What Dogs Taught Me About Change

For much of my professional life, I have been fascinated by one question: What makes change possible?

I spent more than two decades working with people as a counselor and educator.

Later, my work took an unexpected turn when I began helping fearful and reactive dogs and their families.

At first glance, those might seem like two very different careers. Instead, the dogs deepened everything I thought I understood about change.

Families often come to me wanting a behavior to stop. They want their dog to stop barking, lunging, freezing, pulling, or reacting. I understand these behaviors. By the time they reach me, their lives may have become organized around avoiding the next difficult moment.

Yet I learned that focusing only on stopping the behavior misses the most important question:

What is happening underneath it?

A dog who is overwhelmed is not necessarily choosing to be difficult. His nervous system may be telling him that he is not safe. More pressure does not create the capacity to respond differently.

Safety does.

When we slow down, observe what the dog is communicating, create predictability, and give him opportunities to recover, something begins to shift. He can notice what once overwhelmed him and gradually learn that another response is possible.

Over time, I realized how human that lesson is.

How often do we tell ourselves to push harder, do better, stop being afraid, or simply get over something?

Real change is rarely forced into existence.

Sometimes the most powerful question we can ask ourselves or someone we are trying to help is not, “Why aren’t you changing?”

It is, “What would make change feel possible?”

I spent years believing my work was about changing behavior. The dogs taught me something even deeper.

Lasting change begins when we create the conditions that make a different response possible.