Let's talk about something that can make dog parents feel completely stuck.

You do the training at home and it goes really well.

You're probably puppy training at this point so that they can focus.

You can get a sit, you can get a little hand touch or some loose lead walking, maybe even a bit of recall practice from room to room or from the garden into the house.

Then you step outside that front door and it's like your dog has forgotten everything.

The lead goes tight, the sniffing takes over, they pull towards people or dogs.

They bark or freeze or spin or just switch off completely.

And it's easy to start thinking, why aren't they learning anything out here?

Am I doing anything wrong?

Do I just need to be more consistent?

Today I want to give you a different way to understand what is happening here, because it can change everything in terms of how you frame it, how, how you start to add progress, and how you can actually start to feel like things are actually going the way they go for everyone else, rather than it just being you doing something wrong and starting to overthink it all.

What's happening on the outside is often about capacity.

It's not about effort.

It's not about your dog being stubborn.

Definitely not.

It's not about them just not wanting to listen on purpose.

It's about the capacity.

So here's the simplest way that I can put it inside the house.

Your dog's brain has got room outside the house, your dog's brain is busy.

So outside's got scent, information, movement, sounds, surprises, social pressure, distance changes.

So how close you are to things that might trigger them into excitement, overstimulation, fear response, and things that your dog can't predict.

A dog's nervous system's always asking a question because that's what it's meant to do.

It's there to say, am I safe here?

Just like our own nervous system's been created that way, if the answer feels uncertain, their body is going to prioritize scanning and responding.

And that takes resources.

There is a concept that kind of links to all of this in learning science called cognitive load.

So that basically means there's only so much processing space available at once.

When the outside fills your dog's processing space, training cues are going to struggle to land naturally.

Not because the cues bad, but because their brain is training just at capacity.

It's full.

So I want to talk about threshold, because this is one of the most helpful concepts for real world training.

Threshold is the point where your dog's arousal and stress rise enough that the Focus drops, impulse control drops, thinking becomes harder and reflexive behavior takes over.

So that reflexive behaviour might look like pulling or lunging or barking or frantic sniffing or freezing, scanning the horizon or ignoring food that they'd normally take.

And that is a biggie.

That's a big sign that your dog, who would normally want food and take food, has seemingly not shown any interest in that food that they would normally have.

When a dog crosses that throw threshold, they are not being naughty.

I want to shout that from the rooftops.

Your dog is not being naughty when they cross that threshold.

Their body is running a survival program.

And in survival mode, learning will change.

Just like for humans, that brain shifts the activity away from the areas used for flexible thinking and towards fast response systems.

So that's why you can say your dog's name 10 times and get absolutely nothing back.

Their system is busy dealing with the environment.

A lot of dog parents get told some version of they'll get used to it if you just keep going from different people around them.

And that can be friends, family, people.

At the park.

The previous episode that I talked about kind of how to set boundaries with those kinds of conversations will really help with this.

But because it isn't about the fact they'll get used to it if you just keep going.

Sometimes repeated exposure can help when it's done gently, when it's done below threshold, with enough recovery, there is a setup and a protocol that we follow.

And this is going to like.

The biggest example that I can give you for that is with reactivity, absolutely, exposure can help, but it has to be done below threshold, done gently, with enough recovery and building it up at your dog's pace.

When that exposure is too intense or for too long, that nervous system doesn't always settle.

So stress is going to start to build as a result.

And in behavior science, that's called sensitization.

So when repeated exposure to a trigger makes the reaction stronger, that is sensitization.

So you're not weakening that that reaction, you're making it stronger.

So that is the sensitization in action.

So if every walk's full of overwhelm, your dog's brain starts predicting outside equals pressure.

And once that prediction starts to form, it really does take time and repetition to change it.

That is why some dogs seem to get worse over time.

Even when you feel like you are trying harder, it's not because your dog is choosing to escalate in those situations.

It's because their nervous system is learning the wrong association.

It's that sensitization And I do talk about sensitization to clients, because what I work on doing is the complete opposite.

It's desensitization with those protocols.

No matter what what it is.

Even if your dog isn't fear, responsive to something, or feeling threatened, that overstimulation, that overwhelm, is that stress buildup.

So that is how, when your dog is pulling and lunging and barking and all of those things, it can be out of complete overstimulation and over arousal.

So we do the same things in those situations too.

So when people are talking about calm, it's easy to imagine it as being still because you see, like, the videos and you see pictures and the mindfulness stuff, it always kind of comes back to stillness, being still and having your eyes closed and your legs crossed and all of that stuff.

But in real life, especially when we talk about our dogs, calm often looks like a dog who can sniff and then check in.

So if you're out on a walk and your dog is sniffing calmly, not frantically, like through stress, so with tension, and then check in with you, that is a real sign in real life that your dog feels calm.

It's also a dog who can notice something and then recover.

So that is that engagement with something.

A person, a dog, a squirrel, a cat.

Sorry if I've triggered any dogs with those words.

My dogs know those words specifically and can say, oh, there's something in the environment to check out.

But if they can notice those things and recover from that by disengaging, that is definitely a sign that your dog is calm.

And it's a dog who can take information without tipping into panic or frenzy.

So if they are taking food, but it's very snatchy if it is where you are asking them to do something, but it seems very frantic in movement.

So whatever it is you're asking them to do, it just seems like there's an associated emotion there of panic through fear or frenzy through overstimulation.

So if your dog can take information without tipping into that panic or frenzy, those are the things that I've taught clients to work on when we're in the real world.

A dog who can take that information, who can notice something and recover, who can sniff calmly and check in, those are all the signs that I'm looking for.

That's the goal.

I'm not looking for perfect behavior.

I'm not looking for robotic focus.

So where your dog is literally not allowed to put their head down on that floor and get that sniffing in, because that's the information they're taking from their environment and it's helping them to regulate.

So we're not asking for robotic focus.

And, and it also shows a flexible nervous system.

And the best way to build that is by training at the edge of your dog's capacity, not beyond it.

So what do you do practically?

What does that even mean?

So you're gonna build a bridge between home brain and outside brain.

So you start choosing environments that your dog can handle.

And this isn't gonna be forever.

This isn't like the thing that you're gonna do all the way through as a lifestyle choice.

It's a training stage that you're in at the moment.

And that might mean going out on walks at quieter times of day, temporarily, going out for shorter walks, temporarily, choosing fewer busy routes, temporarily, where you are choosing walks that are more sniff led for decompression.

And I would probably say that would be something that you can continue to do forever because I like sniff led decompression walks, even with my own dogs.

It's a really nice thing for us all to go out and just co regulate together in that no pressure, no expectation kind of setting.

And that might mean more distance from triggers temporarily.

Now I've used temporarily after pretty much every single one of those points deliberately because it is just a temporary thing while we work on some of this stuff.

So distance isn't avoidance in a lazy way.

Distance is that nervous system tool that we are helping our dogs with that capacity and with their thresholds.

It changes how intense something feels and it keeps your dog within their learning range.

And when your dog stays within that learning range, you can build new patterns that actually start to stick.

And all of this stuff comes from the protocols that I work on with my clients, with anything that they're working on.

If it's puppy socialization, we're working on how far away they are from things.

So I went somewhere recently, a couple of weekends ago, and it was a very busy.

It was like a shopping village.

That's the best way that I could describe it.

So there were lots of huts down a walkway that were shops.

So the huts were all different shops and it was all pedestrianized.

And there was a big car park.

It was next to a big open, like a big garden as well, so people can walk around.

So it's a.

It was a, quite a.

Quite a busy area.

And I noticed quite a few dogs there, different ages, but I noticed a few puppies as well.

And this is where we can start to create that sensitization that I talked about, which is the thing we don't want to do.

So the puppies that I noticed that were there were getting a lot of attention because they're so cute.

They're so small and cute and fluffy and everybody wants to stroke a puppy.

But it was so busy, it wasn't raining.

And in the UK it's been raining pretty much every day since Christmas.

So, you know, it was a day where it wasn't super rainy and everybody started to think, well, let's go out for the, for the day.

So there were quite a few people there and this is a scenario where we're thinking about that inside brain versus outside brain and the bridge.

So that would be an environment that I would aim to go to once I've built some nice foundations with my puppy already and once they've gotten a bit older and I would be taking them there potentially early on, but observing from the car park, in all honesty, I wouldn't be taking my puppy straight into that environment and putting them straight into a, the situation of person after person after person after person wanting to interact with my puppy because we can sensitize them to that environment and it floods our puppies brain.

And it can go one of two ways.

It can either go into a situation of I absolutely love people and I really want to interact with every single person.

And I'm going to get super excited when a person approaches, even when I'm out on a walk from home and I'm going to get really jumpy and I'm going to start to want to bark to get the retention, all that kind of stuff.

Or it can go the other way where it's too much pressure on puppy and they start to feel quite threatened and overwhelmed.

And it can lead to them wanting to jump up at their person because they're trying to tell them they don't feel safe.

It can lead to wanting to hide away, not wanting to interact with people, that kind of stuff.

So sometimes it's okay.

And puppies have enough resilience to cope in that situation in a positive way and learn that actually it's fine, no worries.

That can happen, but it's not often.

And the risks for.

The risks for things not going that way for me are too high because there has to be a lot of work done to undo that scenario.

So going out into the middle of a busy place is something I would not be aiming to do straight away.

I would be working on looking from the car park, watching.

Like even before my puppy's fully vaccinated, I could take them in the car to that environment and go and watch everybody from my car with them.

Even so, sitting and watching everybody getting out of their cars, going into that space and carrying them and holding them and protecting them in that place, just so they start to get used to the sound of the cars and the people, seeing that number of people.

And if that's the kind of place that you're wanting to take them to.

Same with the park.

I wouldn't be taking them into the middle of a busy park or a daycare setting with 30 dogs straight away when they're fully vaccinated.

I would be observing from the outskirts and choosing the quieter times.

Like one of the points that I made and building up, up to.

Because this is temporary.

Don't forget building up to the scenario of being able to go to the park when it's busier.

Once I've established some of the foundations with my puppy.

So I'm thinking there like the impulse control is pretty solid.

I'm thinking I've built the recall up in different, different types of distracting environments before.

I've started to think about taking them to that kind of setting and maybe letting them go a little bit mad in those kinds of places.

So they go off lead, they go running around with all the dogs, all the people who interact with them and that kind of thing.

So here's the science piece that really matters.

Learning happens best when the nervous system's got access to the safe and social state.

So this is a bit scientific, but in polyvagal theory language that is often described as the ventral vagal state.

And I've mentioned that in previous episodes before.

So that just means connection, digestion, curiosity and social learning are more available to us as humans and for our dogs as well.

So you don't need to memorize that term at all.

What matters is when your dog feels safe enough, their body can process the information, respond to you, try things, recover from mistakes and think the words.

I'm saying body.

Their body can do that because the nervous system is talking from the body state rather than the brain.

When your dog's feeling unsafe or overloaded, the body is going to prioritize movement away or towards.

So that's the fight or flight scanning.

So hyper vigilant kind of behavior.

Looking around with quite, quite a stiff head, kind of bopping their head around and looking around them.

Self protection.

So that is fight or flight mode.

So feeling like they have to protect themselves because they feel threatened or intensity.

That's why training outside can feel impossible for dog parents.

Not because your dog's not learning, but because their body's got different priorities in those moments.

So we want to work with the priorities first.

When we help the nervous system feel safer, learning is going to become available again.

It's going to switch back on.

That learning state is going to start to kind of come back into play.

So even going slower.

So if we're in an environment and we're saying, right, this feels too much because my puppy is moving away from things, looking a little bit twitchy, their head's bopping around and looking hyper vigilant.

They don't really want the food that I know they normally really love.

So I'm going to go out of this situation, take them on the outskirts of this situation and remove them from like being right in the middle of it all.

And I'm going to help them recover in whatever way that looks with the familiar, with slow processing of sniffs, with reassurance from me.

You're not going to feed the fear.

If you reassure your puppy, they are going to start to say, you're here to, you're here to support me.

So that self protection mode starts to kind of switch off again a little bit and, and I wouldn't go straight back into that situation again.

I would just stay where you are and help them recover and say, look, we're feeling safe again now.

We're both safe here.

I'm co regulating, regulating with you and everything's all good and I won't put you into that situation again until it looks like you feel more ready to be able to feel positive about it again.

So this is what I'd love you to try this week.

There's no pressure and definitely no homework vibes.

But I want you to choose one walk where the goal is not about training, but the goal is about capacity.

So go somewhere easier than you think you should.

So if you think you should go to the busy park, go somewhere easier than that.

Let your dog sniff more than usual.

Let the lead be longer if it's safe.

So even a long lead, so a long line lead that we use for recall, it's really good if you want to just give your dog a bit more space and they're good for loose lead walking as well and let your pace be slower.

Then I want you to notice, I want you to notice and ask three questions.

Does your dog recover faster?

Question one, do they check in more?

Question two and question three is, do they soften after a startle?

So if something has made them a bit jumpier, have they softened afterwards?

Those are Real world calm signals.

And when your dog starts noticing them and not being able so the triggers and not not feeling the need to go all in with excitement or over stimulation or feeling the fear and you start noticing that from your dog, your confidence is going to grow as well because you can see that you're not stuck, you can see that you're actually building.

So start from the foundations with your with if you've got a puppy, start with the foundations.

If you've got a rescue dog from aboard abroad, this is just as relevant because when they've come from abroad, everything feels overwhelming and we have to slow it down.

And I wouldn't even be thinking about taking for walk, taking them for a walk in that in those early few weeks even because there's so much going on and their nervous system is just going to be in total overwhelm.

So we're thinking about building, we're thinking about going up step by step by step and this is temporary while we then work up to the next level.

If you want a simple way to put this into practice, I've got a free resource that supports this exact stage.

So in the show notes I'm going to link a calm reset tool that you can use before walks and a simple guide to help you spot early signs that your dog is close to their threshold.

So no overwhelm with any of those things, but something that you can come back to when outside starts to feel a little bit too much.

So if outside's been hard lately, take a breath.

You don't need to push through every time.

You can build calm slowly in real places with real life happening around you.

And when you're working with your dog from a place of capacity, training does really start to feel possible again.

So thank you very much for listening and I will see you next time on the Mindful Dog Parent.