Learning from our mistakes is not usually fun. Screwing up can be psychologically devastating. It can feel like a real setback and maybe it is for a time. But if you learn from your mistake you can change the meaning of that mistake and while it was terrible at the time you can help it to become a strength for you personally.

I made a critical mistake with my dog Paxton, which caused him to bite me.

The actual physical act I committed that initiated the bite was a mistake in and of itself, but there was more to it than that. I made other mistakes along the way. I think one of those mistakes is taking on too much. I have a lot of passions and goals in life. There are things I care about and it is important to me to accomplish things that are related to my beliefs. However, everyone has limits. We cannot do everything that we would like to. We can’t be involved in every project or task or endeavor that we feel is important. When we do this we risk burnout and that is when mistakes are made.

I am now learning that I have been heaping more and more on my plate regardless of the consequences. Most of which are relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But the consequences of my simple behavior towards Paxton were devastating.

I am a husband with a full time job, a part time photography business who has been writing his dissertation, while caring for 5 dogs and three cats of his own and also caring for 2 foster dogs. Perhaps it should be no surprise that something slipped. How does one balance all of those things without every dropping a plate?

So, one thing I have learned is there comes a point where there is just too much and we must learn to recognize that point so we can say no and stop heaping more tasks on our plates. We must choose the things that are MOST important and focus on those and leave some things for others to do. We cannot do it all ourselves and that does not make us bad people. It makes us human.

I have also relearned a lesson that I seem to be frequently reminded about. Having a dog that has any type of behavior issues and working with them to keep them safe and keep the humans safe requires constant attention. Take your eye off the ball for a split second and you will get hit in the face, metaphorically or in my case literally.

We have been working with Paxton for close to a year with very few incidents. We have been careful and taken precautions to protect ourselves, our other dogs, and to protect Paxton. We were managing his behaviors and working with him on his issues. We paid attention to Paxton and were aware of his issues. All it took was one second where I was not thinking, for whatever reason, to ruin all of the work we had done. This is the challenge with dogs with behavior/psychological issues. You can work with them and everything can be fine but if you make a mistake you will have a setback. Sometimes that setback has dire consequences.