Patience and perseverance

I arrive home from a night out with friends only to discover yarn everywhere. By everywhere I mean he found my yarn bag and started running with a ball of it. Then he decided one ball was so much fun he should zoom with another one. As I remember he had unraveled four or five balls of yarn throughout the apartment. It was a tangled mess which had to be addressed before I could go to sleep.  I began collecting yarn in the entry way and I followed it around doorknobs, through the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and living room. I learned an important lesson that night.  If I am to work all day and then go out at night, Dutch must be crated or I should hide my yarn.

I loved Dutch like you would not believe. I loved watching him run and I adored his oddly shaped body. I loved that he was always next to me and I am grateful for his years of loyalty. I often forget in the beginning he was a lot of work.  The yarn was one of many things he did to irritate me.  As a fully house broken puppy, he would pee in front of the TV just to get our attention. Eventually he grew out of this but it was seriously annoying at the time.

In those first three or four years I considered giving up on him at least 1,456 times.  Now looking back I am so glad I did not. Our relationship improved over time.  When I started my journey with Dutch, I knew how to train him to sit, come and stay. I knew that I should walk him every day but that is all I knew. I understood a little bit about conditioned responses but I really only did what the experts told me I should do.

Recently I began to understand through training, walking and conditioning I was building trust. I was telling him that I would take care of him and that I was worthy of his loyalty.  One of my favorite parenting coaches, Dr. Tim Clinton, says “Rules without relationships lead to rebellion”.  This is as true of our dogs as it is our children.  With both our children and our dogs we develop these relationships through quality time, engaging them fully and interacting with them in a consistent manner.  

According to Petfinder.com, the average age of dogs relinquished to the shelter is between 5 months and 3 years.  Most have not been trained.  When we think of the physical development of a dog this is their pre-adolescent, teenage and young adult years.  During this time they are going to push the boundaries and challenge authority much like our children do.

We must reinforce the boundaries, make sure they have plenty of developmental appropriate activities and help our dogs get through the awkward phases. Just as we do with our children.  Our relationship with our dogs is dynamic.  It is ever changing and trust builds over time.   Our commitment to them will pay out a million times over as long as we do not give up on them in those transitional years.  When we commit to developing trust and treating them with kindness they will become our loyal unfailing companions for all of their days.  Sadly when we give up on them their days often end much sooner than they should.

Looking back Dutch was not the perfect dog. He did not start out as the poster puppy for a loyal companion.  To be honest I did not even like him very much during those early years. Every walk and every training session, and every gentle correction was part of the journey. At the end of that journey I would come to cherish the memory of the yarn maze through the apartment. At the end of the journey, I would thank him a million times for his companionship.  Now that his journey has ended, I am glad I did not give up on him because if I had I would never have known the rewards that patience and perseverance can bring.