The Imperfect Trainer

Photo Credit: Norman Rockwell, The Runaway

There’s a story about my father that I’ve told my girls more than once. The setting is a park in Niagara Falls in the 1990’s. I can’t place the time of year, the weather was dreary yet mild with respect to temperature. We ventured an hour and a half from our hometown to visit the Falls as a family. We had recently finished our tour and were making our way back to the car down one of the trails when a voice called out from across the park. The voice was calling, “Scott, hey Scott.” (My father’s name) This obviously peaked my youthful attention as I was somewhere between 10-12 years old at the time. As I looked over to see who was calling for my Dad in this random park, so far from home, I caught sight of a man that appeared to be homeless on a nearby bench. My Dad told my Mother, “Take the kids to the car and I’ll be along shortly, I just need a few minutes.” Being the eldest child, I received a little more grace and lingered back in curiosity as Mom started down the path to the car with my Brother and Sister in tow. I had so many questions as Dad walked towards the man. Is he going to fight him!? Is he going to report him to the local authorities!? The anticipation was certainly present. However, my Hollywood fantasies would soon be put to rest when I watched my Dad approach the man, shake his hand, and sit down on the bench next to him. With the backdrop of Niagara Falls behind them, the 12 year old me stood and watched as my Dad conversed with this man for some time. Details matter. My Dad’s posture was relaxed, he had one arm strewn along the top of the bench as you would if you were putting your arm around someone. He was turned so that his upper body was facing the man, equally listening with his eyes and ears. There was a tangible tenderness to his demeanor that I could sense from my observation post some distance away. They were equals in that moment. There was no homelessness, materialism, class warfare, good, bad, or ugly. There were simply two gentlemen, two humans, two souls. As they finished their conversation they offered farewells, shook hands, and went their separate ways amicably. It’s been over 20 years since this scene played out and yet it lives on like a well-preserved parable in my mind. It’s a parable that brings me both joy and pain to recollect. It shines a light on what we can be and what we fall short of so often.

This interaction has unquestionably impacted many aspects of my life. It’s shaped the way I father, form relationships, and the lens through which I view human beings. In so much, it’s been instrumental in forming my approach as a trainer. Relationships with respect to both animals and their human caretakers can be fraught with superficial layers. It naturally takes time to get to the heart of the matter. Caretakers come to the table with insecurities, anxieties, fears, and worldly worries. They come with their animals that often inhale these afflictions like secondhand smoke. Truth be told, often the afflictions are warranted. We live in a broken world. One in which people are consequentially affected in very real ways. Divorce, career struggles, feelings of ineptitude, profound loss, and financial woes…these are real people issues. These struggles have always been and probably always will be an integral part of the human condition, and you know what, that’s ok. As profound as our plight appears, the heavier the perceived weight of the cross, the stronger the forces that are pushing inwards on us feel, the story above is an unwavering reminder that the simplest acts of kindness can pierce the veil of inequity, injustice, pain, and suffering. There is often a causal flow in training in which the underlying core must be addressed before we can begin teaching technical skills. To be completely honest, this is often a struggle for many of us. It’s not always comfortable to look inwards but sometimes if we can just be patient and sit in that discomfort for a short period of time the answers percolate to the surface. I often have clients that through conversation and reflection uncover the answers to their challenges completely on their own. They were only in need of a listening ear, someone to sit on the bench with them. Someone to take them as they are in a non-judgmental, non-condemning, non-isolating manner. Someone to say I’m here despite your struggles, I will not leave you, you are not alone, we will walk through this together. I’ll teach you how to build a relationship with your dog, I’ll teach you how to train him/her, and we can teach each other how to treat people. We can sit on the bench together after training good or bad and have a laugh. We can shake hands, offer a kind farewell, and depart knowing that until we meet again that we are not alone in the world. We will all fall short, rise, and fall short again. A few words spoken or a simple cup of coffee can heal. There’s harmony, an amicable consonance when we are in this space together. At the end of each day the best thing that we can hope to have is someone who’s willing to sit on the bench with us…extend their arm across the top like they are putting it around us, and through rags or riches see us for who we really are.

End Note: Normal Rockwell’s The Runaway was always on display in our house when I was growing up. I always enjoyed looking at the painting. When it came time to select an image to coincide with this article I could think of nothing better.