“What a frightening thing is a human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.”-John Steinbeck
So today I was accepted into Catch Canine Trainers Academy. This has been a journey essentially twenty-nine years in the making- my whole life. I’m an introvert. You will not find me in a room full of strangers throwing myself at them like an excited dog whom loves anyone and everyone that gives them attention. Quite frankly, I’m just not a people person. They, like Steinbeck wrote, are confusing and hard to read. People have an uncanny ability to be everything they are not. Dogs possess no such talent and with them what you see is what you get. I can look at a dog and tell you if that dog is happy to see me or wants to sink their teeth into my skin. The dog world is blessedly empty of falsehoods. We as humans with a sin nature are much more likely to present ourselves as fakes and in doing so make things harder for ourselves.
If I were to tell you I like dogs I would be lying. It isn’t that I don’t like them it is that I love them. Dogs for me are like a hobby to another person. Most likely if dogs are involved you can count me interested. In my memory I’ve always loved being around them. My parents would tell you different because I was supposedly terrified of them when I was extremely young but I don’t remember that. In life there are a select few things that come naturally to me. Those things are animals in general, dogs, working with children, words, and food.
My life with dogs has been a varied one with the many breeds that have passed through our house or my siblings have gained. Let me tell you, there are few things I enjoy more when it comes to dogs than getting to be around a new breed. Experience is a good teacher and the more breeds I’m around the larger my scope of the dog world becomes. Though decidedly lacking in the small dog department, I’ve grown up with and dealt with everything from large and lazy Great Danes to high drive Dutch Shepherds and Border Collies and plenty of breeds in between.
I said this was a journey in the making. It has been and it isn’t one that I see ending anytime soon. See, for me, dogs have always been the endgame. They are what I’m the best at, which seems ridiculous. How can you be good at dogs? It sounds like improper English and likely is but that is the best way to explain it. I suppose I could say I’m the best with dogs, but you don’t say you’re the best with football. So, you’re just going to need to roll with me on this one. It’s all part of the adventure of being around me.
I’m a people pleaser. I do my best to make other people happy. When people are mad at me or even worse disappointed, I hate it. Whenever possible I do everything in my power to do what other people want, to make the “right”,”sensible”, or expected choice. After graduating High School I started a childcare job teaching at Bayside, where I’ve been for eleven years this August. It was safe, it was expected, I’ve always been good with kids. I grew up helping take care of them and have no problem at all handling them or their messes. They are fun, and unlike their future grownup counterparts I have no problem with talking to them. Like I said, I’m an introvert and talking to anyone over the age of eighteen doesn’t come naturally to me unless it’s about certain things. Working with kids meant stability and safety and adventurous has never been a word often used to describe me. I don’t do spontaneity. Doing the sensible thing meant that I didn’t do what I had planned on doing all along, train dogs. In 2008 the options for training schools or even the petcare business as a whole was nothing like it is all these years later. Now there are schools for trainers globally and many of those adhere more to my philosophy of training a dog with rewards rather than compulsion.
So I started taking care of children for a living and have been doing so for a long time. I do what I know, what makes me comfortable, and despite their physical messiness, teaching children is comfortable for me. There is a predictability to their unpredictability if that makes any sense. Kids are essentially the same and have changed little over the years. Keep them safe, keep them fed, entertain them and your set. It isn’t rocket science in the slightest.
I can’t say that the idea of training dogs isn’t frightening. It is, but more because it will involve the instability of having clients, without clients there is no money, money is important for living. I like the predictable. I despise change I didn’t instigate. There’s probably some name for that which involves some aspect of control or another, but in reality I don’t have to be in control. I’m not a control freak in the slightest. I’m really just a man of habit. Adjusting to new things takes time and I find that time uncomfortable.
That being said, this is a huge leap of faith if I’ve ever taken one. I could spend the rest of my life doing only what is safe, predictable, and expected of me. People wouldn’t bat an eye and I’d remain safely within my bubble of pleasing those around me by doing what seems to be the safe option. But, there is after all most always a but, doing so would mean leaving a God-given passion to rot and die instead of being fully used to glorify Him. Much as speaking with strangers scare me, being complacent in my walk with God is scarier. His timing is well outside the realm of when I had hoped to be getting into the world of dogs but His timing is also perfect so there is the matter of my finite ability to comprehend things and His ability to know everything.
In a way I’m jumping from one predictable passion to another. Realistically I’m not departing from teaching, I’m just adding those older people counterparts and an entirely new species to the roster. Many people spend hours, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the letters Dr. put in front of their names. I on the other hand am seeking to add four to my own-CPDT.
I hope that you understand why this blog post was opened with the Steinbeck quote. If not the reason is simple, people are messy, confusing, and it isn’t easy to always understand each other. Dogs on the other hand are relatively simple; Feed them, treat them right, and throw a ball. They care little for the intricacies of our lives. They just want us and there’s something incredibly moving in the simplicity of that. Dogs after all are man’s best friend, and with good reason.
