Reactions..

Have you ever reacted to a situation that you later regretted and knew you could have handled better?

The other day I was taking a nap on the couch, all snuggled with the fur-babies, when all of a sudden barking rang throughout the house and the two pups were at the door going a little crazy.. unfortunately in my sleepy haze my reaction was to start yelling and carrying on. As you can guess this only served to make things worse.. with me yelling Occa got more agitated and started barking and howling even more, and Belle well she just ran around the house a little confused and terrified.

Turns out there was a dog in the front yard. Totally reasonable for the dogs to alert me to this fact. There was someone on their land - how dare they?!

I meanwhile sat there kicking myself for escalating the situation past boiling point and setting the dogs excitement off the radar...

Later that very day, a delivery truck arrived. I thought right, this is my chance to get it right for the day. So true to form the dogs alerted me to the fact someone was at the door - I said "okay, let me check." Upon seeing who was there I told the dogs that all was fine and to "settle", then whilst I opened the door I asked them to "wait". Perfect behaviour was exhibited! They both instantly stopped their reactions once I showed that I was going to investigate the situation, and upon asking them to settle they chilled out and were calm enough to follow my other instructions.

It showed me that if I can just remember all the hard work and training we have put into the dogs over the past four years and trust them, then everything operates like a well oiled machine. They have their place (alert) and I have mine (investigate). Once we operate together and understand each other everyone is happy.

Have you ever had a situation where you've forgotten your training methods and lost control of the situation?

Forever love your dog,
Emma