All about that attentional focus
Impulsivity, attention and risk
Hey there, gorgeousnesses. I hope the mud is abating somewhat for you - we had a few glitters of sunshine and blue. I even had to break my sunglasses out one day last week. Things were a-stirring.
I feel like I achieved nothing last week. Nothing got finished off. Everything hangs in loose ends, unresolved. I’ve about twenty documents open, unfinished. A bunch of sticky-notes with half-hearted, incomplete messages on them. I even got to the supermarket with my shopping list, missed half the things on it and wondered why I’d written ‘HANDWRITING!’ in big letters and drawn a spiky box around it. I forgot to get bananas, dried apricot, cornflour - a single ingredient from every single meal I plan on making this week. This is the story of my life.
I have no reason for the dramatic HANDWRITING! though.
Did I really think I could buy some handwriting in among the apples, oranges and pears?
I don’t even know why I wrote that. I’ve returned to the chaos of brain fog, not only starting things and never finishing them, but putting things in the wrong place so I have no idea what they mean.
I had a phone call on Friday morning from a friend who judges continental herding in Europe, wanting to know if I could find him a person who herds sheep in Wales with a Welsh collie. He’s been moved in his duties to include collies (don’t ask!) and normally such efficient herders are disqualified from continental herding competitions (well, they have their own branch on the whole) but he was struggling to understand the difference of the Welsh collies compared to the Borders & Lakeland collies. He had many questions! Lidy and I had a run-in with a Welsh sheep the other week and let me say the Welsh sheep are nothing like the mild, sweet sheep of the European lowlands, so I understood why my friend wanted to get a real feel for the landscape which requires a Welsh collie, less in need of a strong eye and guidance from a shepherd, than a Border. It’s always the little things. He’s never been to Wales, so a trip is on the cards.
Funnily enough, last week was a very herdy week. Not least one dog taking umbrage at a collie giving him a hard stare. NOT doing the things it feels comfortable to do is very hard. There were a lot of car-chasers in there as well.
In fact, having had an almost head-to-head stare down with a sheep in Wales, Lidy had a few laps of stalk-trotting before she went back to doing whatever she was doing before - it’s really hard to describe this fast, smooth and efficient movement so typical of the Belgians and Dutch herders - all straight back, low head, heels up at the steadiest of paces. I love watching the different ways dogs move. The beauceron always get me - least efficient movement ever! Their rocking horse gallop has none of the intensity or elegance but they just look like those big people who run for the love of running rather than because they are any good at it. I love watching them tongue out, ears flapping, looking like they might just take off given a stiff breeze and a dramatic weight-loss of about 25kg. Do you ever get those moments where you wish you could just know everything about dogs? I found it really hard to get off the phone with my friend as we were just geeking out about dogs.
Anyway, it’s my goal this week to finish some things off, at least. At least I got to watch videos of dogs.
Last week’s Compendium
Another busy client-y/colleague-y week. How it is lovely to spend the days talking about dogs with such lovely people. If that means I’m less productive, so be it. Same this week, with lots of herdy dogs.
I shared a blog post about when to medicate for anxiety - had a fair few chats about medicine last week which obviously I cannot profess to answer - but it’s nice to find those times when it makes a real difference. The more we know about when and how things work, the better, in my opinion. More Studies Needed!
I shared my ‘behind the scenes’ video which I confess took me 97000 to write and record. How do people create 2-minute content when it takes so long to edit everything? This is just another reason for shying away from the land of Reels, Stories and TikTok. All the flipping editing is hard work and I’m not motivated enough to care about it. Also, when I do it, it looks rubbish. I need to go on a course in the New Year. I can’t say it’ll win me over, but it’s been on my list since August. Adobe Premiere is a thousand times more complicated than I can cope with. I need to learn it properly. I kind of grew up with Photoshop and Publishing stuff, but editing video is just massively unappealing to me on account of just how bad I am at it.
I shared a few FB posts - not as many as I’d have liked. Too much in-person (hoorah!) and faffing about. I asked Google four times last week if Mercury was retrograde. Apparently not. One was on the topic of when a behaviour consultant can help before the vet… I’m glad I posted that one actually. I got a few messages of support from other colleagues who said the same, and then an onslaught (three) posts I saw over the weekend from behaviour bods saying that they don’t work without a vet sign-off. I kind of feel sad about that. So many people could really benefit from training & support beforehand and a bit of guidance. As a lovely friend pointed out, with vet visits now costing so much in the UK and USA, it’s just adding to client bills.
I’m also collecting examples of social media escalations from the Mills study I shared about in last week’s blog. I felt a bit mean (well, a lot mean) calling out trainers who proliferate the “80% of dogs” message - you know, that message that 80% of aggressive/reactive/fearful behaviour is rooted in pain - which is NOT what the report concludes AT ALL, and this week, there was a new exaggerated misreading of 85%. I’m still in the ‘chunnering to myself in angry frustration’ stage of this because I know how much harm it does, but I’ve decided I’m going to start politely calling this out. It’s not fair if people think their dog will completely stop being a knob with a month of metacam. Having had one client who ran up over 4000€ of medical bills and caused her dog to have a very violent reaction to vets, and having heard one US-based vet behaviourist confess that one dog had over $3500 of tests with no result, I’m keen NOT to give my own clients false hope and to be reasoned and scientifically informed. I like to remind myself that the vast majority of the cases in that study were identified through physical examination, not a gazillion weird, obscure, expensive tests. I’m just off to ask if Mercury is retrograde for the 5th time and to take some kind of mindfulness meditation to find my calm.
There was also a short post about safety too
It was also the last week of the Frustration Masterclass for 2023. Doors will re-open in August 2024 and the course will be live once more on Monday 2nd September 2024. Until then, I’m happy to (kind of) wave good-bye to frustration for a while. It of course affects impulsivity (or impulsivity affects it) but I feel happy to stick a pin in frustration for a while. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned since this time last year. It’s been eye-opening. I feel like I’ve gone from throwing spaghetti at the wall to knowing exactly how to approach things. Hoorah! I feel sensible about it. I can truly say I loved writing that course. It slayed about a hundred demons I had over it.
On The Cards
It’s all about the impulsivity from here on in I think. Impulsivity blogs. Impulsivity FB posts. Yes, it is all that my brain is full of. At least there are themes! I don’t suppose I’ll be off the ‘Impulsivity’ train until at least mid-February. It’s clearly a lot broader than reactivity. Far from all impulsive dogs are reactive. Far from all reactive dogs are impulsive. Nailing frustration and impulsivity first really does make such a difference though. I’m long past thinking one approach can solve all - we definitely need to tailor things a lot. There is of course a lot of crossover. Scaffolding dogs for success and gradually removing the level of support needed is definitely one.
Blog post coming up on the Lighten Up website on Tuesday about differentiating different facets of impulsivity helpfully in ways that can help us support dogs more precisely. That said, every single dog I’ve talked about for at least the last three weeks has impulsivity in a lot of different domains.
I’ve got a couple of FB posts too. If I’ve time, I’m really going to try and squeeze in a Q&A session about the new Impulsivity course - lots of people have been asking me about it, so I’m going to try and tackle all those important questions.
Substack on Thursday is a book review of the very excellent Dogopolis by Chris Pearson. This really helps provide a historical, legal and sociological context for why our dogs have so few freedoms in Westernised places, so it fits right in with the whole ‘freedom’, ‘free will’, ‘choice’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘agency’ thing. It’s also a lovely book about dogs in London, Paris & New York, perhaps providing some idea about the sometimes heart-breaking ways we moved from a world of Tramps to a world of Ladies. Without the rose-tinted spectacles and the Disney-fication of course.
In other news…
I managed to record 0 sessions for the Impulsivity course. Aces! Guess what I’m doing this week?!
I was supposed to be recording 3 a week, and now I’m flat on my face at the start line. Catch-up sessions and late-night candle-burning sessions ahoy.
I also managed to read about 5 pages of Expectancy & Emotion. It’s very thought-provoking but I went down about ten rabbit holes I shouldn’t have gone down. I didn’t even finish Human Traces. I despair of myself. I also bought three new books which are now also looking at me with despair.
I’d blame last week’s mud and Lidy’s sudden seasonal moulting but I can’t even say I’ve cleaned those things up. I simply have no idea where last week went. I did nothing. I went nowhere. 168 hours evaporated. I’m guessing a lot of them were meetings, consults and catch-ups!
Have a very lovely week, and spare a moment to think of me, crying into my to-do list, hoping I get to cross off at least one or two things this week!