Is there any stress in your life? Ha! Who doesn’t have any? Besides the work, family, relationship, health, and money stresses you may have, there is also the matter of what’s on the news. Don’t worry, I won’t get going on that… this is a blog about dogs and dog training!

But I have been thinking lately about how all these stresses can affect the quality of our relationships with our dogs.  Many people don’t have time – or emotional energy — to contemplate a dog behavior problem, figure out what to do, and to take the kind of repeated action that may be needed before the dog will reliably adopt a new behavior.

So what to do?

Back when we got our dogs, we were thinking about the fun we would have with them, the love we would exchange with them, and the pleasure of having them in our families. When an adult dog poops repeatedly in the house, when any dog pulls on the leash like a maniac,  when [fill in your own challenges here], well then… our stress levels rise. We weren’t hoping for this.

Here are three ideas to help lower your stress, and maybe not just around dog issues:

1. Management: People talk a lot about dog training but not nearly as much about managing dog issues. For example, the post I wrote recently about using a Gentle Leader to walk our Rottweiler describes a management strategy. Confining dogs who aren’t fully house trained is another management strategy. It’s easy to get into a mindset that management is inferior to training, but hey, given everything else going on in our lives, I think management is really valuable and I’m going to think about it more in future articles on dog training.

2. Training: Seek methods that work for you, that are fun for you and the dog, and that are relatively simple to work into your life. Put dog training sessions on the calendar if that helps you.  (I do sometimes.) Don’t expect yourself to do everything in the next week.

3. Appreciation: Appreciate all the ways your dog does enhance your life. Tell him or her out loud, give hugs and kisses, whatever. Appreciation gets me through a lot of rough spots; for years, my husband and I have had the habit, late in the evening, of asking each other what we appreciate about the day, or what was best for us. Believe me, there are days when it’s hard to find anything. There was a day recently when the very best was when my Rottie Lola came up to me at my computer, put her head in my lap, shoved my arm causing me to let go of the mouse, and gazed soulfully into my eyes.

Speaking of appreciation, I appreciate the various bits of positive feedback I get from readers:

  • Recently,  a woman from a shelter in Virginia asked permission to print out my page on choosing a dog from a shelter, to use with her shelter volunteers.
  • A couple of people who get my weekly newsletter sent me nice thank-you notes.
  • There’s been quite a lot of action lately on my blog page about housetraining adult dogs who already have bad habits, with people describing their difficulties and asking for advice. Some of these I do worry about, as not being housebroken can mean a one-way trip out the door in many cases. So I was really happy yesterday when someone came back and posted about the success she had had!

Blogging can be a bit lonely, since you don’t know who you’re talking to, and these comments sure help my stress levels!

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