Our newest family member is learning to wait while I make her breakfast and put it in her food stand. The ideal is that she would wait on her bed patiently until I put her food bowl down and then come for her food when I call for her.
This morning I stood by her bed with her food bowl in hand. Once she calmed herself and laid down on her bed, the sequence started. I would call out the command to wait as I walked towards her food bowl stand. If she waited, I would go until I put the bowl down. If not, I would come back to her bed to wait again.
I treated her bed as a place for her to reset and calm down. If she was too excited about the food to listen to me, then she would need to calm down and lay on her bed. If she was too confused by the command, then could go to her bed to help her release some anxiety. For her, her bed became her yoga mat.
There were three times where I put the food bowl down and almost called out to her to come and get her food when she excitedly ran to her food too early. At each almost successful sequence, I was disappointed that she was unable to wait for just a few moments longer. But with each almost successful sequence, I would start over again and wait for her to calm down and lay down on her bed.
Oddly enough, she knew that with each unsuccessful attempt, she should come back to her bed.
The entire lesson took 45 minutes, and I was unable to go to the gym in this morning. There were several moments where I wanted to quit, but my husband kept asking me to try one more time to get the command to work.
She eventually waited long enough and she was given her breakfast.
Both she and I learned our lessons this morning. For her, she was learning to wait. For me, I was learning to come back to the mat.
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