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I Can’t vs. I Don’t Know How
| Posted on November 23, 2015 at 12:51 PM |
Good morning!
It’s a beautiful, cold clear day in Mt. Shasta, and I’ve been
thinking. (I do that sometimes.) Here’s my thought for the day: When it comes to struggles, whether in dog training
or “real life,” there’s a difference between saying It can’t be done vs. I can’t
do it vs. I don’t know HOW. There are things that truly can’t be done: I can’t teach Tinker to fly like a bird (she
doesn’t have wings) and I can’t fly like a bird myself without the aid of
technology. There are real and genuine
limitations to what can be anatomically achieved. Some people do have truly unrealistic
expectations of their pets—or themselves, or the world around them. Most of us are pretty good, though, and
spotting the not-so-subtle difference between “My dog can’t learn to do algebra”
and “My dog can’t learn to come when called reliably.” In theory, one of these is genuinely
impossible and the other one isn’t. “I can’t do it” also has some validity. We’re all unique individuals with different
abilities and anatomies, and so are our dogs.
Though there are many tall, athletic people who can slam-dunk a
basketball on a regulation court without a ladder, I am not one of them. I’m not running a 4-minute mile anytime soon,
either. Tinker will probably never be
the fastest dog in the agility ring (though she’s likely to be,
pound-for-pound, among the most powerful.)
We have limitations, of course.
Except… there’s a catch there, too. If something isn’t out of the realm of theoretical possibility,
a good quick test is: how sincerely and
how hard have we tried? Plenty
of us pop off with various forms of It can’t be done without having made the
slightest effort to… train the dog, change our eating habits, make an effort to
exercise more or take any of the steps necessary to achieve the so-called Can’t. We’ve assumed the door is locked without even
testing the knob. If we look closely at I can’t do it (even if other people can) often what we find is—I can’t do it THAT WAY. If there was a ticking time bomb and the only
way to disarm it and save the world was to slam dunk a basketball, give me a
ladder or a cherry picker and I’ve got it. Obviously, that won’t work in a pro basketball
game—it’s against the rules—but in real life with a dog in the home, if you can’t do it (that way) there’s almost
always another way, or many ways, to achieve the same result. Finding a way that’s a good fit for you and
your dog is the trick: maybe you can’t do it (or don’t want to do it)
like Joe-- but you can do it like
Bill or Mary or Jill. Which comes to the last: we can’t do anything if we don’t know
HOW. We have to know HOW. If we don’t know HOW, we have to learn
HOW. HOW is the series of specific,
concrete actions we need to DO to achieve our goals. I hear too much can’t
in dog training. My dog can’t X, I can’t Y, dogs can’t really
learn behavior G with method Z... Curiously—though
not surprisingly—most of that can’t is
coming from people who simply and truly don’t
know HOW. No one likes to look stupid or ill-informed. It’s all too human for us to blurt out, “Oh! I can’t do that!” or “No
way, that can’t work!” when what’s really
true is—I haven’t got an snowball’s idea
in heck how to do that, or how to do it with that method—I wouldn’t even know where
to start. I always did it like THIS and
if THIS doesn’t work, it’s all I know so I can’t. And therein rests the problem, of course. Can’t
is a slamming door, the end of a road before the journey has even started. Can’t =
No. No action, no trying, no effort,
no change. No learning. Instead of saying Can’t in all its flavors, I’d like to suggest that we rephrase it. Try saying instead, “I’d like my dog (myself,
my world) to do X and I don’t know how to
get there.” Saying I don’t
know HOW is two things: 1) An honest
acknowledgement of where we are right now:
whatever we are doing isn’t working and we feel stuck. 2) An
opportunity to ask powerful questions.
Questions like: If
I don’t know how, what do I need to learn? Is
there another way this can be done? Does
someone else know how? Who
can teach me? I see many wonderful dog owners who get themselves stuck. They want the dog to learn to do X, or to
learn to stop doing Y. They try a few things—the things they did
with their last dogs, the things they already know. But
their current dog isn’t like their last dogs, and somehow, for some reason, the
good old ways aren’t working. The old adage where
there’s a will, there’s a way is a good one. If we surrender to Can’t, we won’t act. We won’t keep trying, seek new information or
consider other possibilities. If, on the other hand, we consider Maybe I don’t know HOW? we have a wealth of possible actions spread
before us. Getting more information,
trying something new, exploring who does know and what they know and how we can
use it in our own training… loads of things to do that get us out of stuck and back on the road to successful
training. Have a beautiful day with your dog. |
Categories: Behavior, training, getting help
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