Dalila trying to bite Hans’ tail. He’s not happy with her.
Watching Dalila play with Hans (my older Dachshund) and Ithaca (the cat/kitten) I’m reminded about setting boundaries.
Hans is very clear when Dalila chews on his tail or his ears that he wants none of that. Or if she tries to eat his food.
Dalila pounces on Ithaca and pins him to the ground. Ithaca is bigger than Dalila at this point and it would be easy for him to set boundaries with her, but he tolerates much more than Hans.
Dalila trying to get Ithaca to play with her.
It’s also important right now for me to set boundaries with Dalila. One of my pet peeves with a larger dog is jumping up on people. Right now, it’s not an issue but when she’s bigger she could knock someone over. Mike and I had different takes on this. I wouldn’t let our larger dogs jump up on me or anyone else but they knew they could maul him when he came in.
I bet someone in every Equine Gestalt Coaching® Core I attended worked on boundaries. It seems some of us have a hard time setting and keeping them. We give a little and people take a lot.
This also has something to do with our busyness. We tend to have trouble saying “No” to things and we can get overwhelmed by it.
We feel like we can’t say no because of someone else’s expectations when in reality if we are not going to give it our all we should say no. A half-hearted yes probably won’t live up to their expectations and will make you feel worse than saying no.
Like fences keep our livestock safe boundaries keep us safe.
I touched on this a while back when I wrote about communications. It’s much better to be true to yourself than try to be kind to someone else.
This is something that is also important when we are parenting. Years ago, I had a friend who told me she would loan me her grandchildren when I started feeling like it was time to have kids. Being the optimist that I am I always thought this wouldn’t work because her daughter would tolerate different behaviors than I would. Plus, kids tend to behave better for others than family.
A herd of horses kept safely off of the highway by a fence.
The horses are very good at teaching how to set boundaries. If you don’t set your boundaries with them, they will walk all over you. You can see this with dogs too. I remember reading an article by a vet who didn’t want to work with dogs who came in with the soft harnesses and retractable leashes. Those dogs had never had boundaries set.
Everything gets back to our tolerances and boundaries. If we don’t set clear boundaries people and animals will walk all over us. If we tolerate it, they will go even farther.
How are you at setting boundaries? If you’d like the horses to help you find your boundaries contact me here.
Stand up for yourself and set boundaries. Another version of Stand here.
Onward! Vision
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