I love training dogs and I love gardening. A perfect day for me consists of both. This got me thinking about all of the similarities. Both require time, patience, management and lots of consistency.
Time
Whether you’re growing vegetables or training a dog, it takes time. Neither will happen over night. Preparation takes time and so does the actual act of dog training. (Or the time it takes for vegetables to actually grow.)
Patience
Not everything will go to plan. Sometimes you’ll be following your training plan perfectly but things can still go wrong. It’s easy to get frustrated when your dog starts to bark at something or when you wake up in the morning and you find that a rabbit has enjoyed a nice breakfast of veggies. These things happen and we need to stay patient.
Management
When we manage properly we prevent unwanted things from happening. With dog training we need to do things like close curtains, use leashes and put up fences. With gardening we also need to put up fences (barriers) to prevent things from getting in and eating all of our riches.
Consistency
Changing behavior is all about getting the new behaviors to happen in place of the old and consistency reinforcing them. With gardening we have to consistently show up to water, pull weeds and fertilize.
Whether you're trying to train your dog or nurture your garden, it takes work. Hard work pays off though.