Lessons from the Fun Walks

The Powerful Paragraph

I’ve recently adopted the concept of “fun walks” with my 9-month old puppy. For the longest time, I’ve been treating every walk we take (three times per day) as a training walk. I thought I was doing what’s best for him. Recently, however, he’s been more resistant to going on walks, sometimes outright refusing, digging his claws into the grass and refusing to cross the street. I stumbled across the concept of “fun walks” and decided to give it a try. Instead of insisting that he stay by my side for the entirety of the walk, I let him sniff around as much as he’d like. I still use commands if he starts to pull or misbehaves, but I don’t require him to stay glued to my side. Since we started the fun walks, he’s not only happy and excited to go on walks at lunch, but he’s been even more well-behaved on his morning and evening walks, as well. I realized that the hyper focused nature of the walks was killing his love of walks in the first place, and it made me wonder how often we do that to ourselves. How often do we hyper fixate on becoming the master of a task that we lose sight of the enjoyment and fun we once got out of that same task?