Behavior Change and Your Success
Back in the day when I started running marathons at the tender age of 44, I sustained a few injuries, the likes of which I had never had. But that makes sense since I spent the first part of my life as a couch potato, so no injuries unless you count the time I got my foot stuck in the Lazy Boy recliner.
Fortunately, my brother introduced me to the G.O.A.T. among rehab specialists. He was a former body builder, coach of an olympic volleyball team, author and advisor to many NFL players in the 1980s, much to the chagrin of the NFL trainers, which probably explains why he was forbidden to interact with their players, a story for another time.
As always, if you’ve read this far, you know I’m going to relate this to dog training, and so I will digress…
Gordy was a character, for sure and he knew his stuff which ran counter to some of the popular advice at the time. Never afraid to try new remedies, he took a holistic approach and based on my experience he was ahead of his time.
He had a saying, “Change your emotions and the behavior will follow”. And while it sounds like a big “Duh”, you’d be surprised how many people try to focus on just changing behavior, when it’s the emotions that rule actions!
Think of how many times you wanted to change something in your life, but soon found yourself stymied. I can think of (way too) many things I pursued with a lot of gusto up until the time I had some big “emotional crisis” or so it felt that way.
For example, I took on a project of going through all my thousands of photos that I’ve kept in boxes under my bed for over 20 years. At first it was easy as I puled out the boxes, placed them on my bed. But then instead of arranging the photos by years, I started looking through the photos, then texting my sister and sending her photo copies as we reminisced about the good old days. Before I knew it, hours had passed, but worse was that instead of following through I became anxious realizing that this project was huge, that I had no idea what to do with all the duplicates or how to store these precious memories. Should I scan them to my computer, save them in hundreds of photo albums, transfer to a DVD disc, a thumb drive or should I pull out my crystal ball to see what technology would stand the test of time? I had no clue, because all I knew about technology was that mine was obsolete; as proof, my wedding video from 1985 was on a VHS tape and there’s no current technology to view it!!!
Fortunately, I learned a better way of starting this project by enlisting the help of family members to go through the photos and finding ways to preserve them in a way that the memories could be viewed in chronological order; best of all with their help I achieved a meaningful goal which has priceless benefits for my family and generations to come.
While my profession as a dog-behavior coach, was helped tremendously by education, experience and diligent work, it is also aided by my personal successes which I try to pass onto my clients. You see they also set out with goals which can feel as difficult as though they are training their dogs for the olympics. And I know that if we do not break down their goals to small manageable steps, somewhere about halfway through the coaching, they’ll begin to feel defeated and then the poor dog will find himself dumped at a shelter, or worse at a board and train with a shock collar around his neck.
My advice for anyone thinking about training the newly adopted puppy or adult dog, is to set some reasonable goals, talk to an educated professional who will not hurt your dog or teach you how to, and then ask them how they can help you throughout the process without having you feel unnerved.
If they focus on just training the dog, my advice is to find someone who focuses on your emotional change because that is the very thing that will keep you optimistically on track, pursuing your goals and feeling successful.
HAPPY TRAINING & ENRICHMENT
© Fran Berry CPDT-KA, UW-AAB all rights reserved 2025
