{"id":2834,"date":"2020-08-10T15:59:19","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T20:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/?p=2834"},"modified":"2020-08-10T15:59:28","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T20:59:28","slug":"dog-training-as-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/2020\/08\/10\/dog-training-as-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Dog Training as Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dogs often find a way to change who we are. To force us to become better people.<\/p><\/div>\n

For me, dog training has always been a bit therapeutic. A way to challenge my skills, learn new things, and connect with my dog. A way to work my brain and learn more about how brains work in general.<\/p>\n

During this COVID craziness, in person dog training classes aren’t a thing for me. I’m not teaching nor am I taking. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to sign up for some online courses so that I can take the time to work on some of Kyu’s neglected skills while I help repair his injury and gut. It’s been nice to still have things to work on and that teacher\/student connection. And sense of community. I’ve enjoyed having specific tasks to work on rather than just jumping around on various skills like I usually do.<\/p>\n

The class I’m currently signed up for is new: Success with Sensitive Dogs. Risa was a sensitive dog but not nearly to the extreme Kyu is. I certainly feel some of his sensitivity is tied to his GI issues (which are improving) but it’s still something I wanted to work on with him.<\/p>\n

What I hadn’t anticipated was how therapeutic the class would be for me. How cathartic it would be. I had to examine my own thoughts and psyche to dig down deep into the roots of our problem. Like, I know any training issue is always my fault. \ud83d\ude42 But I really had to do some serious soul-searching to figure out why. I had to analyze myself, my thoughts, and my actions to really understand why I was doing what I was doing and how it was affecting our relationship. It was hard. I cried a few times. I was finally recognizing things about myself that had to change. <\/p>\n

I learned a better way to cope with my thoughts (which affect my actions in dog training. . .and life). I came to understand that I needed to address aspects of myself that were only hurting our relationship (and, really, hurting myself). It wasn’t what I expected but it has been what I’ve needed. Never would have thought a dog training class would be actual therapy! But here I am learning how to be a better person all because I wanted to do better by my dog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For me, dog training has always been a bit therapeutic. A way to challenge my skills, learn new things, and connect with my dog. A way to work my brain and learn more about how brains work in general. During … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,46,11,17,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2834"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2834"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2841,"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2834\/revisions\/2841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dancingcavy.com\/mysterisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}