The Magic is in the pause

I had an epiphany while putting my daughter down for a nap.

This past week, I've had a lot of dogs working on duration—staying in a down, settling on a bed, learning to remain somewhere while life continues around them. They are learning a difficult skill.

And it got me thinking about how much we ask of dogs that many of us struggle to do ourselves.

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We live in a world that constantly promises us more for less.

Better results in less time.

More convenience with less effort.

More information with less searching.

More answers with less uncertainty.

More progress with less discomfort.

There is nothing wrong with wanting efficiency. The problem starts when efficiency gets confused with exemption.

And maybe that's another version of wanting more for less: believing we can purchase the outcome without participating in the process.

Our tolerance for waiting—and maybe even our comfort with doing absolutely

nothing—is getting smaller and smaller.

So when someone tells me they want their dog to lie calmly on a bed while they cook dinner, talk to someone, or go about their life, I sometimes ask:

When was the last time you sat still for three minutes, calmly observed your environment, and didn't respond, react, or reach for your phone?

The response is usually pretty telling....... This is not coming from a place of judgment, it is a question meant to invite perspective.

Occasionally, someone will tell me they meditate.

So I'll ask, "When you first started, how long did you do it?"

Thirty seconds. A minute. Three minutes.

They practiced.

And even more importantly, they understood why they were practicing. As humans, we can understand that sitting through something that initially feels boring, frustrating, or uncomfortable may serve some future goal.

Our dogs can't understand some abstract future benefit of practicing a three-minute down so we have to make the behavior worth learning and build the skills that allow them to succeed.

I'll save the science and actual roadmap of teaching duration for another post, because somewhere in thinking about all of this, I realized: This isn't actually a blog about duration. It's about the pause—and what happens inside of us while we're waiting for change.

Just because something is uncomfortable doesn't mean it isn't working.

And just because something isn't happening quickly doesn't mean it isn't working either. (This is a hill I will die on becasue i've been professionally training for so long.... change takes time!)

I think we've become so accustomed to immediacy that sometimes we interpret discomfort as evidence that something has gone wrong.

The dog gets frustrated.

The child cries.

We become uncomfortable.

And suddenly there is an enormous urge to do something.

Change the plan. Repeat ourselves. Help more. Remove the boundary. Increase the pressure. Make the uncomfortable feeling stop.

But sometimes the most important learning is happening in the space where nothing appears to be happening yet.

THE MAGIC

IS IN

THE PAUSE.

That doesn't mean all discomfort should be pushed through.

Part of good teaching is recognizing the difference between a learner experiencing a manageable challenge and one who is overwhelmed—and knowing when to adjust the criteria, environment, or level of support.

But I've also learned that discomfort doesn't automatically mean stop.

Sometimes it means:

Give it a second.

And I've realized that our ability to allow that pause has a lot to do with what we bring into it.

You cannot give what you don't have.

That sentence has been sitting heavily with me.

I have been in the hands of AA since I was 17. I just turned 37, page 164 of the Big Book READS "The answers will come if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got."

I grew up, particularly in my younger years, with a lot of "do as I say, not as I do."

Like many of the working dogs

I find myself drawn to, I was

incredibly tuned into my environment.

I noticed nuances. I noticed inconsistencies.

Being asked to operate within expectations that weren't always modeled clearly left me frustrated and confused.

Later, that became defiance. Rebellion. Frustration. I was emotionally exhausted, confused, and my nervous system could not settle. (Sound familiar, insert picture of 90% of the dogs that come to me)

I was being asked to operate in the world with skills that hadn't necessarily been modeled for me nor taught to me.

It wasn't being modeled.

It wasn't being reinforced.

Therefore, it wasn't clear.

For a long time, I described myself as someone who had to "learn everything the hard way."

I don't see it that way anymore.

I'm an experiential learner.

I learn through action, trial, feedback, adjustment, and trying again.

Things that were once described as me being tenacious or having a "strong personality," I now recognize differently.

There is resilience there.

There is an internal sense of knowing.

There is a willingness to try again after something doesn't work.

And the more I understand that about myself, the more I recognize versions of it in the dogs I work with. My guess is... if you've read this far, you can relate.

Consistency requires more than knowing the rules.

We talk constantly in dog training about consistency.

"Just be consistent."

But what does that actually require?

I've started thinking about consistency differently:

Consistency requires enough emotional bandwidth to tolerate someone else's response to your consistency.

A dog whines.

A dog gets frustrated.

A dog breaks position.

A child cries.

And now you are uncomfortable.

Can you stay clear without becoming harsh?

Can you provide support without immediately removing the boundary?

Can you recognize struggle without assuming struggle means failure?

Can you give the learner enough time to process instead of immediately jumping in and solving the problem for them?

Over the last couple of weeks, I've changed some things in my own life.

I've been prioritizing sleep, eating differently, and intentionally taking better care of myself.

I've noticed that I have access to emotional bandwidth that I didn't have before.

That became incredibly obvious while working on something we've been struggling with at home: getting my daughter to fall asleep independently.

Ironically, she already does this at school every day.

At home? Completely different story.

So my partner and I created a predictable routine.

The philosophy that has been ingrained in my from my time in program, and is pretty simple:

Say what I mean, but don't say it mean.

We read a book.

She gets into bed.

I rub her back for two minutes.

I tell her I love her, and then I leave, and tell her I will come back to check on her.

When we started, I went back in every couple of minutes. A pat. A kiss.

Reassurance. Then I left again.

There were tears.

There was discomfort.

And the first night, I went back five or six times.

But I didn't need to make her discomfort disappear in order to support her through it.

I ALSO DIDN'T NEED TO ABANDON THE BOUNDARY

IN ORDER TO BE LOVING.

By day three, I only needed to go back twice.

But something else had changed too.

I was able to tolerate the process.

I wasn't interpreting every cry as evidence that the plan wasn't working.I wasn't becoming frustrated because the result wasn't happening fast enough.

I had enough bandwidth to be compassionate and consistent.

And that made me think about how often I see the exact same struggle between people and their dogs.

Now, raising a child and teaching a dog are obviously not the same thing.

I started noticing an interesting overlap in what good teaching was asking of me.

There are two nervous systems in the room.

We tend to focus almost entirely on the learner.

What is the dog doing?

How is the child responding?

Is it working?

Are they improving?

But the learner isn't the only one having an experience.

While my daughter was learning a new bedtime routine, I was practicing something too.

She was learning what to expect.

I was learning that I could support her through discomfort without immediately needing to eliminate it.

She was practicing something difficult.

So was I.

And the same thing happens when we're teaching our dogs. Sometimes we're asking a dog to tolerate frustration, excitement, waiting, uncertainty, or simply the absence of immediate gratification.

But at the exact same moment, the human is being asked to tolerate something too.

The whining.

The movement.

The imperfect repetition.

The fact that yesterday looked better than today.

The feeling that maybe we're not progressing quickly enough.

The temptation to intervene.

The pause..........................

It is a huge part of what good teaching requires.

Not perfection.

Not endless patience.

Not never becoming frustrated.

But enough awareness to recognize when our own discomfort is about to become the learner's problem.

I don't believe in leaving a child to struggle indefinitely any more than I believe in leaving a dog to struggle until they simply "figure it out."

That's not what I'm talking about.

I believe in support.

I believe in clarity.

I believe in reinforcement.

I believe in boundaries.

I believe in following through.

And I believe we have a responsibility to make sure the skills we're asking for have actually been taught.

And I have to be willing to apply that same honesty to my own profession.

I have built intensive programs specifically because concentrated training, professional support and more opportunities to practice can be incredibly valuable.

There is nothing wrong with wanting help. And there is nothing wrong with wanting efficiency.

But I refuse to sell the fantasy that hiring a professional exempts someone from participating in the process.

You can outsource some of the training.

YOU CANNOT

OUT SOURCE

THE RELATIONSHIP

Eventually, the trainer leaves.

And what remains is the design for living you've created with your dog—the daily interactions, the reinforcement, the management, the expectations, the practice, the repair when things don't go perfectly.

That's why I'm so transparent with my clients about what happens after intensive training. I'm not trying to create a dog who only knows how to succeed with me.

I'm trying to help create skills that can live inside your actual life together.

And maintaining those skills requires participation.

But I also believe discomfort isn't automatically harmful.

Frustration isn't automatically failure.

And slow isn't the same thing as stuck.

Sometimes the learner needs another repetition.

Sometimes they need more support.

Sometimes we need to change the plan.

And sometimes...

they just need a moment.

Maybe we do too.

Because whether I'm teaching a dog, coaching a person, raising my children, or continuing to work on myself, I keep coming back to the same truth:

You cannot give what you don't have.

And sometimes the most powerful thing we can give another living being isn't another cue, another explanation, or another solution.

It's clarity.

It's consistency.

It's support.

And then it's enough space for learning to happen.

The magic is in the pause Happy Training,

Heather <3