Support Your Local Dog Park

Little Rock has a fantastic dog park.  I feel lucky to live in a city where I can take my dog to a public park where he can socialize with other dogs and run as much as he wants.  We frequent Murray Park which is along the Arkansas River.  It's down the road from the Big Dam Bridge.  When I do a lot of running, I take my dog with me along the river trail, although the trail bridges have caused some controversy this year.  Big Dam Bridge is a pedestrian trail built over a lock and dam.  I have often been annoyed at the amount of dog waste I see there despite there being doggy bags at either end of the bridge.  I don't like litterbugs, much less people who allow their dogs to defecate on paths meant for foot traffic (sometimes even bare feet).  To me it is a no brainer: pick it up and throw it away!  If nothing else, at least discourage the dog from squatting until it finds some grass or shrubbery.  It's easy to do this by tugging him when he starts making the motions, and if you pause for a while in a grassy spot before getting on the bridge, it may encourage the dog to go before polluting the trail.  

I realize that I am going off on a tangent about the inappropriately located dog waste.  When I started reading newspaper articles stating that the mayor was going to ban dogs on the trail bridges, I was upset.  A new trail bridge recently went in near the Big Dam Bridge that connected to a peninsula jutting out into the river.  I was excited to be able to explore more in that direction and be able to take my dog on my long walks.  Then I was faced with the possibility of not having this privilege because so many other people don't clean up after their animals.  If you are a dog owner, and you don't clean up after it, just find it a new owner, because you don't deserve to be in charge of caring for another being.  Dogs have needs.  They have to be trained to follow the rules of our society in order to coexist with humans.  In return, their owners are expected to leave public areas as they left it before they brought their dogs there.  It may feel silly to carry a bag of dog waste around with you, but it sure beats contributing to a disgusting world.  The joys of keeping a dog far outweigh the inconvenience of acting as dog janitor on outings.  If you're really against carrying it yourself, train your dog to wear a dog pack and make him stow and cart it around.  The waste is in a plastic bag, so it's contained enough to get it to a trash can.  

At the dog park, the dogs have free reign to use any place they want for their own personal bathroom.  Murry Park's dog area has bag stations all over it so that even if the owner forgets to bring bags, there are still bags available.  The dog park also has lots of gravel so that even the messiest messes can be quickly cleaned up.

Don't make someone else step in it - clean up after your dog so we can all still enjoy local parks.

Habit Forming

I used to think that forming habits was something that I could just brute force my way through.  It was a strategy that worked for some time.  My most effective way of breaking a habit is quitting cold turkey.  The problem is that cold turkey doesn't hold up on its own.  Breaking a habit leaves a void in both time and emotion.  It's difficult to keep justifying to your mind the reasons why you quit doing something because after a while, you will miss the positive effects that weren't as obvious with all the negative effects present.

I used to smoke cigarettes.  I quit countless times.  I tried to quit even more than that.  Normally, I would smoke half a pack a day.  When I quit cold turkey, I would be very motivated to squash the habit for a month.  After a month, I was so focused on thinking about not smoking that I forgot why I quit.  The time I normally spent smoking was replaced with a time void of boredom.  There were many reasons why I quit, and they varied each time I took a break from it: expensive, stinky, inconvenient, impolite, unhealthy.  When I finally did quit for good, it was because I was sick and I intentionally focused all my hatred of the sickness on the smoking because I knew it made me equally miserable.  Constantly having to clear my throat was not my idea of pleasant living.  What made me stay quit was adapting my thinking at each stage of clarity.  Nicotine takes a week to fully leave your system.  I've heard that breaking or starting a habit takes 21 days.  I took note of these time frames when I quit the final time.  I used my initial motivation for the first week, then after that I started spending more time thinking about what I honestly wanted versus what I was doing.  I thought about the negative effects like the terrible smell.  I surrounded myself with pleasant smells to remind myself what I would not be able to smell if I smoked.  I focused on healthy living - what it's like to be healthy as opposed to just avoiding causes of bad health.  A person can be healthy by just not drinking and smoking and eating too much junk food, but someone who chooses to take action in the positive direction instead of staying neutral has more stake in staying healthy.  I eventually replaced the habit of smoking with the habit of being healthy.  I may not always be living as healthy as possible, but I am far more resistant to actions that would harm me.

Starting a habit is just as hard as quitting one.  Instead of leaving a void that would need to be filled, you give up time on something else that you used to do.  Walking my dog is one habit that I strive to keep going.  I normally watch TV all evening.  My favorite mode of entertainment is watching TV shows on DVD.  It's hard to stop watching when the stories are so compelling and available.  I realized that I was just making excuses for not walking on a daily basis.  Then I thought about what I would gain by walking my dog everyday as opposed to watching TV.  I gave it a week of just trying to walk him every evening.  Now he is more calm all the time and doesn't behave like a spaz as often.  I still get to watch the same amount of TV, but now I pace myself and find that I like it better that way.  Now even if I feel exhausted I go for a walk anyway because I know that I will feel better afterwards.  By keeping that expectation in mind, the habit becomes easier to keep as time goes on.

Habit forming is more about anticipation than getting a specific result.  If you put a stigma of exhaustion on the thought of performing the habit, you are only conditioning yourself to quitting.  There are more effects tied to a repeated action than just the ones you think about.  Doing something once has a different effect than doing something multiple times.  Unhealthy habits can take years to show the consequences, but small signs of danger can show up sooner than later if you pay attention.  One habit I'm trying to quit at work is eating all the free sweets they give away; donuts, cookies, and hot cocoa are freely available.  When I think about what all that sugar does in the long run - diabetes, heart disease, obesity - it makes it easier to resist.  It's hard to eat a doughnut when thinking about having to stick myself with a needle every day to test my blood sugar levels as a diabetic.  I don't have diabetes, and don't have a family history of it, but it's still possible for me to acquire the disorder.  Additionally, every time I say no to a doughnut, I am openly advocating that it's okay to say no (just say no to the dough!), and for someone more prone to diabetes, it may be all the encouragement they need to say no as well.

Knowing more about the effects of a habit can save you time in the long run by improving your resolve and cutting out your temptation to give up.