Hardening Up Seedlings

I swear I can find a metaphor for dog training in literally everything.

Today it’s seedlings. And apparently, my next project will be chickens.

Which made me laugh when I realized that my life is basically a rotating cast of living case studies in resilience.

Seedlings, puppies, kids, soon baby chicks. Different species. Same developmental arc.

What’s been fascinating to me is that in the very beginning, living things can’t handle long bouts of self-sufficiency. Seedlings need warmth, steady moisture, and controlled conditions. Baby chicks need a brooder, heat, and constant monitoring. Puppies and kids need even more co-regulation, guidance, and structure to make sense of the world.

If you throw any of them straight into independence, they don’t rise to the occasion. They struggle. Not because they’re weak, but because they’re unfinished.

Early fragility isn’t a flaw. It’s a stage.

But the goal isn’t to keep them in that stage forever.

With seedlings, you eventually lower the heat, let the soil dry a bit so the roots grow deeper, run a fan so the stems strengthen, and take them on little field trips outside so they can adapt to real wind and sun.

With chicks, you start with a warm brooder and heavy protection, then slowly wean the heat, introduce them to bigger spaces, outdoor sounds, and the rhythm of the coop until they can regulate themselves without constant intervention.

With dogs, it’s structured exposure, clear expectations, mild frustration, leash pressure, waiting, problem-solving. All the small stressors that build the nervous system’s ability to cope with the real world.

With kids, it’s letting them try, struggle, be disappointed, and recover without immediately fixing everything for them.

It’s the same quiet shift every time.

At first, they borrow our stability.
Over time, the goal is that they build their own.

But something else happened while I was staring at my little seed trays.

Most of the seedlings are coming up nicely. But there are a few pockets that are just… empty. The peppers haven’t shown up at all. The lavender hasn’t either. Everything else is sprouting, and those little sections are just sitting there like they didn’t get the memo.

I mentioned it to a client, and they joked, “Yeah, blame the seeds.”

And honestly, that is the easiest thing to do. Clearly those seeds must just be duds.

Except the more likely explanation is that peppers and lavender just require a little more precision to start successfully. A little more knowledge. A little more nuance in how you approach them.

Which, of course, made me think about dogs.

Some dogs are like the tomatoes of the world. You can take them to a basic class, do a few things right, and they mostly figure out how to live with you in a way that works. They’re forgiving of mistakes.

And then there are the dogs that are more like my lavender seeds.

They’re not bad. They’re not defective. They just require a deeper level of understanding. More attention to the details. More thoughtful communication. More expertise in how to bring out the best in them.

When those dogs struggle, it’s easy to say the dog is the problem.

But more often than not, the dog isn’t broken.

The owner just needs better information.

Better guidance.
Better communication.
Better training.

Because the reality is that every living thing has its own quirks, its own needs, its own way of thriving. And sometimes the difference between failure and success isn’t the seed itself.

It’s whether we’re willing to learn how to grow and support it properly.

Different species. Same developmental truth.

We start by keeping them alive.

And if we’re willing to keep learning, we eventually figure out how to help them truly thrive.