I’m More Patient Than You

January 15, 2013

The final lesson that I learned from my dog training class (cause it’s over and I’m not going back) 🙂 is that Magic has learned to be more patient than me.

There’s this one method of training that you hold an item, say a hoop in front of your dog.  And then you wait.  You don’t “lure” the dog with anything to do anything with that item.  You just wait.  And then you reward when they touch, lick, and even look in the direction of the item.

The idea here is to get them to “THINK” and to understand that they need to offer you behaviors in order to get rewarded.

This was an annoying training technique for me because Magic really did nothing but watch other dogs.  Each time when the trainer wasn’t looking (or so I thought) I would try to get him to do something with the stool… or hoop… or whatever

The trainer saw what I was doing and came over and said, “Magic has learned to be more patient than you.  He sees that if he waits here long enough YOU will show him what to do.  When you train like that you are never going to get special behaviors that he just comes up with on his own.”

Okay.

So this got me thinking about life (of course) and I see how my impatience is a problem.  I see how because I am impatient with say, my ex… about the divorce papers…. I end up doing a lot more of the work, I end up getting upset or aggravated or drained of energy a lot more.  I see how my ex is just more patient than me.

Maybe he has learned that about me as well.. Maybe he has learned that about people.  If he is more patient, the other person does the work?  Who knows?  I think so, as I remember seeing it in his relationship with this mom.  But anyway…. 🙂

So today I am reminded of this lesson.  In a time when I was trying to speed up the divorce papers AGAIN I am reminded to practice my patience – and this time take the challenge, succeed at the lesson (one of the lessons at least), and be more patient than my ex.

I have also tried to train Magic this way at our home, away from all the other dogs and distractions, and I have to work on my patience with this too.  Trying to be more patient than Magic so he “thinks” and does the damn tricks on his own. 🙂  WISH ME LUCK!!!!