What if the thing setting you off the most right now isn’t here to punish you. What if it’s here to teach you. It’s not here to destroy you, it’s here to reveal you. I turned 52 this week, and after 38 years working with animals and 22 years running this business, that’s the truth I keep landing back on: triggers are spotlights. They shine right on the spot where healing, growth, clarity, and leadership still need to show up. Yours and mine both.
Your Trigger Is a Spotlight, Not a Sentence
Here’s what I’ve learned in people’s homes, on the end of a leash, and honestly in my own kitchen. A trigger reveals things. Old wounds. Conditioning. Fear and insecurity. Unresolved pain. Reactive habits, and yeah, I said habits, because that’s what they are. Most people get triggered and they pop off. They go straight to emotional. But if you can own that pattern, you can lead it. And that is something to get excited about.
So grab a journal and get honest. What keeps triggering me, over and over? Is it failure? Embarrassment? Rejection? Your dog? Just being challenged? Then ask what emotion shows up first. Anger, fear, frustration, shame, anxiety, defensiveness. Write a three-sentence story about the last time it happened, what you felt, what you did, and what it cost you. Not money. The outcome. Because awareness is where transformation starts. You can’t go anywhere if you don’t know where you are.
The Dog on the End of the Leash Is Telling On You
Dogs are easy. We’re the hot mess. We’re the hard part. I say it all the time because it’s true. A dog mirrors the handler’s state, and they reveal it fast. Impatience. Inconsistency. Emotional instability in the house. A lack of clarity, which usually just means you’re not doing your homework. Nervous energy. A dog rehearses whatever gets repeated, so if you’re rehearsing reactivity at home, snapping, popping off, living on edge, you’re wiring that reactivity straight into your dog, your family, the people around you.
Now flip it. Rehearse calm. Breathing. Patience. Not popping off. That influences your dog too. What you rehearse emotionally gets stronger. What you practice and reinforce gets stronger. That’s why dog training turns into personal development real fast, and it’s why I became a coach. The dog was never the project. You are.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” — Romans 12:2
That verse has carried me through a lot of changing. Renew the mind. Refocus. Rehearse new repetitions. Decide who you want to become and how you want to show up, then practice it like reps. Because we’re getting trained whether we know it or not. If you’re on social media first thing in the morning, you’re being conditioned to swipe, judge, react, swipe, judge, react. That’s rehearsal too, and it’s making you more reactive, not less.
Breathe, Don’t Bark: The Pause Plan
Here’s the whole thing on a cheat sheet. When you feel the trigger coming, pause. Claim that little space between the stimulus and your response, the space most people never claim. That’s where breathing, not barking, lives. The moment you notice, you create space. Space creates a choice. And the choice is where your leadership shows up.
Four steps to run in the moment
- Notice the trigger. Catch the funny feeling. ‘I’m noticing something. I feel frustrated. My heart’s speeding up.’ That’s it. Awareness is the whole game.
- Slow the body down. Breathe in through your nose for four, pause for two, breathe out for six. Or just close your mouth and breathe slow and rhythmic, in for four or five, out for four or five.
- Get curious, not chaotic. The victim asks ‘Why me?’ The leader asks ‘What is this revealing in me?’ Curiosity opens growth. Defensiveness shuts everything down.
- Choose the next right action. Not the perfect response. The next right one. You’ll mess it up sometimes. Get up and take one more rep.
Do this and two things change. You stop being run by your emotions and start leading them. And you stop taking your dog’s behavior personally, which means you stop escalating in the exact moments your dog needs you calm. Our dogs don’t need our explosions. They need our guidance.
Insight Doesn’t Change You. Reps Do.
I coach high-level trainers who already know all of this, and I’ll tell you what I tell them. Common sense isn’t common practice. Just hearing it, thinking about it, nodding along, that’s passive, and passive doesn’t transform anybody. Repetition does. You don’t build a calm dog in one perfect session, and you don’t rebuild yourself in one good morning. You build it through small reps, done daily, with clarity.
Here’s a story that’s stuck with me from my conservation officer days. In the parks I’d tell people, don’t feed the wild animals. Why? Because they lose their fear of humans. Free food, easy access, and the fear melts away. Same principle with a nervous dog, just pointed the right way. Make him work for the meal, feed him around the things that worry him, and you start shaping calm, positive associations right on top of the fear. Keep the sessions short, two to five minutes, and shut it down while he still wants one more rep. He’ll dream about it like a kid who only got one day at Disney. Always leave them wanting more.
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
For you: catch one trigger this week. Just one. The second you feel it, pause and breathe (four in, two hold, six out). Then ask, ‘What is this revealing in me?’ and choose a better response. Not a perfect one. A better one.
For your dog: two or three short sessions a day, two to five minutes each. Work on neutrality, feed around the fears, and end every session while your dog still wants more. One rep at a time.
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