Time is precious, that’s why we should spend it wisely. Once gone, a moment or opportunity won’t ever come back. Especially the experience made at a young age can influence our whole adult life. Changing a fundament that was built way back in time is often very difficult.
As mentioned in yesterday’s blogpost, we currently have a little guest: Amadeus is a Miniature Schnauzer (in other words: a small dog), and since he is just 8 weeks old, he is still a very unexperienced puppy. Many situations of everyday life are still new to to him.
So currently he shares the house with Mio. Mio is a 5-year-old Podenko-Mix (see picture on top). We took him from an Hungarian pound in the middle of April this year. He lived in a kennel for the last two years and we do not know for sure, how his life looked like before that. It is probable that he was a caught stray dog, abandoned by his former human family or brought there diretcly from a killing-station. Anyways, although he started to enjoy living with us and built his confidence greatly, in certain situations he shows signs of fear and after-effects of abuse.
Today we visited the Animal Training Center for the 10th anniversary celebration and official opening festivity of their new indoor training hall. They train diabetic alert dogs, like Donatella, a labrador-lady who was living with us for seven months two years ago. This was her with Sarah in 2014, when Dona was just about 14 weeks old:
At this event also several of the “graduated” diabetic alert dogs were present. None of them has obvious fears of everyday life situations due to the great training and socialization they received during their first weeks.
The magic of the beginnings
This obvious display between Mio, Amadeus and Dona today made me think how precious the early period of a life is, no matter if it is animal or human. Within the first 16 weeks of their life, dogs should experiene as many situations as possible, connecting them with positive feelings. They are basically conditioned to be at good terms with any situation they experierence, using a treat they like best: food and playing. Through the training, they gain big confidence, which reduces later fears or stresses when they meet unknown situations.
For humans I remember that the first six years are the crucial ones concerning taking over imprints from adults or parents. Many fears we develope later can often be traced back to some event in our early childhood that determined our behaviour.
The interesting thing is, that getting used to fearful situations as a kid is fairly easy. You only need someone to guide you properly, reassuring you in times when you fear your environment most and reinforcing you to positively open up to it maybe providing a supporting surrounding condition and the possibility to make experiences for yourself, being there if it might turn out frightening.
But how much more difficult is it to dig down to your roots of pain and fear if you hadn’t been provided with such a childhood? It’s harder to learn how to go about with fears and change learned behavioural patterns as an adult.
How can we free ourselves again from unnecessarily hindering blokages and change our way of thinking and acting on perceived threads from the outside? I guess the best is to be aware of what happens inside of us. Maybe we can use the help of of another person who makes us aware of our reactions. Then we can look at it from a distance and in this moment of stopping the action we have the chance to reframe the situation and act differently.
How can we best help those who cannot find the right path and the strength to navigate out of this trap of negative habits alone?
Photo taken by Sarah Sutter (www.picsie-dust.at).
Tale Straight 