Growing Your Capacity

I think one thing that really sets a great dog trainer apart from the rest is the ability to search for failures and weakness and really understand and learn from them.  I have always viewed failures in dog training as a positive, I believe theres so much power in knowing what you don’t know or what your dog doesn’t know, this is the only way you can learn to turn that weakness into a strength.  When I train my dogs I always make notes in my phone of any exercise they struggle with and then I will try to make a plan to build that understanding and growing their confidence.  For my really experienced dogs I am always excited to discover failure since it gives me the power to really strengthen their understanding and their abilities. 
This is very different than setting your dog up for failure, I want my dogs to be confident and trust me and really feel like a “team” so I am always reminding myself to respect their capacity.  Their capacity is merely a reflection of the tools I have given them and it’s my responsibility to continually grow that capacity.  Whether its their ability to stay in a healthy regulated state, their ability to understand cues and criteria, their ability to be physically strong and sound to do the tasks that I ask of them, even their ability to be focussed and in the right state of mind.  Respecting capacity means not asking more than your dog is capable of giving, working to grow that capacity with many layers of understanding, reinforcement and positive experience. Every dog comes with its own set of strengths and weakness and it really is our job as a trainer to set them up for success and be able to look at failures in training from a non critical lens but rather a place of curiosity and learning.  “How can I help my dog understand this better?” Or “How can I make this easier for my dog to cope in this environment?” Or even “What am I doing to create this issue?”.  Your dog is doing the best they can with the tools you have given them.
This way of thinking has really helped me to come up with new and better ways of training to make the learning faster and easier for the dog (and the people!).  It’s the driving force and my motivation to be a better dog trainer and teacher.  Failure is information and it is power if we utilize it well.
A realization I have come to in the past year is that although this has been my mentality around dog training for a very long time somehow I have not always applied this to so many other areas of my life.  I hate failing, I hate letting people down, I hate looking at the things I struggle with as a human, all I want is to be competent and when Im not I have a lot of negative emotions around it. 
The last year has been a very hard one for me. filled with a lot of failure; a failed marriage, failed friendships, feeling like a failure as a mother and even failing to show up as a teacher at times.   I think that everyone on this earth will go through some tough times, they will suffer and they will fail and it’s very easy to go down a dark road of shame and despair.  The most important thing I have come to realize is that – it is our biggest failures that lead us on the most important journeys. Just as with dog training, knowing what you don’t know and respecting your own capacity is so valuable.  We are all doing the best we can with the tools we were given, the tools our parents gave us, our peers and our teachers.  Realizing how valuable it is to learn and to grow your own capacity to become closer and closer to the best version of yourself has really been worth all the struggle.  It has led me down a road of self awareness and discovery, healing and forgiveness.
I wish this world placed more value on mental health, on connection, on love and understanding, teaching people how to have peace and love even with differing opinions.
In the past year I have had a handful of loved ones and influences in my life that helped me to move forward and grow, to inspire me in the darker days and my hope is to pay that forward with this blog.  Inspiration, motivaltion and learning around all things dog training, teaching and life.
I will never forget the dogs who I have failed and the people I have let down, those are my constant reminder to be better, to do better and to continue to grow my capacity as a trainer, a teacher, a partner and a human being. 
SO lets start to look at failure in a different light, be able to look at our dogs, ourselves, our relationships from a place of learning and understanding and instead of our failures creating shame, lets let them open new doors to growth, love and learning.  Understanding over judgment, curiosity over criticism, connection over compliance.  If you are struggling just know that your not alone and that your failures, if you look at them from just the right angle, they can be the catalyst to change, to growth, to learning, to peace and understanding.  

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know
nothing about.” – Wendy Mass