Why a dog matters to your leadership style
I’m in the midst of redesigning my website. One of the primary goals is to integrate this blog so it has the same look and feel as the website. Which means I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to articulate why this dog-inspired blog should beintegrated to my consulting practice. One might wonder […]
Recognition makes you feel good, among other things
We all know how good it feels when we receive recognition. It not only puts a smile on our face but it has other significant benefits, too. It motivates us to do more of what gave us the positive reinforcement and therefore increases our confidence. These are important aspects for productivity and happiness. The recognition […]
Nose-to-nose with a snapping turtle? What would you do?
I’ve never seen a baby snapping turtle before this past weekend. But I can thank Grace for the experience. My husband and I were enjoying a quiet afternoon by the small river that runs behind our property (some people call it a creek, I refer to it as a river as it technically is, but […]
Is this as good as it gets?
Next weekend Grace and I will be attending a two-day class together. It’s for dogs that are fearful, aggressive or reactive. Grace can be all of them, in varying degrees. I submitted an application to have her considered as a case study and she was accepted. Since I’ve tried lots of things to improve these […]
Missed opportunities for leadership
In my last post,I talked about situations where we might step in too aggressively and lead through some event or task when it would have been better to follow. Some people are just natural leaders and they are comfortable taking control of any situation – especially when there is a void and no one else […]
Racing to be the lead dog doesn’t always make you a winner
Grace loves the woods. On many Sunday mornings we go for a walk with a small group of people in search of mushrooms.She’s always in motion out there and I absolutely love to watch her graceful moves as she navigates around, over, and through a variety of natural obstacles in her way. On rare occasions […]
Learning anything complex takes time—don’t shortchange the process
One of the agility obstacles that Grace and I have not spent a lot of time with is the weave poles. When first learning this particular skill, the poles are “open” to create a channel that the dog walks through. Eventually, the goal is to have poles “closed” or set in a straight line so […]
Sometimes you really need to state the obvious—sometimes the obvious just isn’t that obvious Part 2
At last weekend’s “Show and Go” agility event, there were lots of obvious things going on as I described in Part 1. There were also things that weren’t so obvious to me. The whole point of this particular event is to expose the team (handler and dog) to a new environment. We were in a […]
Are you ready for your next hurdle?
Grace is fast. Very fast. One of my challenges in working with her during agility is to keep up with her! My pictures never quite portrayed that sense of motion and so I asked a professional photographer, Annie Card, to join us in a recent class. I love the way Annie captured our movements; the […]
Even walking requires leadership
Grace is very vocal when she wants something. It’s obvious when it’s mealtime or when she wants to sun herself on the deck. She is very explicit in her requests, using her voice (persistent whining) and body (sits in front of me, scratches her paw on me, jumps around if the first two don’t work) […]
