Animals|Life Lessons|Relationships
Change Your Mind, Change Your Relationship With Your Animals
Does your mindset block progress in training your dog or horse…or improving any other significant relationship in your life?
Animal training is a relationship I love to research, practice, and write about. There’s so much opportunity for learning on both sides of the animal-human equation. Win-win.
But training can also be frustrating. From both sides of the equation.
One of the best bits of training advice I ever got came from a horse trainer who started out in the make ’em or break ’em, 1950’s era of horse training.
He didn’t like how the dominate’em school of horse training worked out from the horse’s perspective. So he searched out a mentor using subtler methods and found a better way to create a satisfying relationship with a horse. He made a 180-degree turn in how he approached training.
The trainer told me, “The only things that get us in trouble with horses are the things we believe or don’t believe.”
Scratching your head a bit? Wait. Let the idea sink in a little bit. Flip it around.
Another way of saying this is that if you can’t change your mind when things aren’t working, you can’t change the situation. You’re stuck where you are. And this applies as much to training horses as it does to training dogs or elephants or whatever.
According to Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.”
Got it now? When whatever training methodology you’ve followed isn’t working for the current animal in your life, search for a new perspective. Try something different. Think about it looks, feels, sounds, or whatever from the animal’s side of the interaction.
When you train an animal to behave a certain way or perform a particular action, you do that from a mindset about how humans relate to animals that’s developed over your lifetime.
Maybe your mom is really great with dogs. And you’re just following in her footsteps because you’ve seen it work.
Maybe a friend raves about the results they’re getting using a particular training technique with their horse they just picked up at a clinic.
Maybe you’ve had multiple dogs in your home over multiple decades and feel pretty confident that you’ll do fine training the next one.
Maybe you’ve even professionally trained dogs or ridden horses for years.
Then along comes the critter that challenges absolutely everything you thought you knew. Things just ain’t working. This animal isn’t getting with your program. What do you do?
Do you just keep repeating whatever you’ve done before, pushing through, drilling the animal and hoping they finally “get it”?
Do you label the animal stupid, perverse, stubborn, dull, lazy, crazy — or something else that takes you off the hook for not knowing how to find the communication channel to reach this particular animal?
Can you see how that attitude can block training success?
When what you believe should work isn’t working, examine your beliefs around the situation. Can you change your mind, change your approach, change some part of your side of the equation? What’s different from the dog’s perspective? Why is that horse responding differently to what’s worked over and over before?
Can you figure out what the animal believes?
Can you believe:
It’s OK to make training mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up. Convert the mistake into an opportunity to learn something new. You win. The animal wins, too.
It’s OK to ask for help. There’s no shame in not knowing what to try next. Be humble. Even professional trainers consult with other pros when they come up against a complex training problem. Everyone learns. Everyone wins.
It’s OK to change your mind about a training system you’ve believed to be gospel. And changing your mind doesn’t make everything else you’ve done before wrong. That challenging animal may just be helping you learn there’s another approach out there. And maybe the approach you find for that problem trainee will work better for other dogs or horses you meet in life, too. Another win-win.
Sometimes we run into training trouble because we don’t understand how animals perceive situations differently than humans. This article by horse trainer Ron Meredith explains how changing your mind about how horses think can open new communication channels.
It’s about horses but the concept works for dogs and other animals, too.
If you demand perfection of yourself or your animals when training, another article might help you change your mind and take some pressure off both of you.
© Bonnie Kreitler 2021. All rights reserved.
Writer Bonnie Kreitler creates content to help fellow animal addicts build rewarding relationships with the critters in their lives. See more at www.ramblingdog.com
