Utah Animal Adoption Center

Self Care and Dog Training (Jan 15th)

Huh?  What does self care have to do with dog training?  Everything.  Imagine if never did anything for yourself.  You just got up and took care of your dog.  You never ate, never showered, never went out with friends, etc.  In this extreme of what I wrote you would no long live. You would die.  Many of us do just enough to survive.  When we do just enough to survive we actually die inside.  Frustration, anger and sadness builds as our body is not loved and taken care of.  If we don’t take care of ourselves how can we expect ourselves to be grounded and centered when training our dogs?  How can we even expect to make time to train our dogs if we don’t even love ourselves?

Everyone has a learning curve on self care and love. My toss for you this week is for you to ask the question “How can I love myself more?”  As you do this notice how your relationship with your dog changes.

Here are some suggestions:

Eat healthy (eat more greens and fruits and less meat)

Exercise (go to the gym or better yet let your dog be your gym… meaning go running with your dog, bike ride with your dog, ski with your dog, etc.)

Keep your house clean.  The energy in your house effects your energy which effects how much energy you have to train your dog

Set aside time for just you.  I like to meditate, journal, and sometimes even walk without my dog.

You get the idea. Pick an area and work to create a fun transition with it!

One thing I realized I wanted to do for self-care was exercise more.  I hate going to the gym.  I find running invigorating and fun.  As a result I have started to run and the best part is as I am exercising I can excercise my dog at the same time.  I can also cover much distance faster than when I am walking which allows me to have more time to do other things in my life as well

Our body needs to be full of love before we can give away love

Hope you put much love into your dog training this week!