The concept of emotional control makes sense and it doesn’t all at the same time. When thinking about how we are feeling and our arousal level, when we are trying to help our dog with their arousal level, one of us needs to be under control. That is us. We need to be calm and confident so that our dog can easily follow our lead.
Just like in athletics, it is very useful to have emotional control when working with our dogs. If we find ourselves getting frustrated or impatient with our dog, that frustration can have a negative impact on our training progress. It’s important for us to remember that dogs can sense our emotions through our actions and will react accordingly. By maintaining emotional control, we can create a more positive and effective training environment for our pups. This means as hard as it may be, trying to stay calm, patient, and consistent in the interactions with our furry family members. It may not always be easy, but practicing emotional control will ultimately lead to better results and a stronger bond between us and our dogs.
Using Emotional Control
Imagine how you might feel when you look at the image for this article. Many dog owners first response is, I am going to go the other way and not allow my dog to get close. An immediate tension often comes to the surface where we are nervous, and we may even feel scared of what could happen because of the reputation of the bully breed of dogs. Others would see the image and melt because the dog is amazing and always gets a bad rap because of the inhumane activities that many of them have to endure. If we get tense though, then we will often react to our dogs in a tense way. Our muscles get tense and we might even tighten up the leash on our fur baby. They might then think, “hey, what is going on?” “something is happening” This can then cause them to then react perhaps out of fear, in any number of ways.
On the other hand, if we can maintain our emotional control and if our dog is able, calmly say hi to the dog and owner, even if we are feeling nervous, our dogs will be more likely to move with us confidently. We can do this even if we are moving her away or across the street because our dog is not ready for passing by other dogs without getting excited yet. The important thing is to be aware that our tension can affect how we interact with our dogs. On the other hand, remaining calm can help our dog stay responsive and cooperative.
One of the ways we can practice emotional control is to use visualization and relaxation. This can sort of allow us to mentally rehearse the event and take a deep breathe so that if we get tense, we will have a better chance at being calm and able to react in a positive way for our dog. An example would be to visualize going in a different direction from the event that creates emotional arousal for our dog. If the dog is well trained for loose leash walking, they will then feel confident that things are all good and we are just going in another direction.
Planning Emotional Control
When we are working with our dog, we also need to relax and be prepared for the training session and what we are going to work on. We can not get frustrated or excited when something is going to happen that we are rehearsing for example. When my dog and I are training for greetings at the door for example, I need to make sure I take a breath and don’t get all tense when she barks because I need to try to create success for all of us. How she reacts will depend on how I guide her. If I am moving quickly and frantically trying to get her to where she needs to be, she will be moving around frantically as she tries to read the situation with confusion.
Expectations
One of the ways that we can maintain emotional control is to keep our expectations in check. When we are working on something with our dog, we need to know what the desired outcome is for the behavior that we are training. With that we need to make sure that we are not wanting our dog to do more than they are currently capable of doing. The training situations we work on, need to match our dogs abilities, and then gradually get more complex. For example, I am not going to take our dog to an off leash park where there are dogs running past us, and expect her to focus on me without getting excited and lunging towards them. It only makes sense.
