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Speaker Key
SG Susan Garrett
Transcript
00:00:00
The post I created on Facebook, over 700 comments on that post. One commenter thought I was
dismissing grief. It was a frenzy. People weren't just reacting to the words that they read on my post.
They were reacting to the beliefs that they had in their own minds. And why were the comments so
emotional?
00:00:25
Hi, I am Susan Garrett, and this is Shaped by Dog, where training makes sense at both ends of the leash.
What if I was to tell you the most limiting thing about your relationship with your dog is the story you tell
yourself. Not the breed of dog, not the genetics of the dog, not even your training abilities, just the story.
Because once you decide ‘this dog's a slow thinker’, ‘this dog is clumsy’, ‘this dog will never be as good
as my last dog’, or ‘this dog is my heart dog, my one and only heart dog’, your brain will then start looking
for proof, continuously looking for proof. And that changes how you respond to the dog, how you think
about the dog, how you talk about and talk to the dog.
00:01:15
And before long this story it feels true, not because it was any sort of destiny, but because it was a
directive coming from you. A few weeks ago, I made a post on my personal Facebook page where I
suggested that people should stop calling their dogs their “heart dogs”, or their “soul dogs”, or their “once
in a lifetime dogs”. And that post, it blew up.
Not because of the words that I wrote, but because of the meaning that people attached to the words
that I wrote. And that's exactly what I want to talk about today. The stories we tell ourselves and the
meaning we give things.
00:01:53
This episode is not about trying to police the language people use about their dog, and it's not about
judging how deeply anyone loves their dog, and it's certainly not minimizing the connection we all have
with our dogs.
It's about something much more powerful than that. It's about how the human brain works, how belief
shapes attention, and how attention shapes behavior, both our behavior and our dog's behavior.
Because the stories we tell ourselves and other people about our dogs doesn't define that relationship.
It actually builds that relationship. The story you repeat about your dog, that becomes the lens through
which you see your dog.
00:02:36
Let me share a story from 2004. I had a young puppy by the name of Encore. She would've been about
four months old, and I headed down south to a big dog agility event where I ran into the icons of dog
agility, JC and Hazel Thompson.
Now, they were probably 30 or 40 years older than me, I believe they were in their seventies at that time,
but they owned the sport of agility with their distance work and their really well-trained Border Collies.
00:03:05
I ran up to them and I was so excited. I said, “I've got a new puppy, and I can't wait for you two to meet
her.” And that was Saturday morning, early. Of course, we got busy, walking courses, running courses,
and every time I bumped into them, I tell them a little bit more about Encore. Finally, at the end of the
second day I said, “I want you to meet her.”
And I brought her over. JC immediately said, “Oh, Susan, she's a winner.” And I remember saying to
him, I was so excited because I wanted to know what he saw in her. And I said, “Well, what do you see
that makes you say that?”
00:03:40
He said, “It's nothing that I see. It's what I've heard for the past two days. You, talking about her. How
you talk about her. I know for sure this dog's going to be a winner.” And guess what, she was. She was
both a Canadian and US National Champion of Agility. She had an amazing career in the sport of agility.
She won a gold medal at the Agility World Championships, and it all started with the stories that I talked
about her to others, to myself, and of course to her. Now, before I go any further, I want to make
something super clear. I understand what it feels like to have a profound connection with a dog. In truth,
every dog I've ever shared my life with, I've had a ridiculous profound love to the point of heartbreak
when I lost that dog.
00:04:31
Every relationship I've had with a dog has changed me. Every dog has taught me so many things. Every
dog has stretched me, and every dog has helped disclose a new side of myself to me. I will admit some
dogs have been easier to connect with than others, as some dogs have been easier to train than others,
mostly because of where I was at that time in my life when that dog came into my life.
But I never ever said the deepest connection I would ever have with a dog was behind me. I'm very
intentional about how I even describe my youngest red Border Collie Prophet. If I ever catch myself
saying, “You’re the special red boy.”, I change myself immediately to, “You’re one of my special red boys.”
00:05:21
I never want to limit in my mind what is definitively one. Because the moment I ever believe that I quietly
eliminate room for any other possibility. I subconsciously start measuring all the other dogs in my life
currently and any dog that may come after to that one relationship that I defined as ‘The one’.
And this is where neuroscience becomes so relevant to dog training. Because neuroscience defines
something super important to us. It tells us that our brain isn't passively recording reality. Our brain is
actively defining reality. It constantly tells us what matters and what doesn't, what we should pay attention to and what is less important.
00:06:10
And the system that does all of that filtering for us is called the Reticular Activation System, your RAS.
It's fed by our own beliefs, our own confirmations. Our own reality feeds that RAS and tells it, ‘This is
important’. And the RAS has to be on top of things every second of the day. Think of everything that's in
this room. I'm trying to share a very critically important message to this camera. Yet there's hundreds of
other stimuli in this room.
00:06:46
The RAS in my brain tells me ‘Filter all of that out. None of it is important at this moment. The only thing
that's important is this camera. Okay, and maybe this camera, but nothing else.’ The only thing that gets
through to our brain at any moment of the day is the things that we have heavily weighted as very
important.
So, our brain isn't necessarily looking for truth, it's looking for relevancy. It's looking for what we define
as relevant to us in our life, how we live, and how we define what is and isn't important. You may have
experienced this already.
You get a new puppy, suddenly you notice other puppies in your neighborhood, maybe of the same
breed, or on social media, you see things that, “Oh, that's the same markings”, and they just pop up
everywhere.
00:07:33
Is it because there suddenly is this influx of the same breed, a puppy that you have or the same
markings? No, it's your Reticular Activation System has said that “Wow. This is important because this
is the puppy you love.” “Oh, I see that breed. Oh, I see that color. Oh, I see that little pink nose. It's the
same.”
The same thing happens in training. If you've decided your dog is reactive, then anytime another dog
walks by, you're going to tighten your leash. You're going to look for signs in your dog. If they suddenly
get stiff or they shy away from something, it's confirming for your RAS, yes, that's your dog being reactive
again.
00:08:12
And anytime in the day where your dog looks at a dog and maybe glances away, you're less likely to
notice that because that's a sign of a dog that is making a good choice. And that's not the dog that you've
defined. You've defined a reactive dog. Well, reactive dogs don't do this. So, let's just look for all the
reasons why this dog is reactive.
All of those moments that the dog is making good choices, they all fade to the background, not because
they weren't important, because you, your descriptions, your conversations, has already decided this is
the way it is, everything in my life needs to find evidence to prove that this is the way it is.
00:09:01
So, your Reticular Activation System, it doesn't change your reality, it changes the part of reality that you
tend to notice. And that takes us to confirmation bias and confirmation bias is the tendency for us to
notice things that confirm the things that we already believe.
So, if you repeat that ‘this dog is my once in a lifetime dog’, your brain will repeat all of those special
moments where your dog did amazing things, or your dog did touching things, or your dog showed
genuine emotion, or anything that your brain is going to serve up to you to confirm that belief, ‘yeah, this
is the one.’
00:09:45
And likewise, if you believe ‘this dog is tougher than other dogs’, ‘this dog I just can't connect with’, ‘this
dog is just slower’, ‘this dog just isn't as talented as my past dogs’, or ‘this dog just isn't a good jumper’,
your brain will too, start gathering information to support that.
00:10:03
And it's not because the label is true, it's because your brain is objectively gathering data to support you.
And that's why in past episodes of Shaped by Dog, I have warned of the dangers of labels. Because
labels don't define relationships. Labels direct your attention within a relationship.
These labels, these definitions we have for our dogs, they become self-fulfilling prophecies, don't they?
This is where our expectations of outcomes of individual dogs start to change. If you truly believe that
this dog is extraordinary, you're going to show up different.
00:10:38
If you believe this other dog doesn't quite measure up, you don't know why you just can't connect, you
are going to show up very differently than for the other dog. Maybe it's, you're going to be more patient,
maybe you'll be more engaged. Maybe you'll just seem to have more fun. Maybe you'll be more thoughtful
with your reinforcement.
Maybe you'll be more impatient with your hands on your hips and your sighs when you're training that
second dog. Maybe you'll be more willing to work through setbacks, and maybe you'll notice the smaller
steps of progress in the one that you expect it from. And all of those little things add up to a different
relationship.
00:11:20
One dog becomes more confident, more successful, more consistent, more talented, not because of who
that dog is, but because of how our belief in that dog shaped them. Just like my belief in Encore shaped
her. And I believe that's why every single dog I have ever owned has become a National or World
Champion, has been on a World Team, every single dog.
Because I've been very intentional about never limiting my dogs with my own beliefs. I've always left the
opening for what's possible. What you expect affects the way you show up. How you show up affects
who that dog gets to become.
00:12:05
And some of you may have already said, “Dogs don't understand English. They don't know the meaning
of the words that I'm saying.” And you are true. Well, except for maybe a handful of words, they don't
understand English.
However, they are the masters at understanding body language, tone, inflection, energy, the passion
that we carry, and the disappointment that we carry. The hint of anger or the rigidness of how we talk or
walk when we're training them.
00:12:39
They understand all of that, and that is far more powerful than any spoken word ever could be. Our dogs
may not understand our words, but they live inside of the emotional truth that we share with them every
single day. And that's where the subtlety happens. The elevation of one dog, either a past dog or a
current dog to the status of your heart dog, your soul dog, your once in a lifetime dog.
It isn't that I just don't like the phrasing. It's that I want the best for you. I want the best for dogs. I want
dogs and their people to live their best lives. And your best lives, means a life without limits, especially
self-imposed limits. Because one of those dogs becomes our gold standards, and every other dog is
measured up to that dog.
00:13:30
It doesn't matter if we say it, we never say it out loud. It doesn't matter if we never speak to either dog.
And I know nobody intends on being unfair, and I know you love all of those dogs, but there's a difference.
And the other dogs know it. Because comparison doesn't have to be conscious to be influential.
And that's the cost of labels. And that's why this is the second Shaped by Dog episode I'm making,
encouraging you to be careful and conscious of how you limit your dogs with labels. Yes, even the good
ones, the moment you decide one dog is the best one ever, you immediately lower the ceiling for any
other dog that follows.
00:14:14
You immediately limit the ceiling of any other dog that lives in your household. And that's exactly why the
post I created on Facebook created such an emotional outburst. Over 700 comments on that post. It was
a frenzy. People weren't just reacting to the words that they read on my post. They were reacting to the
beliefs that they had in their own mind.
And how those words didn't fit with their own beliefs. And why were the comments so emotional?
Because it was what felt like an attack on an identity that you hold. Because that's what beliefs are.
Beliefs are what create the identity of who we are.
00:14:57
One commenter thought I was dismissing grief because I said I was motivated to write this when one of
my students said their newest dog just didn't measure up since they lost their soulmate dog two years
ago. Another person thought I was criticizing love and made the assumption that I just have never loved
a dog deeply like they have.
And yet another person insisted that I wrote the post about them. The same words were read by many
different people, yet wildly different meanings were assigned to those words. It's not because the people
that were reading the post were foolish people. It's because of the programming of the brain.
00:15:39
It's because of the Reticular Activation System and the confirmation bias that's running in each of our
brains, confirming our beliefs. We're never reacting to just words. We're reacting to the story that those
words represent to us.
Let me make a distinction. There's a very big difference between saying, “This dog changed my life.” and
“This dog is my one and only.” The first is gratitude for an amazing soul. The second is a limitation for
both yourself, and for your dogs. The first honors what you've had. The second predicts what can never
happen again.
00:16:22
One keeps a door of possibility open. One quietly closes that door forever. And that's why I love
celebrating gratitude. It keeps possibility open forever. The philosophy I hold is that every dog that comes
into our lives has a possibility to change our lives profoundly. Each dog brings different lessons, different
gifts, different laughter, different pain.
Some dogs feel like they've been here before, like we're living another life over again. Some dogs may
feel more difficult, different challenges, different gifts, different opportunity for us to grow. But
extraordinary doesn't need to be a one-time event. It doesn't have to be reserved for one dog.
00:17:07
It's a specialness that can emerge over and over again if we leave our heart open to that possibility.
Because every dog has the possibility of being extraordinary if we leave ourselves open to that story. So,
I'm going to leave you with a question.
Have you been limiting what's possible for your dogs by a story that you've been telling yourself? How
has this story served you and how by letting that story go, can you grow?
It could be defining what you see as a behavioral quirk. It could be defining by what you perceive as the
dog's talent in a sport that you have. It could be defining a breed trait that you think is a limitation. And it
could be defining the dog as the special one, the one and only, the love you will never, ever have again.
00:18:01
Then ask yourself, is this a story worth hanging onto? What could be possible in my life if I let go of that
story? Awareness is what changes that story and the openness for gratitude and what's possible. Science
continually shows us something fascinating.
What we believe shapes what we notice. What we notice shapes how we behave. How we behave
shapes the life we get to have. It shapes the relationships we enjoy. It shapes how we show up for people
and our dogs in our lives. So, what I was suggesting in that post, and what I'm suggesting in this episode
isn't to love your dogs less. It's to love every dog without limits.
00:18:48
It's to love with full possibilities. It's to constantly be curious about if you think this might be a limitation,
ask yourself, ‘If that wasn't true, what else could be true?’ What's another story that I could be telling
myself that helps raise that dog up? Which helps raise me up, which helps both of us have the best life
possible.
Because one of the greatest gifts we can give every dog that comes into our lives is to refuse to put a
ceiling on how extraordinary they could become. Because the stories we tell ourselves about our dogs
don't create the relationships we have with them, they create the relationships we live with them.
00:19:29
Thank you for joining me today. And as always, stay curious, stay humble, and keep making life amazing
at both ends of the leash. I'll see you next time right here on Shaped by Dog.
