Pain & Gain

My family and friends laugh at my ability to relate absolutely anything to dog training. It’s true, it’s a primary lens I see the world through. I am currently going through a very real human moment that I can’t help but to draw parallels to the work we do with our clients.

 I am a chronic pain sufferer. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had “back problems”. I started getting arthritis in my big toe when I was 27. It wasn’t until I was 38 that I got a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis, a diagnosis I had to work for, because it wasn’t a “typical presentation”. It runs in my family, so once I made the connection, it made so much sense to me. It explained years of issues with my body that were unexplained. I started treatment, and with this type of autoimmune disease, it’s not uncommon to need to try several different treatments before finding one that works. I’m currently on my 2nd medication, about to switch to a 3rd. Just as important are the things I do to keep my body as mobile as possible, and for close to 5 years I have done weekly private reformer Pilates sessions, regular massage, and have had several rounds of working with a Physical Therapist. On top of that, I’ve also been in several car accidents throughout my life, which obviously hasn’t helped my body stay fully functional. 

Recently, I’ve had a setback. As mentioned, I’m switching meds, because I’m still getting flare ups. This past year I’ve been more diligent than ever about doing my PT exercises and trying to keep my body working right. Yet, sometime in the early part of the year, I started experiencing an intermittent pain deep in my hip. It was hard to explain, and popped up at the most random times. Like a car that won’t make the noise when the mechanic test drives it, the pain was never triggered during Pilates or massage, making it harder to pin down a cause. Mid-year I brought it up to my rheumatologist, and she recommended I go back to PT. For reasons relating to a mix of ADHD hindered scheduling acumen and how popular my PT is, because she’s awesome, it took me from July to October to get in to see her. In that time, this somewhat annoying, intermittent pain became a frequent nagging pain. And then, for complex reasons I won’t explain relating to my current body’s state, going to PT irritated things enough to compress my sciatic nerve. Ouch. I’ve had to cancel some classes as pain has consumed my days. I promise this is coming back to dog training, and that I am going to be OK. 

What was happening is that I have been building up strength and mobility in one very specific context, my reformer Pilates sessions. If you aren’t familiar with reformer Pilates, go watch a YouTube video, but basically it’s a machine that is set up to perform exercises in such a way that it’s difficult to compensate with incorrect muscle groups. My body is the Queen of Compensation. Pilates has helped me strengthen specific muscle groups, but unfortunately a lifetime of other muscles compensating wasn’t overcome with these weekly sessions. I had also started to do some of my PT exercises incorrectly at home, thinking I was helping myself, but accidentally creating some bad habits. 

OK, so let’s take this back to dogs. Many of the dogs we work with are dealing with chronic issues that lead to less than desirable behavior. In many cases, there is no clear cause and effect to these behaviors - sometimes we suspect there may be a physical problem, but diagnostic testing isn’t showing a cause, sometimes we can identify when the issue started, and other times it develops slowly over time until it feels impossible to live with. Sometimes it feels hard to explain what we are seeing in our dogs’ behavior, and even if you know you need help, it’s hard to know where to turn. Some of our clients work with multiple care providers, vet behaviorists, trainers, and other specialists to meet their dog’s needs. All of this feels so familiar to my chronic pain journey! 

What happened to me with this setback happens with our clients, and to anyone working on solving their dog’s behavior problems. We build up skills in specific contexts, and it feels good to be working toward our goals. When those skills are put to the test in a new context, they don’t always meet our expectations based on the amount of work we’ve put in. We feel defeated. Haven’t we spent months, sometimes even years, building up these skills? What I have been learning in my pain journey is that all of that work that I’ve done is paying off. Even though I hadn’t been strengthening my muscles exactly how they needed to work to support my back, I have gained a lot of strength. I’ve built routines that allow me to follow through with the new exercises I need to do. I’ve learned to pay attention to my body in new ways that allow me to honor my limits instead of pushing through. 

All of the skills you are working so hard to build in your dog aren’t going to guarantee that you will never have a setback with their behavior. The work you do with your dog allows you to recover the situation more quickly. It helps you recognize the weak spots that you need to work through in future set-ups. You have learned to pay attention to your dog in ways that allow you to honor their limits. We all wish there could be easy, straightforward answers to the various challenges we face in life, whether it’s chronic pain, or a dog with very big feelings about the world. As we face these challenges, we begin to learn that there are valuable lessons along the way that will help us to face the next challenge. When we can see the bigger picture, we recognize that this setback is a small piece of a much larger narrative that shapes our dogs’ lives, and ours.