Unless I control the dog the dog controls my moods - or does he?

I have discovered the secret to controlling Barney barndog. It is by doling out miniscule portions of wet cat food (known in the vernacular as ‘jelly meat’) whenever he behaves as I desire. World domination is mine, provided I keep up stocks of Gourmet cat food. (Manufacturers please note, I’m ripe for a sponsorship deal here.) It occurred to me last night that I write about my dog so much in this blog that it’s a dog blog more a happiness blog. Maybe I should retitle it Bringing up Barney? Authentic Obedience? The How of Dog Training? Hmmm. It’s a thought. (I didn’t say a good one.)

The reality is that Barney’s behavior has a huge impact on my moods. When he is bitey, on days when walking round the yard is made difficult by having to drag behind me the creature attached by the teeth to my trousers or boots, when my hands are bleeding and sore from his nips – I really experience a lot of negative emotions. Anger, hatred, frustration, shame, rage, misery, despair. All my old feelings of failure and inferiority come rushing back. I have to work extra hard not to take it personally, not to project it into the future as a never-ending failure, not to feel my whole life is crappy. In fact as I write I realise it’s about the three p’s of learned optimism – personalization, permanence and pervasiveness. The four p’s when you add in Barney’s accidents on the carpet. (Not the kind of p Martin Seligman had in mind I suspect.)

Now that I’m fully implementing the Dog Listener method life is much happier, and so am I. Today we’ve only had a couple of bitey episodes, strictly confined to the blanket, which soon ceased when I ignored him. Other than that he has been a sweet, playful, loving little dog. Right now he’s sound asleep on one side of the fire while my white cat sleeps on his blanket on the other side. Even Barney’s attempts to take over Bowie’s blanket have been so half-hearted that a look and a raised eyebrow on my part put an end to them. (Barney has a bad case of blanket envy.) Today I feel happy, even light hearted, playful and elated (it’s good to get full value from my thesaurus). It’s easy for me to assume this is because Barney is good. But I know it’s much more to do with how I’m thinking. While it’s tempting to believe that good dog = good mood, I have a lot more control over it than that. It is situations like this that make me glad I know so much about identifying the thoughts that make me feel bad and modifying them. And that I have a copy of The Dog Listener!