Thoughts on Confidence

 14 year old Song ran up the ramp to my bed this morning. She has done this several times in the last few days. I built the ramp so the old dogs could get safely on and off the bed, but my first attempt at a secure surface did not provide the traction needed for an old dog to ascend and descend safely. Song slipped a few times and learned to mistrust it. I bought a kit to put a rubberized surface on the ramp. There is no slip on this surface at all, but Song’s risk assessment included many young years of jumping on and off the bed and a short time using a ramp where she slipped. She kept jumping. It did not always go well. She mostly only gets on the bed for our morning play sessions, so I’d close her out of the bedroom until I was ready to take her collar and escort her up the ramp safely. It worked, and I was good with continuing with this plan for as long as I’m able to enjoy her company. I had no expectations of her being able to do the ramp on her own. Then after two months of my helping her, she just started doing it on her own. Up and down, joyfully and confidently.

Confidence in life has a huge genetic component along with the impact of life experiences. Often we blame a dog’s lack of confidence on some incident in their past. Yet, in the words of Beverly Lambert, “another dog might have gotten over that.” Life brings adversities and challenges, in particular the working life of stock dogs. Things go wrong, dogs get frightened or hurt. Many dogs come through strong, some need work to rebuild their confidence, and some never really recover. We should work to always build the confidence of our dogs. We should also value the dogs that are resilient to adversity.

Song has always been confident in life. Given her early earned mistrust of the ramp I did not expect her to use it voluntarily again. But she did. Because I did not expect her to use it again on her own, I did not work towards that goal. I simply prevented her from jumping and helped her on the ramp. I suspect that attitude provided patience that was more useful than a goal to overcome her fear.

Whatever the reasons, it is hard not to smile when my old girl bounces up that ramp happily and barks at me until I deliver the special morning squeak toy.