Begin with the end in mind
None of the skills in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey are radical in any way, but they are all combined together in one flow that form a helpful progression for self leadership and empowerment.
This quote stood out to me: “Begin with the end in mind.”
This is one of the biggest missing pieces I see in people’s relationships with their pets. So often they have training goals, relationship goals, or simply things they want to have happen differently. But they get stuck. And then they are caught in a loop of behavior that doesn’t feel good to them, or to their pets.
The incessant barking
The pulling on the leash
Scratching the furniture
Running away instead of being willing to be caught (or coming to you)
When we do not have a clear ‘end’ in mind one of two things will happen:
Either there will be nothing for our pet to go on, and so they’ll just keep guessing (or doing what feels the best to them, which is usually not aligned with our goals!)
Or, worse, we’ll have the opposite of what we actually want them to do in our heads - and that’s what they’ll pick up on.
If you do not consciously and actively choose to have a vision of the end goal that you are asking for in your mind when you make a request of your pet, then your pet will have a much harder time meeting that goal.
They want to do what we ask of them, but when the communication isn’t clear, it’s so much harder for everyone to be on the same page. They rely heavily on the unspoken communication - your energy and the thoughts/images in your mind, and then combine that with the verbal cues to discern what you are asking for.
The words themselves do not mean anything - they only mean what our pet has been able to piece together. So the word “come” could just as easily mean ‘run to me’ as it does ‘run away’ if the energy and end goal are not aligned with the actual written definition of what we know of as the word come.
A client I was working with was struggling because her dog would bolt out the front door and run so far that they would have to get in the car to go find her. They lived in a busy area and she was terrified the dog would get hit by accident if she got loose. Her children were not always good at securing the door, and so there was a lot of upset whenever the dog got out.
We talked about the steps that would happen when the dog would get lose, and all the emotions that it would bring up. The fear, the upset from her kids, the worry of the dog getting hit. It’s no wonder the dog wouldn’t come when called. Would you want to run back into that turbulent environment? Or would you just prefer to keep running in the sheer joy of freedom?
We then talked about a time when the dog did come back to her. How the dog would come running up to her in the back yard and flop down for belly rubs, and how much fun it was to love on her when she did that.
Then we made a plan - the next time the dog got loose, instead of reacting with panic and fear, she would pause for a moment and take a breath, then find that feeling that she felt when the dog would come running up to her in the back yard, and flop down. Before she called the dog to return to her, she would have that picture, and that feeling in her mind - the end result that she wanted most. Then she would call for the dog to come back.
A few days after our session, I got an excited message - it had happened again. The dog got loose. But this time she did exactly as we planned: She took a breath, brought up the picture of the dog running up to her and flopping on the ground happy and tail wagging. She held that energy, and that joy, and then called the dog. And wouldn’t you know the dog came running right back to her and flopped right on the ground for belly rubs.
They want to do what we are asking them to do. But when our thoughts are confusing and muddled, our pets struggle to respond. Before asking anything of our pets if we can have a clear picture of what we desire as the outcome it will make getting that result a lot easier.
