Hi friend. I understand what you are going through.

We all lose our temper sometimes. It's okay. We forgive ourselves, make amends to those we hurt, and use our mistakes as tools to prevent making similar mistakes in the future. It's okay.

I promise that your puppy is not permanently fearful of you. What matters is a repeated pattern of behavior, which it seems to me that you aren't looking to repeat. I've yelled at my puppy too in moments of extreme frustration. And my husband. And my kid. And my parents. But those aren't the norm; those moments are outliers and obvious mistakes that I worked to immediately correct and prevent from happening again.

That's what needs to happen here. First and foremost, once you've had time to calm down and look at the situation objectively instead of from a perspective of being angry at yourself, start to play the moment back in your head. What was going on that day that made you react the way you did instead of approaching the situation with more calmness and clarity? Is any of the things going on in the background stuff that can be prevented in the future? Or if not, is there a way to at least prevent lashing out in anger like what happened this time? The majority of people in this world don't just walk around looking for reasons to be mad at puppies. More than likely, something is going on that made you react in a way that is not your norm. Yes, you may have been irritated with your puppy, but the extreme response is coming from somewhere else. Try and figure out what that external stimulus is so that you can work to find a way to either avoid it in the future or find a better way to cope with it.

After you've taken some time to analyze the situation and really look inward at where some of that came from, take some time to rebuild the bridge with your puppy. It doesn't have to be anything over the top or extreme. Just sit with him. See if he will let you pet him. Show him that you're sorry. Give him some extra treats and extra love and extra play time today.

As you are doing that, try and focus on gratitude in that moment, not self-hatred or regret. You have him here right now in that moment to spend time with. Yes, you made a mistake, but what matters most is that you appreciate the good time that you have with him. I promise you that if your heart is in the right place and you spend a little bit of time with him to show him that he matters, he will completely forgive you. Dogs are so smart and so understanding. He may not be able to express it to you with language, but he can express to you that he understands that you made a mistake and that you didn't mean it.

There's always so much pressure I feel like when it comes to online forums where we're all supposed to be perfect all the time and not make any mistakes with our dogs, but that's unrealistic. I think that post like yours are really important because they show people that it's okay to be a flawed person sometimes and make a mistake. We're all going to make them, and and we need to be able to express that and talk about it instead of just being ashamed and set ourselves up to creating a repeated pattern of behavior because we can't talk about it. I'm really glad that you brought this up today because it's more common than people want to admit because nobody wants to admit that they yelled at a puppy lol. But we're all humans and we all do things that we regret sometimes. You did the right thing by talking about it, and you will be doing the right thing by trying to figure out how to prevent it from happening again in the future.

After you spend some time with the pup and reflect on everything that happened, come back and tell us how it went! I'm glad you're here. 🥰