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.

There's a particular type of heaviness that sets in after a hard walk.

So you've got home, that lead has been put back on the hook, that door's closed behind you and your brain is telling you a story about what might have just happened.

So your dog could have reacted on the walk.

So you felt your shoulders tense up, your chests got tight.

You have, your hands have got tight when you were on, like, holding that lead and you've got home and that's where you start to feel safe again.

So you, you kind of start to check back in, but your brain's already telling you a story.

Why is this still happening?

I thought we were past this.

Have I messed something up?

All those thoughts that I've talked about in previous episodes, the, the dog, mum, guilt, the attaching your identity, as in who you are as a person and how, how good enough you are as a person to, to the progress that your dog's making in the, in your training.

And those moments can be just so destabilizing.

I have been there myself.

I'll talk a little bit about it in today's episode because when you've been working so hard, especially when you've been feeling like you've been working so hard, that's why it's destabilising.

And I want to talk about those moments in today's episode because I want you to hear that those moments do not mean that you're going backwards, even when they feel like you do, because I have felt that too.

I have been the dog mom who have.

Has felt all those things.

And I want to talk about that today.

I want to talk about how we can start to reframe it.

When I think about an episode, when I think about What I want to talk about and stories that I want to mention that are relevant.

Bonnie's reactivity is something that always.

That I always come back to.

And when I think about it in a bit more detail, I think about it from my own perspective, but then I think about it from my.

My client's perspective as well.

And reactivity is one of the hardest things that you can work through.

So I'm talking about this episode today from a reactivity point of view, but you can put anything to it.

So you can put, you know, off lead, recall your dog not listening to you and seemingly ignoring you on a walk when you're trying to recall them, that can be just as destabilizing.

You think, you know, oh, we were starting to make progress, and then it just goes out of the window.

Lead walking you, your arm being pulled off on the lead, that's just as destabilizing because you come back exhausted and you feel like your arm's gonna fall off.

Like, all.

Like any situation on a walk with your dog that we.

We can kind of put to this.

But I think when I think about my own experience and the feelings around it all, for my clients who have reactive dogs and all that kind of stuff, it's a big emotional thing.

So the story that stood out for me, for my own experience with this is Bonnie.

So anybody new to the podcast, welcome.

I'm so glad that you're here, but you might not know about my own experiences.

So in previous episodes, if you haven't listened to them before, I've talked about my own dogs and my own situations, and I try to make everything feel as real as possible because I think that's a really important thing to kind of see, say, like, I felt these things.

You're not on your own when you feel this way.

I, you know, I've got to the place that I have now through time, like times past, between now and then, and I can reflect on it and I can look back and think of all the things that I could have done differently.

But actually, I think about it now from a place of reflecting and saying, well, there wasn't very much structure, though.

You know, I was doing what I could, and I was doing it on my own.

I didn't have anybody helping me with it, so it is always going to feel a lot harder.

And reactivity specifically is so nuanced as well.

So I remember a walk with Bonnie.

Bonnie is a rescue lurcher.

She.

We've had her since she was around seven months old, and she's now, we want to say around 10, so we're not sure of her age because she's a rescue, but we think we got her when she was about 7 months old.

She's now 10.

So there's been a long period of time between now and then.

And seven months old is right on the cusp of teenage times.

And it's usually the time when reactivity can escalate or start to happen.

When I say escalate, it may be that your puppy's lying down.

When dogs go past or people or whatever their triggers are, that they lie down or they sit and they won't move until they've gone, or just really subtle things and it starts to escalate, or it can just be something that feels like it's kind of started and you weren't expecting it.

So nothing was really happening that you could notice before, and now it started.

So teenage times tends to be when it happens most.

But I didn't know that then.

I had no idea about any of that.

So when I started to make progress with her, I remember a walk that stuck with me.

We'd been in a steady place for a while, so I'd seen calmer walks.

She wasn't pulling on the lead as much or looking around her as often.

So hyper vigilance, looking for dogs.

Her reactions were towards dogs.

We felt more connected.

So I'd worked on our relationship, I'd worked on engagement with me and all that kind of stuff that leads to the point of being able to check in with you on walks and feel like they don't need to pull to everything or like not be thinking about you in any way.

So I got that feeling that, okay, things are starting to shift, things are starting to improve.

Then one day, out of nowhere, it.

It seemed she reacted.

So it wasn't a big explosion.

So her reactions were explosive.

They were pulled to the end of that lead as far as she could go.

Pull my arm off, and she would flip herself up in the air.

So that's the best description that I could use.

She'd flip herself up into the air, and she would land any way she would like.

She wouldn't be landing on her feet.

She wasn't a cat.

She gives me cat vibes sometimes, but she wasn't a cat in those moments at all.

But it looked like I'd flipped her up in the air and she would bark, she would lunge, she would.

She would jump onto her back legs.

She would yap sometimes as well.

Very, very big, dramatic reactions.

So this reaction on this particular day, after we'd started to make some progress, it wasn't explosive, it wasn't dramatic, but it was enough to make my stomach drop.

So immediately my brain went to what did I miss?

Did I let things slide?

You know, was I getting complacent?

Did I think we'd made more progress than we actually have?

Because that's what my brain was wired to do.

And it's what most of our brains are wired to do as well.

So I remember standing there after I was holding that lead, I felt that feeling of a mixture of disappointment and self doubt.

Those are the two feelings that stood out in my situation for that disappointment in the fact that it had happened, disappointment in myself because I felt like I'd let that happen.

And self doubt around not feeling good enough.

Because I've talked about it in previous episode, I'll link any relevant episodes in the show notes.

But I've talked about feeling good enough being attached to your dog's progress in a particular area before because it, it resonated with me.

I didn't feel good enough as a dog mom and dog mom guilt creeped in as well.

And that's one of the early episodes too I've gone into in a bit more detail.

But all those feelings, not feeling good enough guilt, that self doubt of, you know, my dog's progress equals this is how good enough I am.

That was what was happening.

But the bit that changed everything to me, once I started to realize and like really started to go into it in more detail, nothing had actually regressed.

Bonnie wasn't worse.

The work that we'd done hadn't completely unravelled.

What had happened was like way more human and biological than all of those things that my brain was telling me.

So when your dog's reactions happen, or if you've just had a hard moment so they are really, really pulling on that lead, or your dog struggled through an overwhelming situation or whatever it is, both of your nervous systems are reacting at once.

So that's your nervous system and your dog's nervous system are reacting to one situation.

So from a nervous system perspective in this situation, and this can be labeled for anything.

That's why I'm thinking, say think about your own situation with your dog with this, because it can be for anything.

But in my situation and this kind of topic today, reactivity is not a linear skill that just keeps improving in a straight line.

Or like, think of it like steps.

We aren't going to go up every single step, every single day from the start to the finish, it very much depends on state.

So our nervous system state.

So that means, like, in any given moment, your dog's response is going to be dependent on quite a few things.

So I'll kind of list a few so that you can have a think about potentially, if you've had a hard moment recently, what could it.

Like, how could it all link together?

So it's going to be how safe they feel.

So from a nervous system perspective, if they don't feel safe just in, just in the same way as if we don't feel safe, we're not going to see a response in the same way as in situations when they do how much stress they're already carrying.

So our stress bucket and their stress bucket is going to play a part in that.

So how full is that bucket?

If you're not sure what the stress bucket analogy is, I'll link to it in the show notes so that you can kind of understand really, really simple terms what it is.

It can be linked to what's happened earlier on in the day.

So, you know, that can be how much sleep they've had that day, how many visitors there's been, how many triggers.

And triggers doesn't mean things that have made them react.

It just means things that have happened to them in the day, what their body's capacity is right then.

So the capacity for you and for your dog is going to be different in every situation and for every day.

So it's what, in that moment, what capacity did they have?

And when we talk about the situation, those kind of things with your dog, we're thinking about it, about you as well.

So how safe do you feel?

How much stress are you carrying?

What's happened to you earlier in the day?

What your body's capacities, what capacity does your body have right then?

And then when something unexpected happens on a walk, your nervous system can flip into that protection mode in milliseconds.

It's doing what it's meant to do.

Don't feel safe.

I need to go into protection mode.

So your heart rate increases, your breath starts to shallow, your muscle starts to tense because it's, it's responding to thinking about, do I fight?

Do I, do I flee?

Do I freeze?

I don't feel safe, what do I do?

I need to prepare my body for that response.

Your brain's not asking, like in that moment, your.

When your body doesn't feel safe and your nervous systems put you into this safety, protection mode, it's not thinking, is this a data, data point when you feel safe and when you have all these kind of feet, you know, all that stuff that I mentioned, your stress is lower, you feel like you, you can be calmer.

You haven't had very many triggers and you've had good sleep and all that stuff.

Your brain probably does say, is this a data point?

What can I learn from it?

That in that moment your body's saying, are we safe?

What do I need to do?

How do I need to prepare to fight, flee or freeze?

That's when the meaning making starts.

Your mind is trying to explain that discomfort.

And the easier and the easiest explanation is usually the self doubt.

The I failed, the we've gone backwards, the this shouldn't still be happening.

But none of those things are facts.

None of those things are coming from a place of you feeling safe and feeling able to process things in a more logical way.

They're a stress response.

So your body's responding in the right way in terms of I feel unsafe, I need to go into protection mode, what do we do right now I need to tense up, ready for, for some kind of response and reaction.

Your brain flips then into, can't process this.

I feel really stressed.

I need to explain what's happening and it has to be me.

Progress is about, if we think about it in a nervous system aware training, it's not the absence of reactions.

We aren't going to say we can never see a reaction here.

So when I think about my own story with Bonnie in that scenario, when I list some of the things about what progress actually is, you'll see what was happening.

So my brain went to, I'm not good enough.

Why did this happen?

We've regressed, we're going backwards.

You know, I thought we were past this, all that stuff, but what was actually happening was shorter recovery times is what real progress looks like.

So your dog takes less time to recover when they have had a reaction.

So when you start to see that happen, that is progress.

It's quicker regulation.

So are they able to regulate themselves, come back to baseline faster than they could before?

It's less intensity over time.

So their reactions to a situation are lesser than they were before.

And that better ability to come back to baseline that I've mentioned already.

So sometimes progress in a reactivity sense looks like reacting and then settling faster.

Sometimes it looks like having one hard moment after having quite a few good ones.

Sometimes it's looking at your own response as well.

So if I just kind of backtrack a little bit and I look at that list of stuff that I Know what?

Progress.

That's what progress means.

Bonnie had still made progress.

So if you think about what I said, I said, we went out for a walk, and her reaction, she reacted, but her reaction was not as dramatic as it was before.

She didn't flip herself up at the end of that lead bar, land in any which way, like, on her back, on her side.

Like, she rarely landed on her feet because she was so overwhelmed.

She didn't jump and, like, become big and dramatic.

She.

She went to the end of her lead, she had a little, like, she got interested, and she raised herself a little bit.

Her chest went up, her head went up, her ears were forward, her head was forward, all that stuff.

She had a little bark, and then she checked back in with me and carried on away and recovered much quicker.

So when we think about that, her recovery time was fast because it used to take her ages to recover from a reaction.

She regulated herself faster because she shook off.

She.

She shook off after she barked and went back to sniffing.

So that regulation point is being able to do things like sniff for your dog.

It was way less intense than it had been, and she came back to baseline much faster.

So for me, when I look back at that situation in the moment, I was thinking all this bad stuff, but actually, when I compare it to where we'd come from, that was massive progress.

She did react, but it was way less than it was.

She checked in with me.

She would never have done that before.

Like, all these things had happened.

But that's not what your brain is telling you in that moment.

So we're looking at that reaction from your dog and thinking, well, actually, this is progress, because it, you know, I'm not trying to eliminate every single reaction in all these situations because the dog over the road, from memory was looking at us, and I think, think there was two dogs, and one of them was starting to bark as well.

So when.

When a dog who feels threatened is getting eye contact, that's intimidating.

And especially when there's a dog, another dog reacting.

It was.

It was a big dog and a little, little dog.

And the little dog was barking.

The big dog looked at her, and the.

And the little dog was obviously looking and barking as well.

So those two things are going to increase stress.

And she dealt with it in the best way that she could in that moment.

And I was really proud.

Once I'd realized, I. I thought, actually, I'm really proud because she, she.

It was a minimal reaction really, in comparison to where we'd come from.

And she was able to Recover way quicker after a situation where another dog was barking really quite loudly at her.

So that's really good progress.

And then we're thinking about going back to the point I was making about what your own response looks like.

So we're thinking your own.

Your response before was I need to panic and self blame.

But what's actually happening now is you soften yourself instead.

You, you think, what do I need to do next?

So you are coming from a place of still feeling like you can do something next rather than it being panic or self blame.

And if you do panic or self blame in the moment, that's okay.

We're thinking about what strategies do we need to give you and how do we help you to feel more confident in knowing to do in that situation.

So it's just, it is a learning point still.

But when you start to see your response soften, that is the work, that is the progress that both of you are making.

Your dog's response reactions were smaller, their intensity was less, they could recover faster.

And your reaction in that moment wasn't to catastrophize.

That's the best description that I could give it.

Catastrophizing is a normal human response to situations that feel threatening or stressful, but you've chosen to soften instead.

So with Bonnie, once I'd stopped treating those moments as evidence of failure, everything started to change.

So I stopped tightening the lead physically and emotionally.

I stopped spiraling internally.

She stopped feeling like she had to carry the tension with me.

So like feeling that tension through the lead.

Because dogs are responding to that environment as much as they're responding to things that they're picking up from us.

So there would be, there will be things like I was doing back then that you may do when your dog is having that moment, that difficult moment.

So with reactivity, it could be you tense, that lead, that lead becomes tense.

Or.

And it's only when they, when you see a dog.

So you see a dog, the lead tense is your dog picks up on that tension and then says, what do I need to be aware of in this environment?

And it's a dog.

And then it's becoming.

That becomes a trigger for them.

Or it could be only when we see dogs do we cross the road we normally walk.

Really like in straight up, one way, straight down, back down on the same path.

Or we do a loop or whatever it is, and it's always on the same side.

But if there's a dog, and only if there's a dog or whatever it is, a Human.

If they're reactive to people, do we cross the road?

That trigger of we're crossing the road will be the thing that tells your dog that there's something there.

It could be that your hand goes in your pocket and that becomes a trigger for them.

So there'll be things that you were doing that they'll pick up on and they'll feel like they need to be aware of something and it becomes the trigger for the reaction potentially.

So they are responding to us and what our body language and all the signals that we're giving off to them as well as the environment.

So there's things that we can do to.

That's why I say like having strategies and knowing what to do really helps.

And I give my clients in this situation emergency protocols because I've been there myself.

What do I do?

Oh my gosh, what do I do in this situation?

Actually this is happening.

Let's do this is what I teach my clients to do.

And it takes time to kind of get to that place because you need to start to feel confident in understanding what your dog's doing, understanding what we do in the, in the different situations.

It takes time to practice and learn it, but it does get to that point of knowing them, what to do.

So the reframe that I still use to this day is instead of asking, what did I do wrong?

And this is for like all aspects of life, that's why I still use it today.

Instead of what did I do wrong?

We ask what might have made this harder today?

So it's not forever, it's not for always, it's not any kind of.

It's not big or over a long period of time.

It's just today.

What might have made this harder today?

Was your dog overtired?

Was the environment busier than it usually is?

Were you already holding a lot of stress or were they holding a lot of stress in their bodies?

This question starts to support you in that curiosity rather than criticism.

So instead of saying what did I do wrong?

When you are reflecting on a particular difficult moment, we're thinking, what might have made this harder today instead.

So that curiosity is what's keeping your nervous system in a state of where learning for both of you is still possible.

Because if we're just self, self critical or trying to find blame, so we're blaming a situation on another person, another dog.

Like whatever it is, it's not about blame.

It's about thinking about what, what might have made this harder.

And if there's no real big pattern to it and there's no real clear signal then that's where we start to ask more questions on a deeper level.

But that question really starts to help keep you curious around it rather than thinking I've got to change all the things.

So after a hard walk, the most supportive thing that you can do instead of more training, because more training is not the answer here, it's regulation.

So for you that could be working on your breath.

So really like doing that body scan, slowing down your breath, unclenching your jaw.

So my historically my jaws been clenched a lot and I've ground my teeth at night since I was a kid.

So I definitely can relate to that one.

Letting your shoulders drop.

So you know, having that awareness of if you feel tense, your shoulders are raised up.

So lowering those shoulders and for your dog it's decompression time.

It's quiet, it's familiarity.

It's not kind of trying to break it all apart and really try to, to do anything.

It's not about replaying it on a loop, which again something I've done.

That's why I mention it.

It's what I used to do in the past.

I used to loop round and round and round the same situation over and over and over, being self critical, thinking I'd done all these things wrong.

But it's about letting both of your nervous system settle.

So after a hard walk, you've got home, you've hooked that lead back on the hook.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, the doors closed and your brain might have started telling you a story.

Have that awareness and say and interrupt it and say to yourself, rather than doing this, let's ask the question and let's both regulate ourselves now so it can be giving your dog a chew.

So they've had a high arousal walk.

Let's give them something to bring that arousal level down, give them a chew in a quiet space in their calm zone and let me make myself a cup of tea and focus on my breath and just try and ground myself again.

So when we start to let both of our nervous systems settle, reflection happens from a place of being able to learn and process better rather than doing all of that escalation.

And it works best after safety does return.

So it's not going to help when you're still activated.

So it's about doing the regulation and then reflecting.

Those are the things that I would do.

So I want you to hear what I've mentioned already and what I hope you've learned from the episode that a hard walk does not erase all the hard work that you've done.

A reaction does not cancel the progress that you'd been making up to that point.

And a bad day doesn't mean you're back at the beginning again.

It usually often just means that you're human, your dog's just being a dog and some something has tipped the balance in that moment and moments pass.

Moments are temporary.

So if this has landed for you, there's two episodes that are that I've that I think are going to be relevant, but I'll link some more in the show notes like thinking about some of that linking back to your identity and dog mum guilt.

But there's one episode I think will resonate is when you feel like you're failing with your dog and when staying calm feels impossible.

So those are gonna naturally kind of sit really well alongside what we talked about today as well as the other episodes that I've mentioned.

And as always, I want you to hear that you're not doing things wrong.

You're not failing.

Even on the days where it's really hard to believe that.

I want you to remember you're not failing.

So I'll see you next time on the Mindful Dog Parent.

Thanks so much for tuning in to the Mindful Dog Parent.

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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.