The Power of 5 minutes!

Sometimes I think it’s easy to get overwhelmed thinking about all the things you need to or want to work on with your dogs, we can get paralyzed thinking about all we have to do and not ever get around to actually getting out there and doing it. For myself I have found it easiest to just pick one thing I want to work on, and give it 5 minutes a day each day.

So for example, when I brought Julia home I had SO many things I needed to work on since she was a feral, terrified, completely untrained and unsocialized 6 month old puppy. After giving her 2 weeks to just land and get to know us, instead of trying to fix all of those things I started with just 5 minutes a day conditioning her to feel safe with me putting her collar and leash on and off. That was it. Then about a week later when she was ok with that, I then chose to work on her interest in playing with me. It took me 2 months of trying for 5 minutes a day, but then it clicked! And now play is her favorite love language. For the month of May I chose her weave poles, 5 minutes a day I pull them out and we work on them, and now a few weeks later they are almost completely trained.

5 minutes is so easy to work into my day and all it costs me is like 5 minutes of time I would have probably wasted scrolling on social media. And I think my favorite part is, since I have only committed to 5 minutes anything over that feels great, but if I only give it 5, I have still met my goal. Usually it does lead to more! The HABIT of working together makes us both enjoy doing more of it, and that is reinforcing for us both. Seeing results is reinforcing! Because the reality is her reactivity is a HUGE process that takes time, so all of these little goals I set with my 5 minutes gets us closer and that in turn is making her reactivity easier to work on.

For the month of July I will be sharing an exercise a day that takes less than 5 minutes if you want to give it a try! Or maybe you have other things you want to work on? I challenge you to commit for 2 weeks to training something, anything, for 5 minutes every day and see what your results are after 2 weeks!