There's a moment that doesn't get talked about very much in dog training.

It's not the breakdown moment because that gets talked about a lot.

And it's not the breakthrough moment either, because that gets talked about equally as much.

It's that quiet in between moment, the messy middle where nothing looks dramatically different on the outside, but something on something on the inside for you has shifted.

So you might find that you've stopped Googling things as much, or you, you're pausing before reacting, or you notice yourself and your dog from a place of softness rather than of anger or frustration or doubt or all of those negative feelings.

It's coming from a place of more kindness or softness.

And then almost immediately, another voice pops inside your head and it says, is this enough?

Am I doing enough right now?

Shouldn't things look different to how they look as they are today?

I want to talk about that moment.

That is the moment where self trust starts to come back because you aren't Googling things as much.

So it means that you're trusting what your instincts are telling you about what to do in that situation more than you were before.

Or you've used the learning that you've taken on board from previous situations in order to be able to use them now.

But it's where that confidence hasn't caught up yet.

So you've still like got some, you know, doubt there in terms of the confidence levels.

But your trust in yourself and what you're choosing to do is starting to kick in.

That is often where dog parents tend to lose faith in themselves again.

When their confidence hasn't quite caught up with their self trust, it's not because they're doing anything wrong, but it's because they don't recognize what real progress actually looks like.

And I talked about progress in the last episode, what real progress genuinely looks like, how it looked for me when I was working with my reactive dog Bonnie all those years ago.

Like all that stuff, it's really important.

And that's what I want to talk about today.

Because most dog training conversations are built around the outcome.

The now, I'm not saying the outcome's not important because we do have to talk about it from a perspective of building a plan.

We need a goal and we need to set the expectations straight away.

And when a client gives me what their goal looks like, it's actually reassessing and saying, well, is this goal realistic?

Is it something that's possible?

Because sometimes those expectations are higher than what is possible.

And that's okay.

It's okay, if that's what's happening.

Because we just have to reset and say, well, these are the reasons why I don't believe that that is, is something we can achieve yet, but we can achieve this, this, and this instead.

And that's making its way up towards what they might be thinking that they're going to get to some of these other skills.

So I'm not discounting outcomes at all as a conversation piece, but that is where most of the conversations revolve around so loosely walking the recall, being calm around triggers better behavior.

Generally those are the like, just as a really high level thing, those are the outcomes that we're kind of talking about, but not as many people are talking about what is happening inside youth before those things are happening, before those things start to stabilize.

Because before behavior changes consistently, something else usually changes first.

And what, what am I talking about here?

It's our nervous system.

So I have the concept of nervous system aware dog parenting just so that it's at the forefront of everyone's minds when we consider our own response to things and our dog's response to things, because their nervous system's just as important in this as ours and vice versa.

So you're gonna start to feel maybe slightly less braced or slightly less on edge or slightly more able to think instead of reacting in that moment, like I mentioned earlier.

And ironically, that can start to feel really unsettling to our nervous system if you've spent months or years in survival mode with your dog.

So that constant alertness there all of the time, that is what starts to feel normal.

Our nervous system and our bodies sense that is the thing that's always happening.

Therefore that is safety, even if it's not healthy.

Our nervous system isn't there to create this balance, to know if something's healthy or not.

It just knows that this is what keeps happening.

Therefore, that is the safe place because it's always happening.

So when that vigilance starts to soften, that I've mentioned, your brain is sometimes going to interpret that as danger, not as progress.

So it's going to flag it up and say, why aren't things feeling harder?

Why don't we feel as urgent right now when something might be happening?

What if we're missing something?

Like that's not our gut feeling or our intuition kicking in.

That's that nervous system that hasn't fully learned that it's safe yet doing this different thing.

And we're talking about that from our dog's perspective as well as our own too.

So our Dogs learned that this particular process is safe for me, like reacting to a trigger, because it means the trigger goes away faster, therefore I am safe.

But actually that's not healthy as a long term strategy.

So we reteach them a different way of feeling safe in a more healthy way.

So I remember noticing it with Bonnie.

So when I talk about our journey through dog training, I remember kind of I've been thinking about all of the things that I felt and the things that I was thinking going back years, but I can still remember kind of because her reactivity was so extreme, I can remember certain things a bit more.

So there was that period of time, that messy middle, where nothing about her behaviour looked dramatically improved on paper.

She'd still got big feelings about things.

She still found really some situations really difficult to cope with and life hadn't just suddenly become really easy.

But I noticed something else.

I noticed I wasn't holding my breath in the same way.

So anticipating a trigger, brace yourself, hold my breath, start to feel anxious, tense, that lead.

I wasn't doing that in the same way.

I wasn't scanning the environment constantly.

So I wasn't thinking, I need to check around people's driveways, I need to make sure there isn't anybody coming around this corner.

As much as I was before.

I could think instead of like in that mid moment of a reaction, I could think myself through it instead of after it had happened and reflecting on it, I could think in the moment, what do I need to do right now?

But that was when the doubt started to kick in because I started to think, well, am I becoming complacent?

Shouldn't I be still checking all these things and being more vigilant and doing all this stuff?

Am I starting to let things slide as a result of not doing that stuff?

But what was actually happening was my nervous system had started to trust itself again and it wasn't being loud or really confident.

It was doing it from a quiet, grounded place.

And that kind of trust doesn't just announce itself and say, hey guys, I'm here.

I trust myself again.

Now it starts to show up in more steadiness.

So that's when I mention it's the shift inside you that you might not be aware of happening, but is happening when you start to think and reflect back about what, what progress is actually looking like for you all.

So Bonnie, like I say, she still had the big feelings about things and she didn't find all the situations really easy to deal with.

But I was being able to cope better in Those situations.

Therefore, I can help her to be able to cope better in those situations as time went on, and I could support her in changing how she felt.

Some of those situations are unavoidable.

I wasn't going in deliberately to set her up for failure.

I was trying to set her up for success on myself.

But there were situations, sometimes that was, you know, there were things going around corners.

All of a sudden they were closer than I was hoping.

All that stuff can happen sometimes.

And it was those moments where I started to see what I've just mentioned, that progress and that shift in myself.

So from a nervous system perspective, it really does make a lot of sense.

So when you've been under prolonged stress, your brain is going to prioritize detection over reflection.

A little rhyme there for you to remember when.

When you've been under prolonged stress, your brain prioritizes detection and over reflection.

That just means the parts of your brain like the amygdala and the stress hormones like cortisol, are starting to feed that stress response.

And that's a normal response for your body to have.

But as your regulation starts to increase, the part of your brain that is responsible for decision making and that perspective and flexibility, that prefrontal cortex, if you want the official term for it, that starts to come back online instead.

But the important bit about this is the return of that capacity really does often feel neutral.

It doesn't feel exciting or triumphant.

It starts to feel quieter and you're thinking about regulation and grounding.

It's calm and that's.

It's steady, it's soft, it's kind.

Like all those things, those.

Those emotions aren't big and exciting and like triumphant and think of all the big words.

They're not.

It's not any of those things.

Because we have been taught that progress should feel obvious.

And as a result of that, we are often dismissing that phase completely.

This is actually where.

This is the state where learning from you and your dog so both of you becomes possible again.

And it's not coming from a place of trying harder, but because your system has more room.

So when I've talked about capacity in previous episodes, we've.

When you've hit that capacity and you don't have capacity, it all links back to that.

So that capacity starts to grow.

Your system's got more room to breathe, you can process things more so that prefrontal cortex is kicking in and doing what it's meant to do to help you to learn and to think things through logically and say, well, what's our strategy right now because my dog started to go a bit bonkers.

It's not the amygdala and the core cortisol.

Cortisol might be kicking in because stress can be positive and negative and it can get us through the moments in brief moments of time where there is stress.

It gets us through.

And positive stress is a good thing.

It's that prolonged stress that I've mentioned that is unhealthy and that our nervous system needs to change its process of realizing that that's not actually safe, that's not safety.

This softer, kinder, gentler, calmer place is where we're looking for safety.

Now.

Dogs don't respond to that perfection that we potentially are aiming for.

And I've talked about perfection in previous episodes as well because I am a perfectionist.

I have those kind of thought processes, this isn't good enough and all that stuff because it doesn't look perfect.

So dog, dogs don't respond to that.

They are going to respond more to predictability, to safety and to emotional availability from you.

So when you start to trust yourself a little more, your cues are going to become clearer.

Because if you're thinking with your the stress and you're coming at it from that fight flight freeze, your cues aren't going to be clear.

Because what may happen and if this is happening, this isn't any kind of passing judgment because I've done it before.

You might be saying their name repeatedly, you might be saying leave it.

You might be pulling them back, you might be saying this way.

And it's all happening in a matter of seconds.

Those cues are all totally like so different.

Sit, hear, stop.

No, leave it.

Like all that stuff's happening so fast.

They aren't clear to your dog what to do and they're not in the state of mind to be able to respond to it anyway.

But your cues can become clearer.

From a place of trusting yourself more, your timing starts to get better.

So you're self trusting more.

You're coming at things from a more logical place.

It means that you can process things easier.

And your timing, timing is important.

With things like this, your timing starts to get better.

Your body is starting to soften so that tense leads not happening, your tension on that lead, your tense muscles, the breathing changing, all that stuff, your reactions are starting to slow down.

So your dog doesn't need to be endlessly motivated.

They need you regulated enough to stay present in that moment.

And that's where CO regulation is happening.

I'm Karma, I'm coming at it from a calmer place.

And this is what started to happen with Bonnie.

I realized I was be.

I was trusting myself more because I realized this is this.

This is actually working in subtle ways because my cues started to become clearer.

This is what I need to do in this situation.

My timing got better because when she saw a trigger, I could process and say, right, there's a trigger there.

Rather than going, oh, no, somebody's coming.

Which is generally exactly what my head was telling me in that exact voice.

My body wasn't as tense, I wasn't gripping that lead as quickly, and my reactions weren't really, really quick and over the top.

That's the co regulation.

It's one of those really underestimated foundations of behavior change.

When I'm talking from my own experience and when I'm talking, talking about it from the perspective of working with other dog parents going through these things as well.

So if you've noticed that you're thinking less about training, you're feeling less frantic, you're noticing more than fixing and you're pausing instead of pushing, it doesn't mean you're giving up.

Because when I say thinking about thinking less about training, you might be thinking, well, I'm lazy.

Why am I not doing it more?

Why have I like, why have I taken a step back from it?

Why aren't we doing things every day or multiple times a day?

Every day, Your nervous system stop panicking when all of those things are happening.

That's not a self.

That's not a step backwards when that happens.

It's a platform that you.

You've taken that step up and it's a platform that your nervous system started to recognize that this is the new safety.

This is more possible and doable and healthier, basically.

So that's what I want you to think about.

Think about this.

Listen to the episode again.

If you want to kind of reflect on the things that I've mentioned and think about how it's like, ask yourselves the same questions about are you doing these things less?

Are you seeing a change in how you respond in these situations?

Because I want you to see what progress looks like for you just as much as the things that I've said that are progress for your dog in reactive moment or in a situation, whatever it looks like, share it with somebody who you think might also need to hear it because they're in the middle of this messy.

They're in this messy middle.

They're in the middle of working with their dog through reactivity, and they don't have that support of somebody with the experience and the knowledge of working with clients in that same way, share it with someone who you think might need to hear it, because it might actually they might be getting that progress that they just haven't recognized yet.

If there's one thing that I really want you to take from today, I want you to hear all of it.

But the one thing is progress doesn't always look like momentum.

It doesn't look like those big, big, huge moments.

Sometimes it looks like that trust coming back quietly, that softness, the kindness, like those nice, gentler words.

That's what progress can look like when it happens.

The most supportive thing you can do is not override it with pressure.

Just let it settle.

Let your system learn that calm doesn't disappear just because you stop pushing.

That's where it all starts to happen and you start to see that actually things are moving forward.

So if this episode has stirred something for you, you don't need to analyze it or act on it.

Just notice what it was like to hear it.

So when I say, like, reflect on the episode, listen to it again, think about how it feels for you.

Just notice it.

You don't have to take action or do anything differently if you find yourself listening again.

Coming back to certain episodes more than once, that's information as well, because you're not behind.

You're learning to trust yourself again and that isn't something that you can rush.

Remember that messy middle that we talked about and that moment where your self trust has started to come back but the confidence hasn't caught up yet.

You're learning to trust yourself again and your confidence is going to catch up.

That's not something you can rush because I've been through that myself.

And trying to push through it will start to make you doubt yourself more because you're trying more challenging, difficult situations that you might not be able to cope with or your dog might not be able to tolerate just yet?

So thank you very much for listening.

I really hope this episode has helped and I'll see you next time on the Mindful Dog Parent.