Welcome to the Mindful Dog Parent, the podcast for overwhelmed and anxious dog owners who are doing their best but still feel like they're getting it all wrong.

I'm Sian, a trauma informed coach and ethical dog trainer.

I created this podcast because dog parenting isn't always cute reels and perfect walks.

Sometimes it's tears after training, guilt in the quiet moments, or just feeling like you're the only one struggling.

If you've ever said, I love my dog, but this is really hard, you're in the right place.

Each week I'll bring you calm, compassionate guidance to help you build confidence, regulate your emotions and reconnect with your dog, even when things feel messy because you're not failing, you're just overwhelmed and you don't have to figure this out on your own.

Welcome back to the Mindful Dog Parent.

I'm Sian and I'm so, so glad that you're here with me.

Genuinely, I'm so glad when I get to record another episode and have my listeners back with me.

So if you listen to last week's episode we went to diving into shame, where it is, where it comes from, and why it makes everything feel just so much harder.

If you've not listened to that episode yet, that is episode 39 and it's a really good place to start because today's episode and what we're going to be talking about today is like a practical companion to that episode.

So I'll link it in the show notes.

You could listen to this episode first and go back to that one.

It's not a kind of following on process necessarily, but I think they do definitely link together.

So link in the show notes.

Go listen to that episode as well.

Because what I know happens for a lot of dog parents is the walk goes wrong, your dog might have reacted, or they're pulling your arm off because they're just pulling the whole way.

Or you've had to cross the road three times to avoid dogs, or somebody at the park's made a comment about your dog not listening to you with the recall or something like that.

Or you've, you've just come home feeling like really wrung out and just a bit hopeless, and then you're bringing all that inside with you.

So the shame that we talked about last week, the frustration, the replay.

So you're stood in your kitchen making yourself a cup of tea, but your mind.

So that is where you are physically, but your mind is going back to that walk and you're back on that pavement again, going over all the moments on the walk wondering if you should have done things differently and half dreading the next time you've got to go out again.

Does that sound familiar?

Because if it does, it does to me too.

It's something that I used to do a lot.

And today I want to give you something really practical that is going to really help you.

So it's a really simple way to process what's happened after a hard walk.

So it's not going to follow you around for the rest of the day and so that you can actually try and show up differently next time.

And it's not about showing up perfectly, so not about making things perfect.

It's just about a little bit more steadiness the next time round.

And I call it the five minute debrief.

And I promise it is really, really simple.

But before we get into the tool itself, because it's a really simple tool, there are five steps to it.

I want to actually talk about why those hard moments actually stay with us, those hard walks stay with us.

Because I just don't think we talk about it enough.

We talk about what the problem is and then we talk about what the fix is.

But there is some kind of thing middle.

It's a little bit like journaling.

So if you're, if you do journal, I can't say that I practice it consistently enough necessarily, but it's a little bit like that.

You're just debriefing when that walk goes wrong, when your dog reacts or you feel judged, or you just come home feeling like a complete failure.

Your nervous system has been activated.

That isn't a metaphor.

Your body's genuinely gone through a stress response when that has happened.

So the heart rate, the muscle tension, the brain has like switched into a kind of threat detection mode.

And the thing about the nervous systems are it's not just going to automatically switch back off just because you've walked in through the front door.

Because like I said, just you're making your, your cup of tea, but your head is still in the walk.

Your body is holding onto that stress and it needs something to happen before it can release it.

So if nothing happens and you just carry on with your day, that activation stays in your system.

So potentially going to show up as irritability, heaviness, dread, or just like a really low level sense that everything's hard, harder than it should be.

And that's also why those walks, so those difficult walks are compounding over time.

So one difficult walk you might be able to manage, but 30 walks that are Difficult.

All of those walks, landing one on top of the other without any real processing in between them.

That is what burnout is going to start to feel like.

And that's where the dread of the lead coming out is going to come from.

And your dog's going to feel all of that as well.

So this is something that I want to really build as part of my nervous system aware dog parenting framework.

It comes up again and again and again because it's just so important.

Your dog's nervous system and your nervous system are in constant conversation with one another.

So when you approach the next walk still like carrying on to that residue you of the last walk that you, that you'd done, your dog is definitely going to pick up on it.

You might huff, you might sigh, you might just start to feel anxious when you get the lead.

And that is just going to make the next walk harder before it's even started.

So all those things are happening in the house before you've even stepped out of your door.

So the five minute debrief isn't just a nice thing to do for yourself, just like journaling isn't.

Actually, there is science behind journaling and I've really been listening to it and thinking, how can I find a way to get myself into doing these kinds of things?

Because it's not something that comes naturally to me.

It's genuinely got science behind it to say that it actually works in a scientific, stress relieving, meditative process, cathartic, like those words that you kind of start to link to things that might seem airy, fairy or whatever word you want to put to it.

There is actually solid science behind it.

So it genuinely changes what's going to happen on the next walk if you do this five minute debrief.

And that is why this matters.

So I want to be clear about what it is and what it isn't before we get started.

So the five minute debrief isn't a performance review.

If you're in corporate, and I used to be, performance review is a phrase that you will hear a lot.

Monthly performance review, coursely performance review.

It's definitely not that.

It's not about going everything that went wrong and working out what to fix.

That's a big one.

Because as an analyst and a fixer of things, metaphorically and everything else, it's not, it's not either of those things.

It can be easy to kind of start to think this debrief is about analyzing what I did wrong and then, then fixing that problem.

It's not that it's not a training analysis.

So it's not saying, okay, what do I need to fix in my training?

And it's definitely not about giving yourself a hard time, but in a more structured way.

It is a genuine nervous system reset.

It's a way of just closing that loop on what's just happened so your brain stops cycling through it and that your body can come back down from.

So it's got five steps, like I said, each one takes about a minute.

That's why it's the five minute debrief.

You can do it in your kitchen, in your car, before you come in from the walk, sitting on your doorstep, wherever you land after your walk, you can do it.

You don't need anything except a few minutes of stillness.

And I want to say before we get started into what it is, it works best after hard walk specifically.

So the ones that feel fine and good don't necessarily need it.

But if in your mind you're thinking, I need to debrief, that is.

And nothing big might have happened, but it just felt like a hard walk.

And in your mind you just say, I need to debrief.

That is something that's a big kind of gut instinct when your body is telling you that you need to do it.

So when you've just come in feeling that heaviness or that frustration or some of the shame, this is what I want you to reach for instead of replaying the spiral.

So if you are spiraling, try and interrupt that and, and say, right, I need to debrief on this.

So let's get into what it actually is.

So it's step by step.

Step one is breathe first.

As always, we have to try to bring ourselves back to a place of more regulation, back to a place of feeling more peaceful before we start to do anything else.

So before you make, even make the cup of tea, before you start checking your phone or starting thinking about what went wrong, I just want you to breathe.

So three slow breaths in through your nose, hold it for a few seconds and out through your mouth and let the out breath be longer than the in breath, even just a few seconds longer.

So I like to use the 4, 4, 6 method.

So it's easy to say, easy to remember.

So we, we're counting to four in our minds as we breathe in through our nose.

We hold it for four seconds and then we breathe out through our mouth for six seconds.

And we're just going to repeat that a few times in that 60 seconds.

So this is integrating my 60 second reset into this as well.

So if you've got long, if you've got a little bit longer than just doing it three times, just, just count.

Set a timer on your phone for 60 seconds and just try and do that.

And it's not, woo.

This isn't just again kind of saying, oh, it's a nice thing to do, it's actual physiology.

So that longer out breath activates what's called the parasympathetic nervous system.

So that is a signal to your body that the threat has passed.

And we want our bodies to go into the parasympathetic nervous system sometimes we don't want it to always be active, but it is something that we need to help ourselves go back into after hard moments to help stop the spiral.

So it's, it's a literal kind of notification.

Think of it like I'm trying to think human analogies.

It's a notification on your phone that tells your body your nervous system is safe to come down now.

And your dog's often naturally going to do this when they come home.

So you might see a big sigh, you might see a shake off.

So if they think about when they shake, when they're wet, so it's the wet dog shake.

If they're not actually wet and they do that, they are just regulating themselves in that moment and you might see it after play or after a stressful moment or something like that.

It's just a decompression for them.

It's actually really good to shake it off as well.

If you're ever feeling a bit anxious or a bit on edge, it's good to have a little shake off yourself too.

It's actually really, really good.

Again, physiology, it's not just, oh, just look a bit silly or anything like that.

It's just really good for our bodies just to shake something out if we need to.

It will also be potentially where you see them like flop down on their beds.

That's the same thing for our dogs.

They're decompressing and you will need to do that as well.

So those few breaths, that's step one.

If it's something that you think this is too simple, just humor me and try it out and just repeat it and do it anyway.

It's just a 60 second reset that's so simple, you can literally do it anywhere and it genuinely does have some really positive effects.

So that's step one.

Step two is naming what happened.

And this is just about the facts and it's an important thing that I want to really Kind of highlight with step two, I want you to name what actually happened on the walk, not what you've interpreted as happened on the walk.

So it's not.

I felt I failed.

Bonnie was terrible and everyone was staring.

That's your interpretation of what's happened.

It's more about Bonnie reacted to a spaniel at the corner of the park.

I felt my shoulders go up.

We crossed the road and came home early.

So think about how.

Like that first one was very emotive and very opinion.

Like you've got an opinion on yourself there.

What exactly did Bonnie do?

It just as Bonnie was terrible and everyone was staring.

Those are kind of.

We've noticed these things are happening, but they're not facts.

Because was everyone staring?

Maybe a couple of people looked over.

But actually, and I've talked about this in the previous episode, that might just be what you're feeling, like you've got all the stares.

And I felt that before myself.

So I do.

I can relate to that.

But if you imagine that second sentence, it's the facts.

Bonnie reacted to a spaniel at the corner of the park.

There was nothing else.

So I'm literally saying this is exactly what happened in that situation.

I felt my shoulders go up.

So that's my body scan.

I'm aware of that happening.

We crossed the road and came home early.

So those are the facts of what happened in that moment.

So this step actually does something really specific.

When we're activated, our brain attaches a big meaning to events.

So that meaning is genuinely always catastrophic.

So we catastrophize.

We say, like worst case scenario.

That's just sometimes how our brains are wired for that.

So naming just the facts is separating the event itself from the story that we're telling about it.

And it makes it smaller and it makes it more manageable and it makes it more true.

Because if you think about the.

The thing that we don't want to say, I failed again.

Is that true, in your opinion?

That is.

That is what's happened.

But not.

It's not a fact.

You.

You more than likely didn't fail.

Bonnie was terrible again, that's your opinion.

And everyone was staring and you felt that that was the case.

But actually maybe only a couple of people glanced over at what was going on.

So you can see where I'm going with it.

If you find yourself attaching meaning that.

And that means I'm failed.

So you might say all of that and then you might add on, and that means I've failed.

Or.

And that proves I can't do this.

Just gently bring it back.

Acknowledge that you've had those thoughts and say, you know, acknowledge that this is how I'm feeling right now.

I potentially have felt like I've failed.

I've.

I've felt like I can't do this.

Just that knowledge, that thought, it's not shutting the door on it and just completely ignoring it, because that is how you feel, and that's valid to feel how you feel.

But we're just stating the facts in this step two, and we're just naming what happened really, truly.

And you can write it down.

If it's easier to write it down, rather than saying it out loud or thinking in your head, just say, this is what happened.

So that is step two.

So we've done step one.

We've breathed, we've regulated.

We've then taken the emotion out of the situation and just separated that meaning from the moment.

And then step three is finding one thing that actually went okay on the walk.

So this can be something that people might resist the most, especially after a really hard walk.

But it's the most important step.

So I want you to try to find just one thing that went okay in the grand scheme of the whole walk.

Not in that moment, but the whole walk itself.

It doesn't have to be really impressive.

It's just got to be something real that happens.

So maybe in that moment, you did spot the trigger before your dog did, and you created distance.

You might have kept your voice calm even when your heart was racing.

So this is talking about that moment itself.

But if that's really, really difficult, take it back a step and say, okay, what?

What one thing happened that went okay on the walk.

Maybe you remembered to do some breathing.

So regulate yourself in that moment.

So you've done some nice body scans, and you've realized that you feel intense and you've breathed through it.

Maybe you made a decision to come home early instead of pushing through, and that.

That was actually the right call.

So maybe the one thing that you can find is that you just went and you showed up and you didn't cancel it.

So when you're thinking like, oh, I'm dreading this, I don't really want to go.

It's cold or it's dark or it's wet or it's like, whatever.

And I just.

I'm just feeling meh.

But you did it.

That's the one thing.

That's one thing.

And that really, really does count.

So this step is going to matter because our brains are wired to Find the threat or the problem or the failure.

That is just what our minds are wired for.

It's not a character flaw.

It's a human thing, and it's how we're built as humans.

But it means without that deliberate counterbalance.

So think of it like a scale.

Your brain is literally just tipping the scales into the negative.

We're trying to counterbalance it by saying that that hard walk isn't the whole story, but our brains are actually telling us that it is.

There was more than just that difficult moment in the walk, and there always is.

So that one, that one difficult walk might have been one difficult moment or a couple of difficult moments, depending on how long you were out or whatever, but it's not the whole thing.

And.

And we're just trying to pan out and look at the bigger picture in as best a way as we can in that situation.

So this is where that debrief.

So that is a.

All these things are going to take a minute.

So it's not about like going into a full, like a four page.

It's literally just jotting down the facts.

And then you can, if it's easier, write down what one thing actually went.

Okay.

In the walk or in the moment, if you can think about that.

So step four, we're moving on is say one kind thing to yourself.

Last week we talked about shame and how the shame tells you that you're the problem.

Not just that moment, but you yourself.

And this step is the antidote to that.

So I want you to say one kind thing to yourself.

Outload it out loud if you can, even quietly, or if in your head if you need to.

Or you can write it down something like, I'm doing my best with what I know right now.

My thing is always you don't know what you don't know.

You are doing the best with the situation that you're in.

So saying that you're doing the best with what I.

What I know right now, that's a kind thing to say to yourself.

Or this is.

Start this, this is hard and I'm still here.

Or it could be something as simple as I love my dog and I'm trying.

It might feel a bit awkward because we aren't, again, wired to easily be kind to ourselves with these things.

It might not feel like you deserve to hear, especially if the war was genuinely really woof.

But I want you to say it anyway.

You don't have to believe it completely yet.

You've just got to say it.

For now, it's just about Trying to bring some kindness back into the situation.

So I remember walking with Bonnie in those early days.

So she was quite stressed initially and then kind of going on after a few years, she started to become reactive and when it's.

It was when her reactivity was at its worst.

So I'd come home and go straight into the repl.

What should I have done?

What did I miss?

What I'd probably do wrong the next time.

So I'd be even like catastrophizing the next walk.

It took me a long, long time to genuinely learn that being cruel to myself after a hard walk was never going to make the next walk better.

It made it feel worse because I'd arrive at the next walk already braced for failure.

And if you've ever heard of the phrase self fulfilling prophecy, that is kind of what it is.

Because if that walk was difficult, I would say, see, I knew it was going to be difficult.

Or I'd tell myself, see, I told you it was going to be a difficult walk because xyz.

Fill in the blank.

The kind thing that you say to yourself after a hard walk is part of what brings you to the next one.

And that's why it's in here as part of the five minute debrief.

So I want you to use your own words.

This is something that I started telling myself over time in general life situations.

So after I'd been to therapy for a few years and my therapist told me that I'd become my own therapist, that was kind of something that I just started to subconsciously do anyway.

So I started to realize consciously, actually I am talking to myself a little bit more kindly than I used to.

And I'd use my own words and say to myself, basically, you don't know what you don't know.

And you're just trying in those situations to do what you can with the information that you have and what you know right now.

And that's good enough.

You are good enough in this situation.

So it's a really important step that I really want you to try.

And I didn't believe myself initially, but I still kind of clocked that I was doing it and saying, actually, Yara, I'm being kind to myself here.

Because if a friend came and said something to you, you would talk to them in that way.

You would say you're trying your best and that's, you know, you're good enough.

You know, whatever it is, you would be being kind to them.

So try to just reflect that back onto yourself.

It's easier Said than done, but try it.

And then the final step, the fifth and final step is one small next step.

So the last step is a tiny lean forward.

It's not a training plan.

It's not a list of things that you need to fix.

It's just one small specific thing that you'll do before the next walk.

So it might be, I'll bring higher value treats tomorrow.

So if you are finding that your dog's getting really distracted when they're out, so they know how to do things in the house and they're really responsive, but you take those same treats out with you on a walk and they just switch off to them, actually just taking a higher value treat out might change how that.

How motivated they are to do it.

So I'll bring high value treats tomorrow.

Or I'll go out 10 minutes earlier when it's quieter.

However, like whatever time it would be.

So it could be I'll text my friend who gets it.

So if you've got a friend or family member or somebody that you that you know that will get it and won't be judging you for saying what you're thinking or how you're feeling, just say, I'll text my friend who gets it.

Or I'll listen to that podcast episode about thresholds.

Or I'll listen to the podcast episode that links to how I'm feeling right now.

Like, whatever it is it might even be, the next step is to rest a day and not think about it anymore.

That's the next step.

You're actively and consciously saying, this is what I need to do next.

The point about this fifth and final step is to give your brain something to do with the experience other than just replay it.

So when we've got no forward movement, that mind is going to start to go in circles because it's got nowhere to go.

So even that smallest sense of there's something that I can do just interrupts the loop.

So one thing that's specific and doable and that's it.

So think about what it could be and make that your one small next step.

So I want to be honest with you about habits, because I think a lot of us have got really complicated relationships with them.

The five minute debrief is only going to work if you actually do it.

And the most common reason people don't do things like this isn't about laziness.

It's that when you're dysregulated after a hard walk, the last thing that you want to do is feel like you've got to go through a step by step by step process.

You want to go inside, close the door and pretend it didn't happen.

So this is what I'm going to suggest.

Instead of trying to remember to do it in the moment, make a small decision in advance.

So decide now that after a hard walk, before you do anything else, you'll sit down for five minutes.

Not to fix anything, but to close the loop.

You could do it by like keeping a note in your phone with the five steps.

So I'll put what the five steps are in the show notes so that you can copy them just as a prompt for the first few times that you do it so you've got them there.

It doesn't need to become this big ritual, but it can, can be something that becomes the thing that you reach for.

Instead of spiraling.

You've got to have a little trigger.

So in habit forming, there is science behind it.

Habits don't necessarily just happen.

There has to be a trigger.

So if we can give ourselves a trigger and say, I don't know, set a little reminder, a recurring daily reminder in your calendar, or a little alarm or something like that at the time that you normally walk your dog and just like say, do I need, do I need to debrief?

Do I need to do the five minute debrief?

And sometimes you won't need to do it, but sometimes you will.

And that can become the little trigger so that it becomes something that you think about.

There's way, way more deeper like levels to forming habits and why it works.

But one of the things is having a little trigger.

So like for me in the morning, to remind me to take my vitamins in the morning, I make a smoothie.

So when I've had that smooth, when I start to pour the smoothie into the grass, the glass, it reminds me to take my vitamins.

So it's just that it's those little triggers that happen repetitively that start to prompt you to do the next thing.

So inside my dog parent path, this kind of like one, this like simple step by step process of like post walk processing, for want of a better phrase, is one of the things that I really want to work on together with the people that are in there with me.

So it's not just the tool itself, but the practice of actually using it and what gets in the way of using it.

Because knowing a tool exists and being able, being able to use it when you're overwhelmed are just two completely different things.

And that gap is where the real support actually lives.

So that is like something that I'm building and I'm creating.

And I want it to be something that you've got these toolkits that are super simple, really easy to use.

But I'm also there to help you with the implementation and the accountability and actually helping you to form these positive habits as a way of helping you to process and move forward rather than just getting stuck in those cycles.

So that's the five minute debrief.

Five steps, one minute each.

Breathe first.

It's always the first one.

Name just the facts.

Find one thing that went okay.

Say one kind thing to yourself and choose one small next step.

You don't have to wait for the next hard walk to actually try it.

So if you've had one recently, say you've had a difficult walk this week and it's still kind of sitting with you a little bit.

You could do it right now.

So you could put this episode on pause, give yourself five minutes or rewind and go back through the steps from the chapters and just kind of pause it at each step.

If you need that kind of talking through as you do it, that can really help so that you've got somebody actually feeling like you're doing.

You're going through it with me.

There are a lot of us that really kind of go through this.

So I think it's really important to actually work on it and, and I'll still be here when you come back.

So if you are pausing the episode or listening to it as you go along and going and actually doing this, I'm still going to be here when you get back.

So I'm always here with you.

If this episode really really you found it really useful, I'd really love you to share it with another dog parent who you feel needs it most and who comes home from walks carrying more than they need to.

So if you're the friend that dog parent is messaging and they're telling you that the walks are really hard, or you're a family member and you've kind of heard them say that and then you've come across my podcast, send them this episode.

There are so many of us out there and we don't have to carry it all on our own.

And if you want to go deeper into the nervous system piece so the regulation, self compassion, the building of genuine calm with your dog.

Come and find out more about the dog parent path at the website linked in the show notes.

I've got a little freebie that you can go check out and if you haven't signed up for for that.

I'll put the link in the show notes there as well.

So thank you so much for being here.

Do really take care of yourself this week and I'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much for tuning into the mic Dog Parent.

If this episode gave you something to think about, or it just made you feel a little less alone, I would love it if you followed the show and shared it with another dog parent who needs it.

You'll find all the links and resources mentioned in the show notes@lavendergardenanimalservices.co.uk podcast and I would love to stay in touch, so head there if you want to explore more ways to work with me or get support.