Bible Study & Dog Training

For those of you do not know, Passport it a 4 day church camp that my youth group goes to almost every summer. There is a theme verse for the whole week and a new verse every day. Our bible study groups have a few people from our church and a few from other churches as well

(Green triangle 4 life 💚)

The Passport theme verse this year was The Lord says “forget about what happened before, and do not think about the past. Look at the new thing I am doing. It’s already happening. Don’t you see it? (Isaiah 43:18-19a NCV)

As humans, we tend to focus on our past mistakes and experiences and often times, they hold us back from continuing forward. It’s easy to blame God for our past challenges and not want to trust him again. But when you do, it will get easier. You might not see the ways that God is working, but God is always at work. This verse can be applied to so many different situations and aspects of life. In our Bible study groups, we discussed the things that are holding us back. Everyone had amazing answers. Since this is a dog training account, let’s apply it to dog training.

When I started training almost 3 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. Our first training outing went horribly. She was reactive, pulling, obsessively sniffing, and eventually, she pooped in the store. I cleaned it up to the best of my ability, but I did still ask an employee for assistance. It was my fault. I take full accountability for her terrible behavior. I didn’t evaluate her before that outing and I was selfish and jumped in too quickly.

At the time, I was still using R+ methods and I was super uneducated. After that, I would totally panic when I had Honey out in public. For almost 2 years, I would tense up, my heart rate would sky rocket, my thoughts would get fuzzy, and I’d forget why I was even there in the first place. I continued to research, ask people on Instagram who had been in a similar situation for advice, and work, work, work. It was clear that a switch to balance methods would benefit her. So we started with a prong collar. When that was successful, I introduced the Ecollar. As time went on, I got more and more confident in her but I always had a harness, a prong, an Ecollar, and a 2 foot leash on her. I wrapped up training and graduated Honey in the fall of 2021. We still train sometimes, but she’s not actively in training anymore. Despite her being fully trained, I’d always keep her in full gear when out in public.

When I got home from Passport this year I was exhausted for a week. I didn’t work with her that entire week or the week I was gone. Then, the day I was leaving for the beach, I needed to walk her before I dropped her off with my aunt. I didn’t feel like digging through our gear to find a leash that matched her harness and I didn’t want to deal with the Ecollar. I slapped a harness on and left. She did wonderful! She struggled to keep a down stay while I talked with my neighbor but that was only because I hadn’t worked with her in 2 weeks. After that, I was so much more confident in her.

About a week after I got back from the beach, I went again. This time with Honey. The first night, she jumped in the water and soaked her collar and leash. Since I had taken her harness and the beach club leader, they didn’t get wet. I clipped the leader to the back of her harness and we went back inside. No leash and no Ecollar. She perfectly navigated the busy condo 100% off leash. She did that same thing for the next few days.

When I had to go to Home Depot the other day, she did it off leash. The store wasn’t super crowded, but there were plenty of distractions and spaces that were difficult to maneuver in. She rocked it. This was the first time I saw major improvements in our outings. Now that I look back at the videos of our outings, I see that each time she was improving. The only difference was I let go of the past, and just trusted her.