Plenty in Life is Free: the book that changed my life and could change yours, too
Plenty in Life is free by Kathy Sdao changed my life. I’m not being dramatic when I say it truly changed my life. And here’s why:
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In the book, Kathy Sdao discusses the relationship between humans and dogs. She discusses how so much of a dog’s life has to be earned for performing for us. That plenty in life is free and we should not only be offering reinformcent to learners, but we should be looking for those opportunities.
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Being in the assistance dog industry at the start of my career, I was so focused on ensuring the dogs I worked with earned every playtime, piece of kibble, and interaction. My personal dogs were being impacted by the same thought process. But, here’s why that type of thinking stuck. Our society encourages it to pervade in our every day lives.
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I can confidently say I’m often a pessimistic person when I look inward. I was shaped by a family culture that relied on feeling good by making other people feel small. I was starting to allow that thinking justify giving a collar correction to a guide dog puppy that pulled towards a friendly stranger, I had stopped giving people the benefit of the doubt, and beat myself up constantly for the smallest mistakes. In short, that book gave me a hard reset, helped me move past my own mistakes, and move forward with a different way of thinking.
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Reading that book allowed me to focus on seeing people and animals right where they were. It helped shift my mindset past expecting them to be perfect and seeing where they were in the present. And looking for the good right in front of me. It turns out, I was able to find (and reinforce) a lot of.
