03/06/2026
ACCEPTANCE MEANS LOVING THEM FOR WHO THEY REALLY ARE ❤️
My lovely Sylvi is 11 this year and I genuinely don’t have any regrets about our life together. There isn’t a single thing I would change.
That doesn’t mean she’s “perfect”, whatever that is. She has so many wonderful qualities. She has fostered many rescue puppies, she is wonderful with people, gentle, kind and absolutely hilarious.
She also has traits many people would want to change. Although she has loads of dog friends, she really doesn’t like some dogs, especially unspayed females and she is exceptionally bossy. She’s a very strong character! The dogs who love her absolutely adore her and she couldn’t care less about the others.
I could have spent years trying to change her and “make” her like every dog. It would have taken so much time away from all the fun things we do together and it wouldn’t have been successful anyway. I don’t like every person I meet, so why would I expect her to like every dog?
I lost my first Inuit at just 26 months old. When she died, I realised I had spent so much of her short life focused on training and trying to help her cope with situations she found difficult. I still regret the amount of time I spent focusing on the things we “couldn’t do” instead of all the wonderful things we could. Ironically, she loved every single dog on earth.
Of course there are plenty of behaviors we should help our dogs with- if it’s impacting their lives and causing them anxiety or it’s presenting a danger. But it’s not a good use of our lives with our dogs spending inordinate amounts of time just trying to make them something that’s more convenient for us or trying to make them meet the expectations we had.
You don’t want to spend the short time you have with your dog wishing they were somebody they’re not. Embracing who they really are and loving them for it is a far more rewarding way to spend your life together
Laura McAuliffe Dog Communication 2026
