What Dog Training Taught Me About Retirement

Two days after I retired, I slept past 9:00 AM for the first time since I was a teenager. When I emerged into the kitchen, stiff-jointed, groggy and a little headache-y, my husband said, "Look how late you slept! Isn't it great?"

"No," I said. Three weeks later, we got a dog so I’d have a reason to wake up and get moving.

Our new dog, Bella, came from a shelter that was only able to tell us that she’s an adult Labrador Retriever mix, and that she had puppies recently. Dog training classes seemed like the best way to get off to a good start. For the next six weeks, Bella, my husband and I attended Doggie Manners Level 1.

Here’s what I learned: Dogs are, well, dogs. Their nature is to live in a pack with hierarchical order and rules. It can look chaotic, but it makes sense to dogs. Humans bred dogs for specific tasks or qualities, and dogs thrive if they have something to do.

Pretty simple concepts, and once I accepted my humiliation that I did everything wrong the first time we tried it, dog training made a lot of sense. 

For example, walking was the first thing we practiced. As a former planning consultant, I understood how Bella’s learning to walk calmly at our sides systemically impacted other areas of behavior. In addition to getting her energy out, it established hierarchy; humans were going to choose the path and pace. She could respond by being her own dog self, exploring and marking her territory along the way, keeping her urine outside our home. In my strategic planning vocabulary, the outcomes of regular walks checked off several boxes on my priority positive impact list.

We followed our trainer’s advice about when to be consistent, (“Never give her handouts from the table...”), and inconsistent, (“Don’t feed her on a regular timetable; make her guess and wait...”).

The hardest thing for me was the assignment for the last class: Teach the dog a trick that requires shaping. “Shaping,” in dog training, is breaking down a desired behavior into component parts, and rewarding the dog for accomplishing each intermediate step. Having one week to do this supercharged my perfectionist performance anxiety; I perceived Bella as being slower to learn than all the other dogs. All I can say is that in the end, Bella could touch her nose to a Frisbee, and my perfectionist tendencies underwent the biggest change.

At the same time I was shaping Bella’s behavior, I was shaping my attitude about retirement. For months, I worried that I made the wrong decision. I felt untethered, aimless, irritated. Luckily, I found out I wasn’t alone.

Research published this year from the Employee Benefit Research Institute reported progressively increasing dissatisfaction with retirement since 1998. Whether or not you chalk it up to baby boomers’ eternal youth narrative, die-at-our-desks work ethic, or the changing economic landscape, it’s not surprising that we just don’t seem to like moseying off into the senior sunset.

I wonder if those of us who struggle with retirement have a lot in common with dogs. We’re also communal creatures who find comfort and security in a group. Give us a job! Work gives us a chance to use our natural abilities. It keeps us out of trouble. We like hierarchical structure, and if we have been the alpha dogs, it’s hard for the grocery store line to replace the boardroom for accepting our top-notch leadership skills.

I think it’s possible for us old working dogs to learn the trick of retirement if we approach it with some basic principles of dog training:

1. Look for a simple, core practice that will trigger small positive outcomes in other areas. The key is the word, “practice,” and is the dog-training equivalent of walking. This is not about distracting yourself with planning a big project, learning a new skill or traveling. It’s taking something that you already do - physical activity, writing, meditating, cooking – and doing it regularly, with mindfulness and without judgment. Simply pay attention to how your thoughts change over time while you do it.

2. Make a couple of rules for yourself. We working dogs like to know the rules, and retirement has none. Remember how your workplace always had some protocol that seemed ridiculous, and yet there was always someone who took it seriously enough to enforce it? Be that person. Whether your rule is to always have breakfast at the kitchen table instead of in front of your computer, or not reading Facebook posts from former colleagues before 5:00 PM, there is no rule too minuscule for you to institute immediately.

3. If you feel you must achieve a goal, break it down into component steps and reward yourself as you reach each one. This is shaping. Pay particular attention to, and be flexible about, your rewards. You might be surprised that what felt like a reward before retirement isn’t one now.

4. Find a pack of other working dogs to play with now and then. Our dog trainer told me that when a group of dogs are together at a park or kennel, they tend to play with others of similar breed. Retrievers have a different way of playing than lap dogs and simply have more fun together. The same goes for you. You’ll feel better if you continue to connect with other people who share or need your professional gifts. If you decide to volunteer, look for something that utilizes a skill that you mastered. If you were a marketing executive before, stuffing envelopes at your place of worship won’t feel as good as building up their Twitter presence.

Dog training taught me that from a dog’s perspective, there’s only this moment. It’s the trainer who knows there will be another one. When you put the two perspectives together, there are endless possibilities to make each moment a new adventure. 

Retirement can do that, too.