Being a weary woman impacts your dog training.

NOTE: THIS PIECE IS ABOUT MY INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE AS A CIS WOMAN & I WILL BE REFERRING TO THAT THROUGHOUT THE PIECE.

My clientele majority is women & there is a common denominator I note with majority of my clients that I will summarise in three words: Frustrated. Overwhelmed. Tired. 

Most women are pushed passed their breaking point continuously. The worst part is that it is so normalised, some women may even find my title triggering because we tie our self worth to how much we do & what we do.

We want to be top employee in our workplaces whilst being liked.

We want to make our children happy whilst pleasing others.

Some of us want to be good at looking after our home but somehow fitting the gym, friends & appointments in.

We also want to make sure others around us are happy but commonly neglect ourselves.

Are you surprised now that most of us are overwhelmed?

In my early days of training with owners I noted a similarity with my clients who were women & I made a feedback loop that summarises their feelings:

This feedback loop commonly then leads to weariness, fatigue & labelling of the self of being “lazy, stupid, dumb, not good enough” which is wild considering how much most of us are doing - but many of us do not note the labour.

An interesting conversation I had with a client last year was that she said she cannot train her dog and she felt guilty she could not do it enough. I proceeded to ask her, “So what were you doing outside of dog training?”.
I cannot summarise the list of things this woman did but it goes along the lines of she works, she cleans, she looks after the children & so on.

What hit me was that she thinks she is not doing enough. I am not going to talk about mental load for this blog, because that is whole blog in itself.

Ultimately, there is a deep underlying issue though that plagues this woman, many of us & even myself.

“We believe we need to be like men in order to do things well, but we are not men.
Only in accepting our strength as women will we then be able to be content.”

Now before someone gets reactive I am not talking gender norms because eww, but I am talking biology & specifically about the menstrual cycle of a cis woman & how to work around that so you do not burn out.

Now before half of you turn away & think “What does a dog trainer know about the menstrual cycle & how this relevant?”, this dog trainer has a degree in Science & majored in Human Biology, but more importantly this dog trainer is a woman.

I have spent most of my life trying to be like men by working hard without complaining (6 days a week), trying to be a good wife/friend/daughter & I paid the price for it with chronic fatigue & chronic pain. I was also on birth control that devastated my body & it took months after it to feel like myself again.

Essentially: I wanted to do it all like a man but neglected my needs.

When the trajectory of my life shifted from “healthy” to being diagnosed with chronic fatigue, I had to learn to manage it with spoon theory (CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE).

I began to take note of the importance of management & started seeing other factors that were contributing to my fatigue. This led me to look at birth control impact, which led me to make an informed decision to go off it due to all the side effects (I will add I am in a stable relationship, so I know this is not for everyone & I believe in choice for women in whether or not they use it.).

I started shifting from viewing my womanhood (eg. period/ability to be pregnant) as a liability to seeing a different kind of strength which came from learning to work within my cycles efficiently to reduce burnout & weariness.

I am still learning how my moods are shaped by this cycle, but in learning to understand the different moods/energy levels I displayed in different cycles, I began to organise my work & personal life around it.

(LEARN ABOUT THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE)

But let’s not be all talk: how do I apply this knowledge in practice?

How do I function as a woman who has a lot on her plate?

I will schedule friend catch ups in stages where I will have the most amount of energy (follicular/ovulatory) & if I have to do essential meet ups in more tiring times of the month (luteal/menstrual) I will manage my energy by assigning moments of rest (even if it is 5 minutes) throughout the day.

I have fixed responsibilities that occur throughout the week, so I ensure that on days they occur I will plan less intensive work on those days when I am in my low capacity stage.

I have learnt to communicate my needs to those closest to me eg. husband, but with others I just tell them when I am free & most people understand!

As a dog owner, I do intense/fun training in my high energy stages, but will do more low intensity training like place, crate, fun obedience when I come to the low energy stages.

How do I work as a dog trainer who owns my business?

Rather than see a million clients on the hardest time of the month, I would schedule clients on other times & keep more simple work in this time eg. scheduling/email admin. I will organise clients at different points & make sure to put higher demand clients on a time/schedule where I can focus but also give them what they need.

As a result of knowing myself biologically, my fatigue has become more managed & I am feeling more in control of how I run a business & have actual energy for others in my life.

I know it may seem like pure privilege to have this ability to organise my life like this & I agree because not everyone is a sole trader, entrepreneur or is able to have flexibility because of lack of support, resources etc. This is not meant to be one more thing to make you feel like a failure, but the opposite! It is to challenge us as women to fight against the lower mindset of being a woman that holds most of us back from trying to make our lives more enriching.

I do personally view life as one of those things where we live in the mindset we accept.
If I only ever believe fatigue & burnout was the only way I could live, I would have stayed there but I did not want to so I fought my way through it & continuously do so.

I am not preaching my lifestyle as the “ultimate dream” but I do think there is worth in reflecting on how you manage your life & whether you could benefit of learning more about yourself as a woman…

Maybe then as more mature women begin understanding themselves & feel more empowered, they can teach younger women to realise that their biology is not a weakness but one they should be in tune with - how cool would that world be!