Got Headaches? Using Focus To Transform Your Dog

09/15/16 • -1 min

In a previous post I spoke a bit about my family vacation in Flathead Lake, Montana. We stayed in a beautiful house with a little dock and an orchard. This morning I sat on the dock being very quiet, trying to blend into the background, and watching the deer in the orchard and the birds diving into the water. This beautiful setting is the scene for a story that made me laugh, and which I’d like to relate to you here. Yesterday, my family was hanging out in the house and my wife suggested that we go down to swim at the dock. It was our first full day of vacation, so no one knew if the water was cold, warm, or somewhere in the pleasant middle. I had to finish an email and get changed, so I told them I’d be down in ten minutes. I also had a massive, raging headache, so I popped a few aspirin. Ten minutes later I walked down the steps and walked over to the water to see all four of my kids sitting on the dock with their towels, huddling and shivering. They said to me, “Dad, get in the water. It’s amazing, it’s so warm. Just jump in!” If it was so great, I asked them, then why weren’t they in it? But they told me, “Oh, we just got out for a second. You’re going to love it!” I thought to myself, “Well, the sun’s out and the lake is shallow. Maybe the water is warm!” But they kept insisting over and over how amazing the water was. Something was fishy. I turned to my wife to ask her what was going on, and she held up her camera and showed me a video of three out of four of the kids jumping in all at once. The video cracked me up, because as soon as they jumped in they started screaming their heads off! That’s where the video went blank, because my wife turned off the camera to pull the kids out of the water. My kids were trying to trick me after all! But I decided that even with that, I was going to jump in. The water was crystal clear. How often would I get to take advantage of something this amazing? So headache and all, I jumped right in. It was cold at first, but as I swam around more it started to become more comfortable. It was still chilly, but also extremely refreshing. I noticed that in about two minutes my headache away. I was swimming around, feeling wonderful, having an amazing time.

Previous Episode

Keeping The Fire: Passion and Play

This past week, I was out on a morning walk while on vacation in Flathead Lake in Montana, which is an absolutely stunning area. On morning walks you can see deer and birds diving into the water to catch fish, and our lakefront house had a beautiful dock. Yesterday on a hike we saw some bighorn sheep. I’m caught by how gorgeous and amazing this place is. As I’ve chatted with the people who live in this area, I get the sense that after a while it ceases to be novel. For me, the beauty of this place is novel. I love being on or close to the water, but for some reason I live in Utah—where even getting to water means packing lunch and taking a long drive. For the thousands of people who live around Flathead Lake (which is in Glacier National Park, just south of the Canadian border), being on the water isn’t anything special. They live there! And while they love and enjoy their home, as time goes on the novelty wears off. There was a time years ago when I worked for a dog training company and the novelty of dogs began to wear off for me. I felt like I was just an assembly-line trainer, and wasn’t finding opportunities to challenge myself. When I did that, I felt the novelty slip away. And then, about twelve years ago, I thought that I was done with dogs. While I still wanted to own them, I didn’t think that I wanted to work with them professionally. I was out of training for a few months. But then I started my own business, after realizing that the passion and novelty were still there. It was my format that had discouraged me from loving my job.

Next Episode

Perfect Fit: Choosing the Right Dog for You

In this post, I’d like to talk a little about how to choose a dog. This is a question I get a lot, especially since we do plenty of service dog training. People hear that labs are good service dogs, so they get a lab. The reality? Not every lab can handle a service dog’s job. Sometimes people do their research and figure out that a German Shepherd is right for their lifestyle, so they go out and get any Shepherd they can find. These owners place too much importance on the breed, because the breed book says that the dog will be a certain way. Now, those breed books have some general things correct, but a lot of things very wrong. All dogs are individuals, so within a hundred German Shepherds you’ll find a huge variety of temperament, character, personality, courage, fear, and so on. So what are you looking for in a new dog? The older the dog is, the more you can tell about its character. We can tell some things about puppies, of course, but not a ton. You want to do your best whether you're rescuing an older dog or buying a puppy. There are a few characteristics that I always want to look for. One of those characteristics is sociability. We’ve all heard this story: “We were going along at the shelter, and this dog was huddled in the back corner and didn't want to come out for anybody. We felt so sad for him that we rescued him.” I’ve heard that a lot. There’s no problem in doing that if you have a big heart, but you need to understand what you're getting into. If your dog doesn't want human contact and is constantly trying to get away from you, it’s not going to be a good companion for your family.