What do a Harry Styles concert and walking a reactive/anxious dog have in common?

15/06/2023 - Training

Raising dogs and raising children – two totally different things, right?

The more I train my dogs and parent my children, the more I see the similarities in the two different roles, and the more I think perhaps we need to take a dog-training approach to parenting!

Both my daughters are neurodivergent. For many reasons, we have chosen to home-educate them for the past three years – a decision which was cemented when I realised that the typical education setting was advocating a course of action that wasn’t in THEIR best interests, it served the interests of the school.

I suddenly realised that I was being asked to raise my children in a way that was totally contrary to the principles I advocate when training dogs – and that seemed completely wrong!!

My experiences working with dogs and parenting neurodivergent children really highlights how we can use similar methods to achieve the same successes. I often say, with complete honesty, that my middle dog, Rem, helped me to be a better parent to my children. Learning how to support a puppy with anxiety/attachment and learning how to support him has the same principles as helping my children interact with a world that is often difficult for them to navigate.

Last night I took my daughters to their first concert, Harry Styles at Wembley Stadium. After booking tickets nearly a year ago we’ve had plenty of time to plan and prepare. For many young teens/tweens attending your first concert is a rite of passage and of course it was for my girls too, but we had to make a number of considerations as they don’t cope well with being around people, busy environments, going to new places, not knowing exactly what will happen and when and many other everyday life tasks/encounters.

I was determined to make the day a success and an enjoyable experience for them. We spent a good few months planning the day down to every minute detail, scouring every possible accessible guide, obtaining rucksack passes, radar keys, finding our exact seats on the seating plans, finding ‘view from my seat’, talking through every element of the day so they knew what to expect, watching street views and walking our route ‘virtually’ with them, pre-planning which bench area we would sit to eat our packed lunch, packing every item we might possibly need from the right snacks to fidget toys and ear defenders!

I am so thrilled to say that we had an amazing day with only a couple of minor overwhelming moments, but due to the pre-planning and rucksack full of ‘tools’ we pre-empted everything or had a solution to help. Minimising triggers/stressors from the planning, rest days in the run up (and after to recover)and then being able to reduce anxiety/overwhelm with our ‘tool box’ was key to this successful day!

This is no different to supporting your own reactive or anxious dog through their everyday life or adventures and holidays they take part in.
Humans can expand their knowledge and understanding to help them have more compassion and skills to support them, and when we train, we are building the ‘tools’ to help our dogs cope in tricky situations or learn ways to relieve their stress and reduce overwhelm.
In training sessions, we are doing those practise walkthroughs to prepare for real-life, so that when we go on a big adventure day out we can plan the location, timing, routes to ensure we are setting them up for success, planning times to relieve stress and lower anxiety and, should we be faced with a tricky situation, our training tools can help us to effectively manage it to ensure everyone has a good adventure!

One thing that’s important to appreciate is how much work goes in behind the scenes to make for a successful result – whether that’s a hidden disability or a reactive/anxious dog. You might think the end result looks simple, you might not understand what the fuss is all about – but the truth is it’s hard to tell from the outside how much time, effort, understanding and patience it takes for them to succeed.