Emotional Hurdles that Trip up Dog Owners
Shared from The Good Dog Training and Rehabilitation : http://thegooddog.net/
The Good Dog Tip: The emotional hurdles that trip up dog owners.
One of the biggest challenges in dog work isn’t actually the dog, it’s untangling and helping with the often unacknowledged or unresolved emotional state of the owner. Even with great training and the best tools and strategies, if the owner is still struggling with being balanced themselves, oftentimes the dogs will continue to struggle.
Here’s a short list of the causes I see most often sabotaging owner/dog success:
-Boundary issues
-Worthiness issues
-Self-esteem issues
-Unfulfilled in relationship/marriage
-Unfulfilled in life, have no fulfilling passions/life work
-Wants kids, doesn’t have kids
-Have kids, but is addicted to nurturing feeling
-Been damaged by humans and now only trusts dogs
-Don’t believe they’re worthy of success and happiness so they repeat/sustain/create realities of failure and struggle with their dogs
-Are addicted to the attention their problem dog creates/generates
-Are uncomfortable socially around people, so dogs become their entire world
-Projecting their own pain/hurt/traumas onto their dogs
-Addicted to the feeling of immediate gratification of giving a dog something it likes (food, treat, affection), rather than long-term benefit
-Feel badly about discipline, rather than seeing it as a gift of comfort, security, safety, and trust.
-Needing/wanting their dog to like them desperately (and willing to do anything to preserve that), so the human feels loved/seen/cared for/wanted
-Dislike authority, structure, rules themselves, so are loathe to share them with their dogs
-Seeing dogs as people, not as a different species with different needs/priorities (Usually this occurs either because of lack of knowledge or because it feels good/fulfilling.)
-Thinking that affection, freedom, toys, food alone will make their dog happy
-Doesn’t want to hurt their dog’s/kids feelings by sharing rules, boundaries, consequences
-Worried their dogs/kids won’t like them/love them if they do the above
-Want to be their dog’s/kid’s friend not leader/parent because it feels better to/for them
-Are uncomfortable with being an authority figure/past issues with people in authority positions
-Prioritizing what feels good for them over what actually makes the dog better/healthier/happier
-Is worried that their dog will be unhappy if corrected/trained/given boundaries
-Dogs representing/being far more than dogs emotionally/replacing human relationships
-Not being realistic/understanding how consequences are necessary and rule life for all creatures
-Trying to love dogs better
-Projecting human emotions/needs onto dogs
-Broken people need the safety and love that they receive from dogs, because they don’t/can’t/are afraid to get it from the human world. (These folks can’t share believable energy/consequences/leadership because they’re internally fractured.)
As someone who has experienced this from the other side himself – meaning the unbalanced side – I know first-hand what my emotional state caused in my dogs, and also how when I changed myself that it created the gateway for change in my dogs as well. Check in with the list and see how you do. I’m still working on mine.
