A couple of weeks ago I let something get the better of me and felt really low and that everything was going wrong for me and my beautiful Hero and I had a bit of a melt down about it. Don't really know why it hit me so hard as I'm actually a very mentally strong person having spent years doing an extremely challenging job which needed me to be strong as any sign of weakness could have put me in danger. But with some stern self talking and help and advice from people on here, we seem to have turned a bit of a corner. It's taken a lot of steps back and there are still the usual issues with having a puppy, especially a 25kg bundle of energy and excitability, but he's my beautiful doggie and I wouldn't be without him. He needs me to remain calm, cool and collected so that he can become the best he can and I will work hard on me to make sure he gets the best from me. He relies on me entirely to provide, play and give him a beautiful life and to help him reach his full potential and be a happy dog. So from now on when something goes wrong, the first questions I will ask is " Is it me? What have I missed? Did I do something wrong? How can I fix it?" This is just my own personal feelings so please nobody take offence and think that I am being critical of anyone because that is not my intention
Hi there - I shared a lot of your same emotions while raising my pup who is now 14 months old. I went through a lot of self doubt at my ability to raise a puppy (even though I had probably done 100 hours of research and planning lol) and when things didn’t go as planned or situations arised that i didn’t have a ton of control over, I would become very anxious which I’m sure transferred over to the other end of the leash. I had to work really hard on developing a relatively stable mind set especially on walks when we couldn’t control who we were gonna run into it or what situations were gonna come up, rather that be with strangers, off leash dogs, etc. I understand where you are coming from when you say you want to ask yourself those specific questions but I also hope you don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Sometimes you can do everything right and things just happen, your pup acts out, they embarrass you, someone criticizes your training, someone criticizes your dog etc. I think my personal biggest struggle raising a puppy was that I lacked my own self confidence and when the tiniest thing went wrong, I really blamed myself and struggled to come back from it. That’s not to say we shouldn’t look at previous situations and think about what we should do better because I 100 percent think we should evaluate what’s best for our animals but not to the point that it’s killing us and we can’t enjoy all the spirit and joy that comes with these sweet dogs. I truly hope that helps, your pup sounds wonderful.
