How Does Your Lifestyle Affect Your Dog?

Your Dog’s Behavior Might Be a Lifestyle Issue (Yours, Not Theirs)

You can teach your dog to sit, stay, and spin like a circus performer, but if you’re constantly tired, anxious, distracted, or checked out, your dog is going to feel it.

And those feelings will be reflected in their behavior, no matter what you've taught them.

I’ve seen this play out hundreds of times with clients and in my own life. When I was broke, overworked, and living off Cheerios and canned tuna, my dog Batman knew over twenty tricks, but if I didn't have a treat to bribe him with or he wasn't in the mood, he would become very uncooperative.

Not because he was a bad dog, but because my lifestyle made me a cranky, impatient, and untrustworthy leader.

Your Lifestyle Matters to Your Dog

Here’s why: Your dog is always responding to the environment you create for them, and your well being is the most important part of that environment. If your work life, sleep, diet, and social life all suck, you everything you do with your dog will suffer.

Dogs need routine, certainty, and rest. If your days are chaotic, theirs will be too. And whatever challenges having a dog presents, you won't be at your best when facing them.

If you feel like you might be stuck in an unhealthy circumstance, there is some good news...

Small Hinges Swing Big Doors

You don't need to fix everything all at once. All you need to do is make small, consistent changes in your lifestyle and stick with them. Over time, a tiny improvement in your sleep will give you more energy. That energy can be used to exercise or walk with your dog an extra five minutes. That extra exercise will put you in a slightly better mood. Being in a better mood will make training with your dog easier. When training is easier, you'll do it more often.

A hike once a week can make a huge difference.

Little shifts in the right direction will always snowball into a better quality of life for you and your dog. And there are so many ways to start:

• Better Sleep - Buy a blackout curtain for your bedroom, go to bed 30 minutes earlier, or turn off screens an hour before sleep.

• Better Diet - Eat healthier fats and avoid seed oils, make your own food at home rather than eating out, or simply drink more water during the day.

• Better Relationships - Spend more time with friends and family that are positive and working on improving their lives too.

• Better Body - Walk an extra twenty minutes every day with your dog, join a gym or fitness class, take the stairs at work rather than the elevator.

• Better Mind - Read books or listen to podcasts that help you learn more about health and wellness, start a hobby that forces you to learn, or spend some time traveling to a new place (even locally).

Remember this golden rule of lifestyle improvement: Something, no matter how small of an improvement, is infinitely better than nothing.

Trust me, your dog and your future self will thank you.