A few months ago my family and I registered with a site called borrowmydoggie.com.
We like the idea of having a dog, but aren’t really in a position to look after one properly.
The site puts owners and borrowers in contact with each other and they make their own arrangements.
Might be regular walks, occasional holiday cover, etc.
We’ve walked Skye a few times now.
Her owner feels she’ll benefit from some time with children, so everyone’s happy.
We’ve been teaching the kids how to train a dog.
It’s similar to training kids really.
And to re-training adults.
There has to be a reward to a behaviour being taught.
A ‘treat’ as it’s often called.
If, every time you do a certain thing you get something good happen, you’ll keep doing it.
Dog or human.
The problem arises when we associate the wrong reward to the wrong behaviours.
If you have habits you want to change you’re going to have to assign something positive to the new behaviour.
An instant reward.
If there’s no reward, you won’t keep it up long.
You can reassign rewards from elsewhere.
A week of 95% healthy eating could be rewarded with shopping trip.
Going for a workout could be rewarded with watching you favourite TV programme.
Doing a healthy food shop could be rewarded with a nice soak in the bath.
And so on.
You may argue that these things are things you’ll do anyway.
But we’d say the same of a lot of the other rewards people give themselves.
It’s just how we chose to view these things.
What we chose as a reward is up to us.
Why is a bottle one wine or a bar of chocolate coated sugar a “reward for” or “earned after” a hard day.
The two have zero actual correlation.
Just the way we chose to see it.
Give it a go.
With the things you know you need to do, if there is no reward built into them (ie: just enjoying doing them), then give them a reward from elsewhere.
Much love,
Jon ‘Wasn’t allowed, as a teenager, to call my dog ‘Dog’ like the Mark and Lard sketch’ Hall and Matt ‘3 dogs’ Nicholson
