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.

Hello, welcome to the Mindful Dog Parent.

I'm Sian, and as always, I'm really, really glad that you're here joining me today.

And I'm starting the podcast with something slightly different this week.

And it is a question, and I actually really want you to think about it rather than just letting it wash over you.

It's not something you have to write down or overthink.

It's just if you're listening to this in the car or when you're making a cup of tea or whenever it is, just have a think about it.

Because I want this to be something that feels tangible, that feels personal to you, that you can literally take away with you and start to make personal, like, personalize it.

Just like with all the episodes, that is what I want for you.

So some of the advice out there is really general, but the things that I give you are things that you can start to say, well, how does this thing, whatever it is, this topic, this question, this set of, this step by step that Sian's given me, how can this be made relevant to me and my dog?

So that's what I want to do with this question.

So what the question is, when did you last give yourself credit for something that you did with your dog?

Now, it doesn't have to be a big thing.

And as I say in the intro to the podcast, it's not about the perfect walks and it definitely isn't about these big breakthrough training sessions or moments that you've had with them.

Just something small, something that you might have handled better than you did a few months ago, perhaps, or something that you've noticed or tried between you and your dog.

And I'm gonna guess that it's been a while since you gave yourself credit for something that you did with your dog?

Because most of the dog parents that I talk to and work with and most of the dog parents who listen to this podcast are just much, much quicker to catalog what went wrong and list what went wrong, and it comes to you in an instant.

I bet if I asked you the opposite question, you would think of things immed immediately.

Oh, well, you know, the walk went really badly.

My dog reacted.

Like, all these things you could just list straight away.

But I'm asking you, when did you last give yourself credit for something that you did with your dog?

And I'm guessing that you're going to be thinking much harder and much longer.

And if you're not amazing, it's great that you've got that awareness.

But it's not something that comes naturally.

That bad walk gets replayed on a loop.

But the moment that you kept your cool without getting frustrated or that small win that you had in.

In the TR session, or that tiny bit of progress that you've made.

So if you're working on separation anxiety, for example, you've gone out, you've been able to go outside and close the door for four seconds, whereas your dog previously would just go absolutely insane with anxiety as soon as you kind of stepped out of that door.

So that's progress.

That four seconds of being able to stand outside and your dog being calm and is progress.

It just doesn't feel huge.

That's why I'm trying to get you to think about this one.

So all that stuff, all that positivity just disappears.

And it's like it didn't count because that bad walk is what you're playing over and over in your mind today.

I want to talk about why that happens.

And I'm going to say straight away, because I always want to be honest with you.

I have fallen into this negativity bias, which I'll talk about in a little bit.

I have been the dog mom who thought of all the bad things that happened and struggled to list all the good things that happened.

And that's the dog mom in my life, with my dog, but also in my.

In my work, in my life.

Like, it's just so much easier to say all the things that are negative and list all of those than it is to say what you might be grateful for or what you found joy in.

So I have been somebody who has previously done this a lot, but I still fall into it.

So I don't do it as much as I used to, but I still.

I still do do it because.

And you'll find out why.

It's a very human thing to do.

So I want to talk about why it happens, what it costs you, because it does cost you something.

And probably more importantly, how to start seeing the evidence that's actually already there, the evidence that you're actually doing better than you think you are.

And I believe so much that most overwhelmed dog parents just aren't failing.

I always say you're not failing, you're overwhelmed.

You are succeeding in ways that you've just completely stopped noticing.

And I can talk to you on this from experience with working with clients as well.

So I go into a one to one session and I say, if we're in a program, for example, and I say, well, what's been working and what progress have you made?

Or how have things been going?

And then they list all the negatives and then I say, okay, I ask a few little questions and then I kind of say, well, that's progress, that's a win.

That's something that they weren't doing before and it's a, it's a positive thing.

So those are things where they go actually, yeah, they have, they have made progress and I've made progress with them.

They just weren't recognizing it.

So this is what, this is what I'm here to do.

I'm here to help you and cheerlead with you and help you spot the wins and start to have that awareness so that you can do that for yourself instead of having somebody else have to point that out.

Because as soon as I start to point that out, it becomes something that my clients are really more aware of.

And then the next time I go, they say, yeah, we've done this, this and this, and there's a bit more positivity there.

So that's progress as well.

So there's a reason those hard moments are sticking and the good ones just slide away.

And as I say, it's not because you're pessimistic or negative or too hard on yourself by nature.

I mean, you can be too hard on yourself.

And I have been too myself as well about so many things in life, but it's actually because your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

So we've got what psychologists have labelled a negativity bias, which I mentioned.

So that is basically a deeply wired tendency to just give more weight to the negative experiences than the positive ones.

It is genuinely a survival mechanism.

So threats are going to get remembered and the danger gets catalogued because historically when we Go back before we, you know, had technology and lived in houses like we do and all of that.

And we lived in our groups, our communities, and being outside of that community meant threat and danger to our life.

It just.

We can kind of see where we're going.

So historically, the cost of missing that threat was just much higher than the cost of missing a good moment.

So it just wasn't something we focused in on because we had to remember what the threats were and what the dangers were so that we didn't fall back into the same scenario again.

So it makes sense.

But the problem with negativity bias in dog parenting means that every single difficult walk or every single reactive moment that your dog has, every time you felt like you've handled something badly, that is going to get filed away and stored in your brain very much more than when your dog didn't react.

So the moments that go well, that those times when things are actually okay, the walk that went well, the progress that's quietly happening in the background, those just don't get the same sticky treatment.

They just pass through.

So it's kind of like something that happens, but you just don't have an awareness of it as much.

So when you sit down at the end of a hard week and you try to kind of assess how things are going with your dog, you're not actually doing a fair assessment.

You're going.

You're going based on a biased one where all the bad data is like the front of mind and the center of your mind.

And most of the good data is just being gotten rid of and recycled.

And then you just start to conclude that I'm just not making any progress, I'm failing, things aren't getting better.

But that conclusion is not accurate.

It is just what is happening when you run a biased assessment on incomplete data.

So I'm an analyst by nature, so this all makes like.

This all comes really, really naturally to me.

So I'll give you an example.

I've seen it with Bonnie lot in the past.

So there was weeks where I was having really difficult moments with her reactivity.

So she was reacting, and maybe the reaction was getting quite extreme, or the walk was just harder than I'd like it to have been.

And then I found myself spiraling into we've gone backwards.

That's one of the biggest things that I hear from clients as well.

So when I was just a dog woman, not the trainer that I am now, that was what I thought.

We've just gone so much more backwards with this.

But when I actually stopped and looked at the bigger picture and the full picture.

So I kind of took myself out of that one situation or that one moment or one walk and zoomed out and looked at the bigger picture of progress, where.

Where she was a year ago or six months ago, even what our walks looked like then compared to what they were looking like now.

How she was responding to me, how I was actually responding to her.

That progress was just undeniable.

So I zoomed out on it and said, actually, that one moment doesn't define any.

I need to look at the bigger picture here.

I. I just wasn't looking at it at the time.

So I was only looking at that one bad situation or day.

So what I want to do is something very different in this episode.

I want to talk through what I call the evidence audit.

So it's not complicated.

It's just a really deliberate, structured way of looking at what's actually there and the proof that you're actually doing better than you think.

So there's five areas that I want to consider, and as I go go through every one, I want, I want you to genuinely pause and think of at least one specific example from your life with your dog and really make it tangible for yourself to build that awareness.

So you could be listening in the car.

You don't have to write it down.

It's not about just kind of like getting a little sense of potential.

Oh, maybe that was happening then.

I want you to have an actual moment in your mind because the specificity is.

Is going to be what makes this real.

So we're not going to say, oh, maybe we had a good walk last week.

We want to say this walk on this day was great, or this moment in our training session was really good.

Or think about a comparison.

So what were you doing a year ago or a month ago with your dog?

And what are you doing now?

And what can you compare from then versus now?

So the first one I want to go through is you know your dog better than you did.

So I want you to think about where you were when you first got your dog or when things first started to feel really hard with them.

Did you understand what triggered them then?

Did you know what helped them settle then?

Did you know the difference between a manageable moment and a moment that just needed space?

I can guarantee that you will know things now that you didn't know then.

And that's not nothing.

That is evidence.

So maybe you know now that Your dog needs 10 minutes of sniffing before they can actually focus.

Maybe, you know, the Specific look they get before they're about to react.

And that's a really big one.

So starting to understand your dog when they're doing some of these things before they do these things is going to be really important.

So if you can see some specific things your dog does before they're about to react, maybe you know which side of the road to take on a Tuesday morning when a dog walker passes.

That knowledge that you have now didn't just come from nowhere.

It came from you starting to pay attention day after day after day, even when things were really hard.

So I really want you to think about those that you know your dog better than you, better than you did.

And that is the first thing that I want you to kind of consider and just think back to when you first got them versus what you know now, and write it down if you like, think about some of these things.

I just want you to think about it so that it starts to make it more personal for you.

The second thing is you handle things differently than you used to.

So this one might be subtle because we often don't notice those gradual changes in ourselves.

And I can attest to this.

So when I think back to how I used to react, react in certain situations, to how I react now, it's very different.

So when you're, say, for example, when your dog first reacted to another dog or to a stranger or to a noise, whatever it is, what did you do, what did you feel, and how long did it take you to recover from that situation?

So if I think back to when Bonnie first started to be reactive, or even when Maisie used to be barking at all the things, so she used to bark a lot, she was never like she, she love.

But even if she saw a person over the road from our house, so she was looking out the window and she saw someone over the road start barking, and my reactions then were to tell her to be quiet, to tell her to shut up, get frustrated.

And then when I compare myself from there to what I started to see when Bonnie started to get reactive and building it up from there, I realized getting frustrated and getting in that cycle of just trying to correct the behavior that was in front of me just wasn't working.

So I changed things and I got more patience.

And that's not an easy thing to do.

You know, there's some things that you've got to do to try to work through and build that patience.

It's not just something where you say, right, I'm going to be more patient now because it's your nervous system state that you're in that impacts practice.

It.

So I just started to get more patient.

I started to build more of a connection.

I noticed more then I started to notice more check ins and engagement and that kind of thing.

And that's what I'm talking about.

So what, what did you used to do and what do you do now?

So I'm not like I'm saying, I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying you've got it all figured out, but there is like, is there any way, even a small one in which you are responding differently now to what you.

So it could be you're giving more space instead of that tension on the lead, maybe a slightly calmer voice turning away instead of trying to push through, going home instead of feeling the need to force something.

So if you're out on a walk and it's a difficult walk, you are taking the decision to go home instead of trying to push through and just getting more and more fed up, wound up, stressed.

All of that is evidence and that is change and that is what counts.

So I really want you to think about what your reactions used to be versus what they are now because it really plays a part.

The third one is you are still showing up.

And I think this is the one where people dismiss it just most often and the quickest because I just want to say the fact that you are still here, that you're still trying, that you're still taking your dog out even when it's hard.

You're still listening to podcasts like this one and looking for ways to understand your dog better.

That is not a small thing.

I really want to just hammer that home.

It is not a small thing that you are still showing up.

Dog parenting when it's difficult is genuinely exhausting.

The people who give up don't listen to episodes about how to process hard walks or to understand shame or regulate their nervous system.

You're here because you care and caring consistently in the face of difficult moments.

That is evidence, that is building resilience and that is growth.

And that is something that I recognize in myself as well.

So I was still showing up.

I had moments and I'm not again ashamed to say it now that I considered Bunny wasn't the right fit for our home.

We had Maisie already.

She was our resident dog and she was, she wasn't old, but she was getting older.

And Bonnie was very, very young.

She was about 7, 8 months old when we adopted her.

Maisie didn't take to her, there was lots of things where I was just thinking this might not work and making that really difficult decision to take her back to the rescue center.

Because that relationship for me was a biggie.

I needed or wanted.

I wanted them to feel like they could get on together and play.

And the things that I had in my mind and I imagine just weren't happening.

They weren't.

They just weren't.

Bonnie just Maisie just wasn't very tolerant of Bonnie.

So that is what I'm thinking.

Like, it's just one of those things that I considered at the time and I don't feel ashamed for doing.

I did at the time.

I was thinking, I feel awful.

You know, she's been poorly and I feel like she' had enough time and all these things.

But I just felt like there might be something where it just wouldn't work.

But I still showed up, I still persevered.

I built management into the situation and I gave it time.

And with all those things, I was showing up and it was still hard, but I still did it.

And that is what I'm proud of.

So it's not always the best decision to keep the dog in the home if it's not working relationship wise.

I will add that in as a caveat.

Sometimes it is the best decision to take the dog back to the rescue center.

I'd had conversations with Dogs Trust, who I adopted her from.

I'd had a conversation with a behaviorist and that kind of thing.

So it wasn't something I just decided was going to happen instantly without any kind of conversations.

And we were saying, okay, maybe it won't work, but try these things first.

And I did and it worked.

So sometimes we say maybe it's the best decision to bring them back because we've tried XYZ and it's not worked and it's causing you more stress and worry and anxiety.

And that's when you have to really think about it.

So I do want to add that in.

It's not always something you.

You say, I'm showing up, I'm going to keep showing up.

But it's just too difficult to show up consistently in this particular situation.

Sometimes it's better.

And again, we're thinking about how we would have responded to something before to versus now.

If we are making the decision that this is the best thing to do because tried XYZ and it's not working, that's progress as well.

It's very individual to context and the person and the dogs and all that kind of thing.

But I just want to put that in there.

So the fourth one, your dog trusts you.

I want you to think about that one from like just.

Just about a moment that you had, like just one situation with your dog in the last few weeks where your dog came to you, where they chose you, where they might have settled near you or leaned against you or looked to you when they weren't sure of something.

Dogs don't do that with people they don't trust.

They won't turn to that person or feel that they can get what they need from that person when they don't trust them.

Your dog's nervous system has registered somewhere that you are safe, that you're theirs, that even in the middle of all their difficult moments, you are the source of something good.

And that trust was built by you, by all those ordinary, unremarkable moments of care that you have given them.

That is evidence, and I think that's probably the most important evidence on the whole list of five points.

Think about those situations where your dog has chosen you and checked in.

And that was where I felt like I was making those bigger wins with Bunny at the time.

So.

So she didn't initially choose me.

She didn't want to lie close to us.

If we sat down on the sofa, she'd get off and lie somewhere else.

And that was her choice to do.

And I just thought, oh, she's independent this, that and the other.

But that was before again, before I knew all the things that I know now, before I started to work on properly some of these other things with our connection and relationship and making things feel like she could.

Situations feel like she could come to me instead of feeling so threatened that she had to protect herself, which is genuinely what happens.

She started to lie close to us.

She started to light on us.

She started to ask for fusses.

She started to.

She just changed.

And it's because I realized that I had built that trust with her and the connection.

And she started to choose me.

And I noticed, we noticed those little things that she started to do.

They were really subtle, but I noticed them.

And I started to say, this is working.

So that is the kind of thing that I want to think about for you and your own dog.

And then the fifth and final one is you understand things now that most dog parents don't.

So most dog parents who get a dog never think about their own nervous system.

They never consider the connection between how they feel and about how their dog behaves.

And this isn't about blame and saying that you need to Stop being anxious because it's making your dog anxious.

Absolutely not.

That's not what I'm saying.

But there is a connection there between how you are feeling and how your dog picks up on how you're feeling.

They never look at the root cause beneath the behavior.

So they're just trying to look at the behavior itself and say, my dog is barking, my dog is doing xyz, I need to stop it.

They just try and get the dog to stop doing the thing.

So that's what, that's what generally happens.

And again, it's not any fault of their own, it's just how they're doing.

They don't know what they don't know.

I had to think about that then how to word, how to word it so that it, I.

It wasn't a tongue twister.

They don't know what they don't know.

And they're doing the best with the information that they have at the time.

But you are doing something different because you have more information.

You're thinking about regulation and co regulation with your dog and why things happen, what your dog's communicating and what you might be bringing to the walk.

And that is fundamentally different and more a more sophisticated approach that want, for want of a better word to dog parenting.

And just.

Most people just never get there.

And that matters.

It is evidence that you aren't just going through the motions.

You're genuinely trying to understand.

And that I think, really starts to play a part.

So now you've got some evidence.

I really want you to think about those questions.

I really want you to think about scenarios that are relevant to those and really get the evidence out of each one of those situations to prove to yourself that progress is happening.

But it's just not being super obvious and big potentially right now.

So the question is what to do with it so it doesn't just disappear again.

So the simplest thing I can do, you're thinking about these things and you might be driving and all of that kind of stuff, but you can come back to it, you can remember it and you can.

Or you can like note it in your phone when you have gotten home or that kind of thing.

The best thing that I can do that I found is writing it down using the notes on your phone.

If you're, you're more of a tech person.

But I do think notes can get lost in a phone easily.

But just writing it down.

So writing down three things that you did okay this week with your dog, those are three moments of evidence from that list of five that I've given you to think about.

It won't take long, it's just going to take a couple of minutes.

It doesn't need big inspiration or like a big elaborate journal.

You don't have to go out and buy a big journal or anything like that.

It's just a deliberate act of noticing and recording, which is the exact counterbalance to what the brain's natural tendency is to do.

Because the natural thing that our brain does is just discard that because it's not relevant to survival.

It's the exact opposite.

So over time it genuinely starts to become something that you keep can return to on those hard days.

So I have given this as a task to clients before who I felt have needed it.

So if they have come to an into a session and started to say this has happened, this has happened, this has happened, then they were all bad things things.

And then I highlight the, the good things that have actually the progress that has been made in between sessions.

And it's not being big and obvious.

Sometimes when I think that it's going to help, I ask clients to write them down and come back to them, put them up somewhere super obvious.

So again, if you, if you have them on your phone, where can you put it on your phone?

That's going to be super easy for you to be able to get to rather than it just being hidden on an app or in your notes that you just never go something.

That's why having it on the fridge or having it just up on a wall or on a board or something really, really helps to keep it front of mind.

So when negativity bias starts to kick in and your brain is running in biased assessment so that I'm all negative assessment of my week and you're telling you that nothing's actually working, you have actually got data to look at that is evidence and your own evidence from your own life with your own dog.

That is very specific and very real.

That is why I want you to have it somewhere that's a bit more obvious than maybe hidden away in an app somewhere.

But if it works for you and you do check it, I would maybe put it in the calendar or something like that as a daily reminder.

So have it so that it's just a recurring daily event that you have or something that, or an alarm or something like that that just pops up so that you've got it there and inside the dog parent path.

My framework for supporting dog parents with that on a deeper level, the work I do with dog parents isn't just about the training or the techniques.

It's about this exact thing, that building of the capacity to see yourself and your dog really clearly rather than going through distorted lens of overwhelm and sh.

Because that clarity is what makes everything else possible.

Genuinely.

So I want to leave you with this.

You are not the sum of your hardest moments with your dog.

And I've said this before, you are the sum of everything.

The hard moments and the good ones.

The progress that you've made, the care that you've consistently given, the knowledge that you've built and the trust that your dog has placed in you.

You are a sum of all of those things, not just the hardest moments with your dog.

You're doing better than you think.

The evidence is clear and it's there.

And I know that you've got really tangible evidence of all the in all those areas that I've been through, those five points, you've just got to be willing to look at it.

So that's what I want you to do and take away from this episode today.

So if this episode has landed for you and something here has felt really true, or if you've just thought of somebody else who you think might need it as well, I want to ask you something specific.

I really want you to share it with them.

I want you to share it with the dog parent friend who you know is struggling, or you might think he's struggling, but they're just not telling you that they are as much as they might be giving you hints of, but they're just not telling you that they are.

Outwardly post it in a group where overwhelmed you kind of notice in some overwhelmed dog parents are kind of gathered together and struggling through things a little bit more.

Because the people who need this podcast most are often the ones who just don't know it exists yet.

And you sharing it is how they're going to start to find it.

And if you listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, I would really love it and so much appreciate it if you could take a couple of minutes to leave a review.

I know that sounds like a small thing, but it genuinely, genuinely isn't.

Reviews are how Apple decides which podcasts to show to new listeners.

Every single review helps another overwhelmed dog parent find the show.

And that's my aim here.

You can find it by searching for the mindful dog parent on Apple Podcasts.

And if you scroll down, you'll see the option to leave a rating and a review.

And it literally, it doesn't even take two minutes.

It takes like 60 seconds if and I just so appreciate it.

So if you're ready to go deeper to work on that nervous system piece, the self compassion, the building of real genuine calm and confidence with your dog, come and find out more at the Dog Parent Path.

I will put the link in the show notes and I have a free three part private podcast series.

You can't just find it on the Mindful Dog Parent.

It's a separate thing for the Dog Parent path specifically, and it's a really good place to start.

So I'm going to link that in the show notes as well.

So thank you so much for being here.

Really take care of yourself this week and I shall see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much for tuning in to the Mindful 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 forward/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.