26/05/2025
I'm out on a walk in Calgary and me thinks a storm is brewing!!!
There’s that palpable tension in the air.
There’s wind, yet also stillness.
There’s heat, but also coolness.
There’s a charge to the air that you can’t see, but you know is there.
Naturally (well, if you know how my brain works anyways) this makes me think of conflict and the gaps (differences) that create the potential for conflict.
Gaps between what a dog experiences and what they want (or need) to experience.
Gaps between our dogs and us, who they are and who we want them to be.
Gaps between dogs and other dogs, people and other people.
That space "between," held in the gap, is full of potential for growth, connection, learning, and evolution. Or it can be a destructive force.
As behaviour consultants, guardians, humans, we feel that energy all the time.
We say something to a client, friend or family member and there is tension.
We can feel the tension between us and a dog, or between a dog and another dog. Sometimes it can be subtle i.e., you want to go in one direction on your walk and your dog wants to go in the other (see my entire relationship with Mouse for details..😆 🤣)
In that moment, in the middle of the gap, in that place that holds tension, we have a choice.
We can lean into it and harness it as a catalyst for transformation (and just in case in the abstract-ness of my post this is unclear - I do not mean letting the dogs just work it out!)
Or we can run from it, push it down, distract from it, and miss the opportunity and we can get caught up in the storm.
Tension isn’t the enemy. And neither is conflict.
It can be a powerful catalyst for growth.
