Thoughtful Thursday: Being Present in the Moment

While working on obedience recently, Flash was showing some of her excitement for training by completing extra jumps and twirls during position changes. The amount of joy in the moment she exhibited was palatable. It made me smile and resulted in us having a wonderful and joyful training session where, by the end of it, we were both out of breath and smiling.

Okay, I was smiling and she was panting and fully engaged.

When the world intrudes and gets overwhelming, one of my favorite places to go is training. It allows me to be in that present moment with my dog. To experience the joy, and sometimes the frustration, of being present in a moment of joy.

We also underestimate the joy of play. I've found myself doing a lot of that lately. I tell myself that I will play with my dog, and if it leads to training, that is a bonus, if it doesn't, I'm okay. Most of the time we end up training an advanced behavior.

Dogs are some of the best teachers we have.

They teach us kindness, patience, and give us immediate feedback on what works and what doesn't.

They remind us to be present in the moment.

They remind us to find the joy in the moment.

They remind us to TRAIN in the present moment, with the end in mind.

If we are not with them in the moment in which we are training, not only do we lose our focus, but they lose the lesson we need them to learn. The present moment in which we are training is the field in which our final behaviors are cultivated and nurtured. That field is where those behaviors are tended, reinforced, refined and generalized. We must weed it, water it, and expand the field.

Lack of training allows the field to go fallow, the weeds of unwanted behavior grow. In fact, we also plant unwanted behaviors in our fields through lack of clarity, poor timing, and lumping behavior chains.

Go train.

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The K9Sensus Detection Dog Trainer Academy is now a year long academy for the same price. We are taking enrollments for the 2026 year. Please visit www.k9sensus.org/ddta for more information.