It has been a very interesting week here in Austin.  On Thursday, we adopted a second dog.  This one wasn’t so much adopted, as it was inherited from extended family that didn’t really want to deal with the little bugger anymore.

Derby, the mini poodle, is not quite the second dog that I had been dreaming of.  For starters, he’s about 100 pounds smaller than the dog I had envisioned bringing into the home.  Second, he’s got some noticeable and challenging behavioral issues.  He’s possessive of food, doesn’t like to be picked up, never was properly socialized with people or other dogs, and frankly - just seems to be a bit “slower” than your average dog.

What I’m realizing is that Derby is much harder to train than my first dog, Haley, was.  I’m also thinking a lot about how training a dog is about proving your credibility to the dog - establishing that you, the human, are the leader of the pack.  If you aren’t consistently reacting to behaviors and actions in the same way, then the dog will continue to confused about who the pack leader is.

In that sense - I would argue that training a dog can teach us some lessons about PR:

• Credibility (alpha dog positioning) is the primary goal
• Consistency is critical - coming and going only confuses the stakeholders (dogs, customers, investors, etc.)
• You absolutely have to be firm - but never too aggressive.  This is like the difference between bickering with your competitors and simply asserting yourself and your opinion (in a credible way!)
• You can teach an old dog new tricks - it just takes a long time! Patience is critical with training dogs, as it is with getting your company’s PR from 0-60.  Sure - with the right press relationships you can get a lot of buzz in a very short period of time, but you’re not getting the credibility unless you’re carefully looking at your business and determining what type of initiatives are best for you.  That’s a whole different level of PR, and it’s the stuff that you slowly build with precision, over time.

So, I’ll be practicing “PR” at home this weekend.  And I really do have to run, as the dogs need a little, ahem, firm attention right now.

I don’t know what it is - but for all the “similarities” between PR and dog training, I think I’m way better at what I do at the office than what I’m dealing with at the house right now! ;)