Quality vs Quantity
When you spend as many hours as I do working the horses on the long lines, it leaves you with a lot of time to think.
There are 168 hours in a week.
If you train with your pet for only one hour per week, that leaves 167 other hours that they are doing whatever it is that they do.
Playing
Sleeping
Running
Romping
Being Curious
And generally being a pet which does not involve automatically conforming to the human world.
If you are only going to spend one hour per week working with your pet, that one hour had better be of the highest quality possible to make up for the other 167 hours.
So there’s a choice to make:
Spend more time, possibly lower quality, working with your pet.
OR
Spend less time, but higher quality working with your pet.
If you’re anything like me, time seems to be of short supply (that’s another topic for a different day), and therefore quality is going to have to be the primary focus.
How focused can you be when you are working with your pet? How can you find small ways to bring more quality to the interactions that you have together to maximize the limited amount of time that you do have?
My main focus with the horses is to ensure that the movement that they get when they are working with me is of such high quality that it supports their bodies for the other 167 hours of the week, until we can work again. Even the minutes that I spend feeding and caring for them have a focus of being quality time together so that future interactions are positive, and supportive.
This is simple, but in order to be successful, it requires awareness. And having awareness requires practice.
It takes time to do a little research to ensure that you are finding the most efficient and effective methods of training that are the most useful to your pet’s overall well being. But it’s worth it because it makes your pet’s life better, and your life easier. How are you using your quality time with your pet out of your 168 hours this week?
If you’re looking for resources, I recommend Kirsten of Wexford Training, horse trainer, or Meagan of The Collared Scholar for dog training. Both of their philosophies put the animal’s mental and physical well being first and use that as a beacon guiding the training.
