Someone asked me recently if I thought you could teach an old dog new tricks when I was talking about an old dog I had.  Spencer was a rehomed border collie who was 10 years old when we adopted him and through no fault of his own, we were his third home.

He arrived with a few party tricks under his belt, although there were some things that he had no idea about. 

Trying to get him to “stay” tested my patience – and his.  I could see he knew there was something I was asking of him and he tried to figure it out yet there was a disconnect.  To start with, I wondered whether I was using the wrong word so I reached out to his previous owners to find out whether they had taught him a different word to “stay”.  The reply was something along the lines that it was the correct word – just something he was “not the best at”.

With this knowledge to hand, a training plan was put in place to teach him how to stay. 

I started out with a new word for “stay” and taught him the exercise as if he was a puppy.  He knew he had to do something and had to figure out to be able to have the same privileges of the other dogs.  He was enthusiastic to learn, he got it wrong a few times along the way and that made him more eager to figure it out.

The whole family knew the training plan, not everyone had the patience, the time or the knowledge to be able to implement it in a way that helped Spencer understand and succeed. 

We eventually got there and it was such celebration the day that he had learnt enough for me to be able to leave him sitting at the end of the driveway, walk down and across the road to the letterbox to collect the mail and back, and he didn’t move a muscle until I told him. I don’t know who was the most excited – me or him when he realised he had cracked it.

Being in business is similar.  You might feel you’re a bit long in the tooth and see others getting different results to you, yet you haven’t learnt what it is that they are doing to get those results. 

Then you get to the point where you have figured out what it is that they are you can make a plan to get that skill or learning under your belt.  Reach out to someone to help you learn or implement it if need be.  If they say no, don’t give up because not everyone has the time, patience or skill to be able to help you achieve your goal. 

Have the courage to give it a try though and take some action towards that skill.  Sometimes the fear of failure can hold you back from actually giving something a go. 

In Spencer’s case, if we hadn’t had a few trial runs of walking halfway down the drive and back again first, we never would have got to the point where I could go down there and back.  That would have been depriving him of the pleasure of a lot of other things in life because we never took the chance of pushing to see how far we could go or what else he was capable of learning.

So yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks.  The dog just has to have an open mind to learn and the courage to reach out for help or to give it a try. 

Make sure you have someone to celebrate your wins with you because that celebration with someone else when you get there is sometimes the encouragement you need to learn the next big thing that will help you reach the lifestyle you want.