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, guys.

I'm coming to you from, from my summer house that has just been finished and renovated.

So different background.

If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see different background here today.

It's a really nice day outside, so I thought why not come and sit in the summer house, Just have a little chill in here.

That's why I'm holding the microphone as well.

The sun's out.

It's actually been thundering this morning.

So we've had a bit of a storm and it's kind of the calm after the storm.

And I think that is a really good theme to lead into today's podcast episode because today I want to talk about what calm really means in dog training and why it's why I think it needs to come before any of the tips or hacks that you have been trying.

Now, I talk about kind of calm quite a lot.

I know other people that talk about calm quite a lot and they have different opinions on how important it is, my perspective and the reason I think it's important.

And I'm going to go into why it's important, what we can do to bring more calm into our lives with our dogs and all of the things giving you things that you can take away.

It's just something that I wanted to go into because I've realized that I talk about it but don't necessarily say why I think it's so important.

So today's episode is all about that because when I say calm, I don't mean sitting on the floor, cross legged, meditating.

That's not what I'm talking about.

If you do that.

Awesome.

Amazing.

I tend to do kind of little meditations where I'm not cross legged on the floor.

I pick times of the day where I can just spend a couple of minutes just closing my eyes and getting myself back to a more regulated place.

But that's not what I'm talking about here with dog training.

It also doesn't mean never losing your temper, because that is such a human thing.

It's impossible to say that you will never, ever again lose your temper.

You can find ways to stop yourself and think about what you're doing beforehand, but there will always be a point in time where you will lose your temper.

So it's not about that either.

It's something much more simple and I believe much more powerful because calm for me is about shared safety.

It's the moment that your nervous system tells your dog's nervous system, we're okay here.

And from that place, learning and connection can actually happen.

I've seen it firsthand.

I've experienced it firsthand.

I was stuck going over and over the same things with my old dog, Maisie, trying to repeat things that just weren't sticking.

And I just didn't know why.

Now I know why.

And I feed it into the framework that I've built for all of my clients who I work with.

One to one, they get that framework.

And I'm starting to feed this stuff into my in person classes as well.

So it's going to be something that any clients who join my puppy classes are going to start to see this stuff too, because could give you all the tips in the world.

And I had this conversation with a client yesterday, actually.

Her dog is pulling on the lead on their walks and he's a big lad, he's a big Labrador and he can really, he's got the strength to pull you over if he really wanted to.

And I could give his mum all of the tricks and tips that, that are available online.

They're available anywhere.

You can find them on YouTube.

Loose lead walking tricks, Loose lead walking hacks, all the things you could find and some are better than others.

As with everything, some of the tips are going to be more useful than the others, but you're gonna find them anywhere.

The difference is I've come at this kind of these training sessions from a place of right.

We need to help your dog get to a place of feeling emotionally stable to process the things that we're trying to teach him.

Because she would forever get stuck, his mum would forever get stuck in this cycle of trying to do these things and saying they're not working.

These tips potentially would work, but if we don't have those things in place at the Bottom, which is the emotional stuff and making sure that everybody feels regulated.

This is my version of calm that's not all sorted.

The learning just won't happen.

So today's episode is going into detail on that, giving you things to take away as well.

So you're going to start to get some tips that you can always implement, as I always give you things that you can go and do.

And if you've ever been feeling stuck bouncing from tip to tip without results, telling yourself that you're failing, this missing piece is what you need.

And I want to go deeper.

So I want to talk about why calm matters more than cues.

Now, I've touched on it already a little bit, but this is what nobody is telling you.

Behavior change is not about stacking more cues.

It's about the state that you and your dog are in.

Think about a time when your dog barked, lunged, or pulled.

More than likely, the automatic response that your body gave was your heart probably raced.

Because if this happens regularly and it's happening a lot, say it is barking reactivity.

Your body has got into this state of responsiveness and your body's learned that this is what's going to happen.

So your heart's potentially going to race.

Your jaw is going to tighten, your shoulders are going to go up.

So you're going to be all tense.

Your dog's going to feel that as well.

So both of you are going to be in survival mode.

And survival mode is not a learning state to be in.

So imagine you're trying to be shown how to do things by somebody at work in an, in an anxiety inducing situation.

Say it's a presentation, your heart's going to be racing, your jaw is going to tighten, your shoulders are going to start to go up, there's gonna be tension there.

So if somebody's trying to teach you something and you're anxious, it's not gonna go in, you're not gonna take it in.

You're gonna be like, you'll hear the words, but they're not gonna stay in your brain because you're not in a learning state.

And that is what's happening with your dog.

That is why tips often don't stick.

It's not because you're not good enough.

And I've talked about this lots and lots of times because a lot of the times we think we're doing something wrong.

And I say we because I have been there as well.

I, I have been the dog mom who has done the things and thought I'm not good enough because it's not working.

So I've lived through that also, personally, with Bonnie, with Maisie, Oliver, not so much.

He.

Bless him, he's.

I learned kind of a lot of stuff by the time we adopted Ollie.

And he picked everything up really, really well because of how I adapted my training with him.

So.

And it's not also because your dog is stubborn.

It's not about that either.

It's because neither of you were calm enough to take it in.

So think about that thing I mentioned.

Just think of a situation that means that you are anxious, that creates anxiety.

So say you've got a fear of spiders.

I do apologize if you do genuinely have a fear of spiders.

But something that you're afraid of and that thing was there in the room with you, then somebody was trying to teach you something.

Your focus is going to be on the thing that you're afraid of.

In that moment, somebody's going to be saying, right, you need to do this and this and this and this.

But you won't take it in, and you'll come back at it later on and say, what do I need to do again?

Because your thoughts were just solely on the thing that was scaring you.

So that is genuinely what is happening with our dogs as well.

So calm isn't going to erase the behavior, but it does open the door for that learning to actually happen.

And without it, you are trying to read a recipe while the kitchen's on fire.

Now, I've used that analogy before.

It's a really big analogy, but it kind of makes.

It shows you how obvious it is.

It makes it really obvious.

So the kitchen's on fire and you're trying to read a recipe.

Your head ain't going to be on that recipe.

It's going to be on the fire that's happening in your kitchen.

That is why this is really important.

So I want to talk about what calm connection really means.

I want to dig deeper.

So calm connection really is something that I've coined because I think it's where everything starts and gets built on top of.

So it's not about perfection.

I want to kind of go straight away in with that.

It's not at all about perfection.

I am a recovering perfectionist.

I won't say I'm fully recovered from it because I have learned patterns that I keep going back to.

But I'm fully aware that I am a perfectionist, and there are positives that come from that.

I'm motivated, and it makes me want to push forward and keep pursuing the things that I'm interested in and passionate about, but there's negative sides to it as well.

So calm connection is not about perfection.

It's about co regulation.

So it's about your dog looking at you and feeling safe.

And it's about you having the capacity to show up without shame or panic.

It's just started raining here.

The sun is still out, so there should be a rainbow somewhere.

But that is what's happening right now.

If you do hear any rain, not sure how heavy it's going to get, but we'll keep going because Bahrain's not gonna hurt anyone.

So, yeah, it's not about that perfection.

It's about you both having that connection and the ability to tell each other that you feel safe so you understand your dog and where they're coming at things from, and they know that they can show you and tell you in a less obvious way than the barking and the lunging, that they when they don't feel safe so that you can start to co regulate so that you can start to help each other.

So for me, this was a hard lesson with Bonnie.

I tried everything.

So this is going back nine years or so, the recall drills, the loose lead hacks, the reactivity games, because she was a reactive dog.

But until I started paying attention to our state together, nothing changed.

And I can honestly say that we went round and round in circles with our reactivity training.

Specifically, I was doing the things that I thought were gonna work, but they just didn't work.

And that's where it all started to lead to all these other feelings.

When I started to learn to ground myself first, when I learned to pause before starting to react, she started to regulate too.

Because I could then be calmer and have a strategy.

I knew the things that I needed to do, but I was doing it in an un dysregulated state.

Sorry.

Coming at it from a place of panic and anxiety.

And I was trying to do things too quickly and it was too much for her to then be able to cope with.

So I slowed down and I started to pause and I started to think, right, what do I need to do right now to help us both here?

The same cues that had fallen flat before suddenly just started to work.

And it wasn't because the tip had changed, because I was still doing all of the ethical stuff to help my dog through her reactivity, but it's because we changed as a dynamic.

I made sure I worked on helping her with her emotional regulation, doing things in a more structured way, and it didn't mean I was changing My whole day and my whole routine.

Because at the time when I first got Bonnie, I worked full time in corporate.

So, you know, nine years ago, full time worker in corporate, you're not going to have all the time to change the routine and everything like that.

But I was doing, making little shifts and that's the difference.

So little changes are what creates that bigger result at the end.

You see those little things that start to change.

So that's calm connection.

It's the bridge between the fact that you love your dog and the behaviour that you want to see.

So I totally know that you love your dog.

I loved Bonnie at the time, but I was struggling and those two things can coexist at the same time.

The behaviour that you wanted to see.

What I wanted to see from her was that lack of reaction.

And the thing that I wanted her to do was look away from the trigger, the other dog, and not feel like she had to stare at them and start to work herself up.

But that wasn't happening.

So this calm connection is that bridge between how you are feeling right now and the love that you have for your dog and the behavior that you want to see.

So there's three practical ways that I want you to start building calm.

So I want you to have a place to start from.

So I want to give you three things that you can try this week.

As always.

Some of these things are going to be things that I've mentioned before, but they're really important things, so that's why I'm talking about it again.

So the first one is an anchor routine and I've definitely mentioned this before because it's quite an important one.

I want you to keep one predictable thing the same every day.

So the things that I've mentioned before, if it's one sniffy walk in the morning or a cuddle before bed, that predictability becomes a safe anchor point for you both.

You always have that one thing that you can do together.

You can also play a calming game.

So I give this to one to one clients a lot to try and help in different ways.

It helps with overstimulation.

So if your dog struggles to come down from being aroused or stimulated, it's great for that.

It's also a good way to start to do something that helps you to connect together.

Doing something that's coming from a calmer place.

And it's the sharing platter game.

So it's something that I've shared before, I've done videos on it before.

So if you did want that, just send me a DM on Instagram @lavender garden animalservices.

I'll happily send you that.

I'll give you my contact details in the show notes as well.

So you can message me for the sharing platter game just meant just put sharing platter as the, as the subject.

And I know what, I know what you mean.

And I'll send it you.

Because the anchor routine is something really simple, really easy.

That sniffy walk doesn't have to be for an hour or 45 minutes.

It can be a 10 minute short.

Let's just go out and do this short sniffy walk for 10 minutes.

That's it.

If it's not possible for you to do that, instead of going out, do the thing before bed.

So have that cuddle time before bed.

And if you set your day up for your dog to succeed with these little shifts, that anchor point will really start to bring you back together from a calmer, connected place.

And that's, that's always where we want to start.

So that's the first one.

The second one is micro pauses.

So before you ask your dog to do anything, whether it's sit, whether it's recall, whether it's loose lead, I want you just to take 30 seconds to breathe and to soften your body.

So really have that awareness of what your body is actually telling you and doing.

We're so switched off from our bodies.

I am still in the process of learning what my body is telling me and how it's feeling in the States that it's in with the work that I'm doing with some awesome people who I am so grateful for.

It's making me emotional talking about it because I am so grateful for the help that they have given me and are still providing.

So, yeah, it's just something that is a work in progress.

But these pauses can really start to help you to recognize how you're feeling and the state that you're in.

Taking that 30 seconds just to breathe and to soften your body.

You know, are your shoulders tense?

Let's lower them down.

Are your, you know what muscles are tense?

So I have always been a jaw clencher and my jaw, the dentist has always said that I've got really strong jaws, jaw muscles, because I clench my jaws a lot and I have done since I was a kid and I, you know, that's something that I can be more aware of that I'm doing.

Have you got tension in your legs?

Do you need to just loosen those muscles in your legs?

Like go from right from the top of your head right down to your toes and just say how, like, do a little body check in a body scan for yourself.

And anything that you start to feel is more tense, just soften them.

And just like my legs were tense a minute ago, so I'm just starting to relax myself in the same way.

So that moment of grounding is contagious.

So you start to soften.

This is about your connection with your dog.

They're going to do the same thing.

If we're doing things frantically and tent with tension and anxiety or whatever it is that stress, they are definitely going to feel it as well.

And it's going to start to heighten their response in their behavior as a result.

So if you're not.

If you're not doing this before you leave the house on a walk, there's already tension, and then going out for the walk is going to add more to that stimulation.

So it's going to escalate everything even more.

So those micro pauses are really useful.

The third one is to spot the wins.

Now, I do this with everyone.

All of my clients notice one micro win every day, even if there's more.

Amazing.

You've noticed more than one.

But just try to spot one thing that's different.

Did your dog settle faster after barking?

That's something that I always talk to clients about.

So if there's a reactivity client that I'm working with, did their barking actually last less time or did their recovery happen quicker?

Did they check in with you sooner?

So you go out for a walk, you're practicing some walking stuff.

Did they check in with you more often?

If they did.

Amazing.

That's a really good win.

Write that down on your phone.

If you've got a notes app on your phone, write it there.

If it's something that you can stick on your fridge, that's even better because it's more visual and you can see it.

So when you're on a low motivation day, that little win that you are noting down, it starts to become a list.

When you're feeling low motivation, go back to that list and say, look at all these wins that we've had.

That starts to help motivate you again.

Those micro wins are proof that progress is happening as well.

So even when it feels slow and those motivation days aren't always going to be super high, going back to that list is going to help you, definitely.

So the last thing that I want to do is go through a little invitation to you from me.

And if this idea of calm connection is resonating with you.

I want to invite you to go deeper with me on Monday that is the 15th of September, I'm running a free Calm Connection challenge.

So you know what Calm Connection is.

Now I'm running a free four day challenge to reset with your dog.

Every day we're going to focus on gentle steps to rebuild calm and connection so we know what those things are.

Now.

It's not overwhelming, it's not meant to overwhelm you.

And I say this to clients a lot as well.

So when we're working on anything and I give my clients a plan, if you start to feel overwhelmed, you're trying to do too much.

So it's not meant to be that.

It's not hours of training and it's not about perfection.

I don't aim for perfection with any of any of the things that I do.

It's about creating that shared safety and trust that makes everything else possible.

By the end of the four days, you are going to feel clearer, calmer and more connected with your dog and you're going to have a framework of your own that you can keep coming back to when things feel too much.

So this isn't just a one and done.

This is something that's personal to you.

You can rinse and repeat it whenever you need it.

You can sign up to the challenge in the link in the show notes.

As always, I would absolutely love it if you would join us because I think this is going to be the start of the big changes that you're going to have with your dog and your relationship with them and that connection that you're building with them.

And all these training things that you're trying are going to start to stick.

So next time you hear me talk about the calm and calm connection, remember, it's not about being Zen, it's not about being perfect.

It is about creating shared safety for you and your dog.

And that's the foundation every single bit of training sits on.

Thank you so much for listening.

I hope to see you in the Calm Connection challenge starting on Monday 15th September.

I shall speak to you then.

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 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.