can create ease, freedom and a sense of connection within their relationships.

Flip the Script on Guilt

One of the greatest pieces of knowledge I learned from the Body Mind Method which I share with the pet parents I work with on a daily basis is that how you feel impacts how you think and how you think impacts how you feel and how you feel impacts how you think.

As you can see, this pattern goes on and on and on!

Understanding how our body mind connection works, is transformative in how pet parents show up and care for their dogs.

Often, pet parents are striving to be the leader or even the utmost responsible in caring for their dogs.

For one of the pet parents I serve, this feeling of responsibility leads her to doing all the things, training all the time, playing every minute, essentially putting all her focus on her dog.

What this leads her to express how she feels when this pattern shows up. She expressed feeling trapped by her dog, depleted of energy into doing what she also needs to take care of herself.

Then when she has zero energy to keep doing all the things, she then moves into blaming her dog for not meeting her expectations and even blaming herself for not doing more or knowing what else to do.

Blaming herself and her dog leads her into a disconnect of how she can empathize with herself and her dog when a lull in learning shows up and instead made her feel guilty.

Empathy is a crucial component in any relationship. It allows the space to objectively see the the situation and be creative in coming up with solutions and listening to yourself in what feels like the right choice.

Reframing the tough moments leading her to feel guilty and instead asking herself if the blame is true or if there are other possibilities allows her to open up what else could be going on.

Also recognizing the pattern of when answers aren’t quite clear, when the new situation is out of the ordinary and how this can cause some internal chaos of how to handle the situation can cause us to spiral is where your growth can happen.

When you uncover your patterns and beliefs, you can begin to shift into a different way to respond, because you feel differently about the situation.

When this pet parent learned and made the choice to change her pattern cycle, she’s given herself permission to take a break and make the choice of how she wants to feel taking the next action with her dog.

By taking a step back, she is giving herself space to check in with herself about how she wants to feel and she can then take action based on her choosing.

This allowed her to recognize her dog was uncomfortable being at the groomer because she too felt uncomfortable with the situation. She made the choice to not move forward with that appointment and she and her dog left.

She now clearly sees what her and her dog need to work on for her dog to be set up for success with other pet professionals.

Dog training is learning about how to teach a dog life skills, professional coaching helps you learn how to change your own pattern cycles and beliefs.

Together, these can transform your relationship with your dog.

Are you curious how this approach can empower you too? Set up a Discovery Call with me!

Let’s Chat!