Chrissy 0:01
Welcome to The Dogs of our lives podcast with me, your host, Chrissy Messick, in these short digging deeper episodes, we'll dive deeper into interesting topics that arise from my guest interviews, those areas of dog training, behavior, consulting and interspecies communication that provoke more questions that I'd love to answer for you as an expert in the field, and speaking of questions, how well do you really know your dog? Why not try out my quiz, which is linked in the show notes, the questions and the answer might surprise you. Now let's dig in. In last week's episode, I talked with Alyssa Rolfe, who's a clinical animal behaviorist as well as a canine and feline nutritionist. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, the link is in the show notes, and it's episode number 16. We talked about a holistic approach to caring for our animals, which covered a lot of topics, but I want to take a deeper dive into the awareness aspect of ourselves and dog behavior and how that affects our relationship with our dogs. There are four levels of cultural awareness. This paradigm is based on the work by William Howell, but for our purposes, I specifically want to talk about dogs and humans living together and the cultural aspects of that. So as we go through the cycle of adjustment or progression of these four levels, our awareness of our self and our dog naturally increases. This awareness tends to progress through a series of levels which we're going to talk about, and each level corresponds to a phase, or phases in the cycle adjustment. So the first stage is unconscious incompetence, and this has also been called the state of blissful ignorance. So at this stage, we're unaware of cultural differences between us and our dog, and it does not occur to us that we may be making cultural mistakes or that we may be misinterpreting much of our dog's behavior around us. So we have no reason to not trust our instincts. We might have even done some light research that ended up being terrible information from unqualified people, especially on social media. But just keep in mind, this field is unregulated. Oh boy, I remember the state so much, and I wish I could go back sometimes, because I see everything now, and that can be hard. I remember as first time dog guardians. We were clueless, but I thought we knew everything. I mean, how difficult can it be to bring a dog or dogs into our home, right? Well, little did we know our dogs would teach us a lot, and eventually it led me into dog training, behavior consulting and animal communication. And I've had many clients come to me in the state as well, so not realizing that their dogs have emotions or that they communicate with body language or vocalization, or not knowing the type of physical or mental enrichment they might need, or what pain looks like, or awareness of their own behaviors and interactions with their dogs, or even how to navigate and develop the skills to work with their dogs if there are apparent behavior issues. For me, my favorite thing is to help people go from this state unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence. So now we're at stage two, conscious incompetence, so we realize that differences exist between the way we and our dogs behave, though we understand very little about what these differences are, how numerous they might be, or how deep they might go. We know there's a problem or difference here, but we're not sure about the size of it, and we're not sure of our instincts anymore, and we question everything that we thought we knew about dogs, and we realized that some of the things we don't understand. So we may start to worry about how hard it's going to be to figure this out with our dog. This is where it's super important to be open minded and question everything. Start using our critical thinking skills. This is where we can do this. We might start thinking, oh my gosh, I've been doing everything wrong with my dog, and I feel so bad. And this is where I like to throw in the quote by Maya Angelou, do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better. We're all learning as we go. So let's forgive ourselves and our dog and move forward. We also might start thinking, holy cow, how much work is this gonna take? And just remember, this is a journey. If you can take about 10 minutes a day to work on yourself and with your dog, you are making progress. Squirrel moment, I hope you're enjoying the dogs of our lives podcast as much as I'm enjoying making it. So I've got a small favor to ask, and that's to leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts, I'll read them out in my next show. So stay tuned to get a shout out on the dogs of our lives podcast. Here we are at stage three, conscious competence. We know cultural differences exist between us and our dog. We know what some of these differences are, and. And we're trying to adjust our own behavior accordingly. It doesn't come naturally yet, and we have to make a conscious effort to behave in, I guess you would say, culturally appropriate ways, but we are much more aware of how our behavior is coming across to our dog and how it affects our dog's responses to us, so we're in the process of replacing old habits or behaviors with new ones for us and our dog, and we know now that we'll be able to figure our dog out and ourselves out if we can remain objective. This is where we start to understand that our dog's behaviors are their ways of communicating how they're feeling about their environment, their physical, mental needs and so much more, we start to learn to respond to these behaviors appropriately and objectively, instead of reacting out of emotions such as anger or stress. And we do this now because we understand that there's a function to our dog's behavior and they're asking for something, and it's up to us to find the root cause of this behavior and address that, not just suppress the behavior, if we're addressing the root cause, then behavior will just change naturally. We'll start to notice that our daily interactions will change. With our dog, we'll appreciate them and see them in a whole new light. And this is where they become our teacher, and where you can become their teacher. So here we are at the last stage, level four, unconscious competence, and this is where we no longer have to think about what we're doing in order to have awareness of ourselves, our behaviors, our dog's behaviors, and how to interact and live with them, especially when behaviors show up that we don't understand or that we get frustrated with, communication and Understanding are now second nature to us. We can trust our instincts because they have been reconditioned by a new understanding of ourselves and our dog. It takes little effort now for us to be sensitive to our dog's needs. This is where you've gained knowledge and skills to be aware of your interactions with your dog and responses to behaviors you find frustrating, and we have awareness to look beyond the behavior and ask, why is my dog doing this? And what can I do do to help them in a kind way? And this comes naturally, and before we realize it, our whole relationship has changed with our dog for the better, and maybe even with some humans in your life. This is where it becomes, life changing, where your dog has changed your life, and it may not be an easy journey, but it's definitely worth it. Squirrel moment, let me know in the comments. Would it be helpful if I created a checklist for you to see what stages of awareness you are in with you and your dog? Well, that's it for today. I know I've thrown a lot of information and thought provoking ideas at you. Let me know your thoughts, if you have any light bulb moments, and I'd love to hear from you. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you discovered a valuable nugget you can implement right away with your dog. If you enjoyed the episode, please follow, rate and share with fellow dog lovers who might benefit. Don't forget to take our How well do you know your dog quiz? You'll find the link in the show notes until next week. Happy tales. You.
