07/17/2022
I get that having a well trained dog is a lot of work. I won’t sit here and try to sell you some easy-breazy fantasy, because it wouldn’t be true. Yep, it’s a bunch of work, and the dog you have and the goals you have determine how much.
But as someone who’s tried “both options” with soft, medium, and very hard dogs, I’m keenly aware of the cost of not doing anything, and also the benefits of diving in. Even with the easy ones, the pain point might be lower, but the freedom and inclusion they won’t get to enjoy—if you honestly look at it—isn’t just hard, it’s sad. And when you get to the harder ones, man, the pain point is extreme (destruction, chaos, danger, stress, etc.), and you also get the lack of freedom and inclusion. So it’s a compounded loss.
I look back at how I lived with my dogs for the first 5 years of their lives and how we lived the next 10 or so, and it breaks my heart. So much unnecessary stress, anxiety, frustration, anger, limitations, and just an extremely poorer quality of life. Instead of enjoying life together, we got through life together. And that’s a monumental difference.
My point is simple. We all know good things require work and sacrifice. And if we’re going to share much of our lives with our dogs, it only seems logical to put in the work (the “hard”) that yields the the least stress, the smallest amounts of anxiety, the largest degrees of safety, the most enjoyment and connection and inclusion and freedom.
Of course it’s your choice either way, but even though doing nothing might seem like the easier “hard” I would posit that that perception is absolutely wrong. It simply means you don’t have to be proactive, only reactive. But it’s a mirage—and one made up by the lazy, rationalizing, excuse-making human mind. Reacting to problems rather than beating them to the punch and heading them off at the pass is always more painful.
We all know it. It just depends how honest we want to be with ourselves, and how much beauty, connection, joy, fun, and freedom we prefer to the other stuff—and the work we’re willing to put in to get it.
