Accentuate the positive...

Have you heard of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon? Even if you haven't you'll have experienced it. It occurs when something you've just heard about or experienced suddenly starts cropping up everywhere. Like an actor you've never heard of suddenly  being on screen every time you turn on the TV. This morning I posted a short video on my Facebook page about how often we overlook all the lovely behaviours our dogs offer us all the time compared to how easily we home in on their unwanted or problem behaviours, even when those behaviours occur far less often. Then, this afternoon, I was surfing the net and came across this article that touches on the same thing - our pre-programmed, hardwired 'negativity bias' - a phenomenon that means that we pay more attention and give more weight to negative experiences than positive ones. “The mind is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.”             Dr Rick Hansen Negativity bias is why we forget 100 compliments while remembering, verbatim, an insult. It's why we remember failure more than success and it's why we notice negative behaviour in our dogs more than positive behaviour. It's an innate reaction but we can take steps to overcome it by consciously making the effort to notice and acknowledge positive events. Doing so is a skill to be developed like anything else but the more we do it the more proficient we become. In our life with our dogs I think there are two huge benefits of training our eye to notice the good stuff more -   seeing it gives us the opportunity to mark and reinforce it, thereby increasing it; and   being aware and mindful of just how much good behaviour our dogs are already offering us re-frames how we view our dogs. Instead of being labeled because of unwanted behaviours we can see them for the dogs they really are more clearly. It's a skill I'm still working on... Cheers x www.theperfectpuppycompany.co.uk