Hey pet people, your dog doesn’t have to be perfect

Being interested in and enthusiastic about dog training does not mean your dog has to be perfect.

I love training Scout. The whole world knows it. I have an entire social media profile and blog devoted to reflecting on life with her! Some would say it’s overkill… I like to call it passion 😉

But an unwelcome side effect of this (very worthwhile) investment is that I often put way too much pressure on ourselves both as individuals and as a team.

Am I a fraud? (Spoiler: No.)

If she “misbehaves”, I worry that people will think I’m a fraud. Here I am, professing to care about training my dog… and there she is doing something “bad”.

It can be quite the rabbit hole of not-so-great feelings.

Just the other day on a conference call, a dog started barking in the background. No big deal — so many of us are dealing with working from home now for the first time!

But someone asked “is that Haley’s dog?” and I couldn’t help but bristle. Scout was lying calmly on the floor (like we’ve trained for), and I was proud of her behavior. I hated the idea that someone assumed she would disrupt our meeting.

But it really didn’t matter:

• For one thing, chances are this person thought of Scout first because I tend to be pretty vocal about my dog ownership. Anyone who has known me for more than 10 minutes knows I have a dog.
• Second, even if Scout had been the one barking — which she has in the past — that doesn’t change the fact that I know she’s a great dog. (And that occasional vocalizations are a totally normal thing.)

The world doesn’t end during one tiny slip up

The underlying current of my life has been a journey of growing through external expectations and developing security in who I am and what I believe — independent of approval from other people.

I am a novice owner who is interested in learning. I love my dog, and I want to train to make our lives easier and more fun. I don’t want “reactive” to be a label that follows her around for the next decade.

But that doesn’t mean I’m perfect… or even close to right half the time.

I want to walk the walk. I also want to give myself, my dog, and our messy imperfect wonderful progress the grace it deserves.

So show me your dog. But also… Show me that we can care a lot and still not be totally polished. Show me that we can all have different end goals.

We are works in progress, always. Here’s to reminding ourselves to value the effort and the intent along with the “end result”.