The Off Switch: Teaching Your Dog to Regulate and Do Nothing

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining: Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host, Jack Lawrence.

Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then I get one like, oh my God, what the fuck I done? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, a podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout. It's okay, it's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, Max O'Neill, Down Under Dog Trainer. Joined by our special guest, Sarah, from just checking out your Instagram actually at the human and the hellhound. It may sound terrifying. I'm actually looking at a beautiful dog. Stunning. I mean, you know, stunning. Looks like a wolf.

Yeah.

Is that her?

That's her.

Wow. That would scare the crap out of me if I was out.

Wait till you come in at night to see his white teeth. You don't.

And she's very quiet too.

So yeah, she's only small, isn't she?

Yeah, she's 22 kilos.

Yeah, right. There you go.

Although I must admit, if I looked at her, I wouldn't instantly think Malibu. I

get Kelpie a lot.

Yeah, I can see that.

And people just kind of walk past and like go to touch her and she's like, absolutely the fuck not.

Oh, what? That drives me nuts.

Yeah, people just want— Nice Kelpie.

But the thing is, people just coming up and wanting to touch your dog. In general. Yeah. And then, and then you're like, because we were doing training actually the other day and I had Kira in a down stay and I was sort of walking away and these people sort of walked up and then they're sort of like starting to sort of rouse her and I'm like, What are you doing? Like, and then they— I was like, oh, can you not? Well, I was just— and we're just training. They looked at me as like I'm an asshole.

Yeah.

I'm like, guys, if you had a child sitting there like on a mat, I wouldn't come over and start going, oh, hello.

Stick my hand in the pram.

Give your child a hug.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so weird.

So weird.

Yeah. Anyway, well, let's not get onto, you know, my annoyances with other human beings in the gym.

That might be a whole other topic.

Oh, dude, that might be a miniseries coming soon. Jack's Grievances.

Oh, that's going to be a long— it won't be a miniseries, I'll tell you that much.

Sign me up for that one. Yeah. Yeah.

But we want to talk about nervous systems and the dogs today. Now, I know you said before we started recording, you were nervous about this because when we talk the nervous system, you think that people go, what? Shut up.

Yeah. It's definitely, I think, new information. And obviously by no means am I an expert. I'm not an NLP coach or a neuroscience nerd or anything like that. Sure, I'll butcher it compared to a lot of people, but basically the simple understanding, right, is that we have a nervous system, our dogs have a nervous system. It's there for a reason. But I think we kind of misread that a little bit. And the word regulation's kind of been thrown around and some people are all for it and some people think it's bullshit. So a lot of like mixed opinions at the moment because like Max mentioned, it's the hot topic at the moment. So

yeah. And I think it's always an interesting one with, you know, where topics suddenly come into the fore focus. And I think the whole nervous system and regulation and, you know, calming down your dog chats really come off the back of it's great now that everyone's understanding to stimulate their dog more. I personally think it's come off the back of that where the average owner I see now, I'll go to people's house and they do have tugs, flirt poles, ball ropes, and they do heaps of cool stuff with their dog, which is awesome. Like, oh, you're an awesome owner. But, and probably same with you, also seeing a lot of dogs, I'm like, okay, so you do this across a week, this across the day, fantastic. When does your dog switch off and sleep? And they go, we've got a bit of an issue with that. He actually doesn't. Mm-hmm. And I think that's where this has come off the back of, because As a society, we tend to overcorrect and not find a middle ground. We've gone from walking our dog 3 days a week to stimulation, stimulation, stimulation. And now we've kind of gone the other direction. We're now like, you know, we're amping dogs up and we're conditioning their body to just always be on and never be off.

I'm so guilty. I'm so guilty with Kira. When we first— when I first started getting into the training and I sort of got the bug, like every time we went out, I'm like, right, we're doing this, we're doing that. You know, I trained her in the gundog stuff. You know, doing searching and all that. And we were just, every time we were out, we were always doing something, always doing something. And then I got to a point where we'd go out and she was just like looking at me like, you know, she was just, she wouldn't just chill and go sort of wander around. I just wanted her to go sniff, go enjoy, go do something, go be a dog. And but she'd be like staring at me going, nope, what are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing? So I'm 100% guilty of doing that.

Same. Malinois. Yeah. So you get a Malinois and you're like, you don't talk about rest with them. You talk about do more.

Yeah.

And they are literal crackheads, right? So you keep feeding a crackhead crack and that addiction just becomes bigger and bigger. And same type of thing, as you mentioned, you go to clients' houses and they're like, they just don't relax. They're on all the time, which is obviously— we'll talk a little bit about that in the nervous system. But I think, yeah, like you said, we get so caught up in the like outlets. Great. Right. Like, especially for a lot of people have working breeds now. Like, even if we're just talking about dachshunds and spaniels and things like they need that outlet and they need to, like you mentioned, burn that mental, you know, brain out. And the same with the physical movement and things. But then when do they stop?

Yeah.

You know, or like then they're just crated. So I got into that of like more and more and more and like tire her out. And the only thing that was tiring her out was bite work. But she was like starting to get a little bit unstable, in my opinion, with it because she wanted it so bad.

Yeah, right.

She had no impulse around it. So I kind of took a step back from that, and we actually haven't done it for a long time. And I find she's a lot better. So loves her ball, loves the wedge. She still has outlets, but I don't get her to that level where she's like, she's tapped out, she's just not listening anymore. Like, um, it's too much for them. And I started to focus a lot on regulation, which I didn't realize how poorly I'd kind of done, because much like yourself, I was told, do more.

Yeah,

do more, do more outlet, do more tracking, do more bite work, do more play, and then put her in the crate and then get her back out and do the same thing. Which was fine for a little while because I was like, great, she just goes into the crate and switches off and then comes out and does something else. But now I want to take my dog just to the park and she can't, like you said, she cannot relax.

Because she's like, as soon as I'm like, once I'm out of here, It's game on.

It's 100 miles an hour.

It's go time.

100 or nothing. Yeah. And similar to us though, like I think even just as a society, like we're so overstimulated with everything. Like how often do you go out and just sit and stare at, like, remember as kids, you know, we'd lie down and watch the clouds. Now you see them watching a phone.

Yeah.

It's, yeah, it's crazy.

What do you do without your phone? You start to get a little bit—

I'm shocking. I'm terrible with that. Yeah.

So that's the other thing is that, you know, we expect our dogs to be able to regulate and coexist in this world without feeling heightened emotions and being bored and things yet. We struggle to do it ourselves. So yeah.

Okay. So, all right. So let's break down this, this nervous system situation and why it's so important.

So the nervous system is obviously there for a reason, right? So the way that I like to explain is it's kind of like your internal Wi-Fi and your alarm system. So it keeps us safe. It like activates obviously when you're excited, like it constantly is in this kind of like up and down wave throughout the day. If you think of it as like a smoke alarm, we have smoke alarms in our houses obviously to let us know if there's going to be a house fire. But sometimes somebody can just be burning toast. The alarm goes off the same kind of way. And anybody who like has a kind of a healthy alarm system is like, oh, okay, no big deal. And we come back down to that regulation word that we talk about like quite easily. Whereas if you've been in a house fire and you hear the smoke alarm go off, it's going to automatically fire up that fight or flight, like panic mode. We need to get out of here. And even if you run downstairs and you're like, oh, they're just burning the toast. the body takes a lot longer to come back down from that than someone who's never experienced that type of stress response.

So yeah, and especially if like, if we're sticking on our dogs for a sec, like especially if we haven't given them the tools to actually regulate, like a lot of dogs get stuck up there and then they can spend hours, days, weeks,

yeah,

stuck up that way. There's like, their sleep's affected, they're dysregulated, they're barely eating, they're snappy, they're cranky, they're touchy. Like it's, it's a lot.

So in terms of the nervous system, a lot of people that kind of have heard about it would know parasympathetic and sympathetic, right? So One's you kind of rest and digest and the other one's fight or flight, which we talk a lot about fight or flight in dog training. You can't run away. Generally, those are the dogs that'll bite just to try and get out of that situation. But they can stay there. And then there's also like a functional freeze type fawning.

Yeah. That really what they call, like some people refer to as like green zone or blue zone where you're really like super shut down.

Yeah. And that can come from punishing emotions. And I know this is definitely a topic that not everybody agrees on, but You know, they're like, you can't punish emotions. And I don't think you should punish emotions. It's not that you can't. If your dog has a reaction, instead of actually just punishing and suppressing the behaviour, where is that behaviour coming from in the first place? Why do they feel like they need to behave like that? And much like anybody, I think you spoke the other day about the purple car theory. Yeah. Someone cuts you off, right? And then most people, if someone cuts you off in traffic, you should be able to have a bit of a mouth off and then come back down to regulation. Whereas some people really sit in that and spiral on it. And then a couple of days later, you see that same person and then you're automatically triggered straight from the get-go. So dogs' nervous systems can be very much the same. And I think at the end of the day, it all comes down to like safety. So I work predominantly with women. I get a lot of female clients. And the way that I like to kind of explain that is that, you know, you're obviously married. You mentioned you have a partner too.

Mm-hmm.

If we're at, you know, at a bar by ourselves and we see like a shady kind of person coming towards us, I'm going to feel a little bit more vulnerable sitting there by myself than sitting next to one of you guys. Right. Um, and the body language, same as dogs, you know, they kind of like, we're looking at you like, I don't know about this. I feel a little bit unsafe. And if you're like, mate, don't worry about it. Just go and say hi, go and give him a hug. You know, now I really don't trust your leadership because I've just told you non-communicatively that I don't feel safe and you've put me in that situation anyway. So you mentioned advocating for your dog. massive one of like, I can trust you to keep me safe. And just because it may be irrational to you doesn't mean it's irrational to me. So, you know, exposure with dogs and things, the same thing happens with reactivity.

Yeah, our dogs don't understand what's going on half the time, so it's up to us to make those judgment calls and, and be there for them, because otherwise if we leave it up to them— the way— so the way we look at it, right, so we've got the nervous system, and the nervous system can operate in 3 states, right? We've got a nice mid-ground where you want to call that your green zone, yellow zone, whatever, but where our dog is regulated and they're restful and calm. They've then got that state where they can be really activated.

Okay.

I think we call that their parasympathetic nervous or the sympathetic nervous system, sorry, where they're elevated, heightened. And this is, this isn't always a bad thing. Like we activate that sympathetic nervous system when we're playing tug, fetch, turning our dog on. Absolutely. And then, but it can also be activated in a negative way. And we'll, and we'll talk about that. And then the other state For everyone listening that we, you know, they see our dogs in is that like blue zone. I think the technical name is a like dorsal vagal state, whatever, but who cares? But where our dog's super shut down. And when we talk about regulation, what we're really talking about is about helping our dog return to restful and calm and picking the right state to be in. Because especially from a dog's trauma history or the way we've trained and conditioned them, they can really get stuck in a state. Yeah. Either massively heightened or massively low and depressed. That isn't always compatible with the situation. So for example, we might put 2 dogs in a shelter for a 3-month period side by side. One of those dogs might bounce off the walls 24/7 because they've never got a way to displace their energy. And then when we adopt them, they've basically just been conditioned for 3 months to always be on because they don't know how to burn their energy. The dog by the side, they might have just figured out, you know what, nothing's happening. You know, I'm just going to lay here and be miserable. And then we, like, I see dogs like that who we struggle to pep up at all. Hey, do you want to play? Uh, do you want to train? Nah. Do you want to cuddle? Nah. They just lie there and they're miserable. They struggle to get out of that. And both of those examples are examples of a dog struggling to regulate, to come back to that middle, to either come down or come up just to that nice healthy mid-ground where they're restful and calm, not depressed or not overly heightened. Is that sort of how you

100%. Yeah. And I think that's where some, not all trainers can go wrong too, where they just shut down the behaviour. Yeah. Where the dog's like, it's like learned helplessness, right? Yeah. They're like, well, now I'm just not going to try anything and I'm just going to sit here. And people see that as like, wow, what a calm dog. Whereas when you know what you're looking at, you're like, that dog is so shut down and so depressed that they just have no enjoyment. They don't get that sympathetic of like excitement and frustration because frustration can be a good thing too, right? And play and stuff.

Yeah.

They're just in that, yeah.

And you've got to have those high, you know, you've got to have the lows to appreciate the highs and vice versa. And, and eventually, you know, like what you're saying is, you know, if we correct absolutely everything, the common denominator— sorry, starts to become arousal and excitement. Dog's like, oh, okay, you just don't want me to be that way at all. Okay. And I get people who go, you know, we got this Border Collie because we thought it'd be full of life, but now he just sits there staring at the wall and he's super depressed. And it's like, because you guys have just been like way too tough on it. And as with everything in life, it's all just about mid-ground and finding that balance. Like, yes, you gotta stop some things, but like, you know, we always say— I know it's a shared thing— it's about suppressing certain behaviors, not suppressing the individual, not suppressing the emotion, not suppressing generally. It's just, I don't want to see that little thing,

or I don't want to see that there, but maybe put it here.

Spot on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like, I don't want Nelson biting people when we just went to the cafe, but yeah, on a Tuesday morning at Casey's, like, go be violent.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So if we look at like, you know, regulations, so again, real world examples are, you know, we all 3 of us will pep our dogs up for work, as a lot of you guys probably do with, you know, your own dogs. But just as much spend as time we spend as the 3 of us like elevating our dogs and get them up because we know it's a good outlet, it's healthy for them to get up to that level, we spend just as much time putting in work to bring them down and teach them to bring down. Because if we didn't teach, you know, if I didn't teach Nelson strategies to calm himself down. I don't want the dog that I see on Tuesday at 8 o'clock when we don't bite work. I don't want that dog 24/7, and it wouldn't be healthy for him to be like that 24/7. And that's part of being a good dog owner, is showing those strategies and how to do it. And the reason this is an important conversation is because bite work and ball and gundog stuff is sexy and fun to post on socials.

It looks cool.

It looks cool. But when people go like, hey, like, especially when Nelson was a puppy, I used to get a million questions. What have you taught him this week?

Yeah.

And I go, oh, today I taught him to lie on his back between my legs and we did chest circles. And people are like, okay, cool, sick, man. Like, you're a dog trainer, I thought you'd be doing way more cool shit. I'm like, the down is just as important as the up. Like, things like that.

And I think there's a lot of, um, kind of, I guess, misunderstanding around that of like, out— like similar to what we spoke about, outlet, outlet, outlet, tire the dog out, put it away, tire the dog out, put it away. Um, and then you get these crazy crackheads who can't have their nails done or can't just relax or potentially be like, you know, they don't really focus on things like cooperative care. Like, obviously you want your dog in a calm state of mind when they're at the vet and all that type of stuff. But keyword that you said was teach.

Yeah.

Right. Teaching our dogs to do nothing. Just like we have to teach ourselves to sit there and be like, don't reach for your phone. Like, it's a conscious thing that you have to teach them of, like, especially like you mentioned, different environments. Different expectations.

100%. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

I think, I mean, I think one of the best things I ever learned from, from you, Max, was parking. Yeah. That simple act of just parking the dog, like sitting down in a spot, you know, foot on the lead and we're just going to sit here.

Yeah. I remember the first time I told you that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was just like, like most people, you want to be able to go out with your dog, take your dog, you know, you're going to go for a coffee and the dog can come with you. You want the dog to come with you and experience things and sit there and be chill. Kira just could not be chill. She could not relax. There's another dog. I want to, I need to go over and see those people. I need to see them. They're going to play with him. And she's just like this constant, this ball of like, just, I need to, need to, need, need. And then just that act of just going, no, I'm going to sit here. You know, foot's on your lead. I'm not going to interact with you whatsoever. And eventually it's amazing to watch them. And it doesn't take very long to go, oh, okay. And then you just sit down and then eventually lie down and then eventually just on the side. Just like—

I like the big sigh. Yeah. Just like, oh, okay.

Yeah. And then, and it's like that for me was almost, you know, as exciting as her learning something new and us doing something cool. Was the fact that she could actually just stop, lie down and not be bothered by what was going on around her and go, okay, we're doing this now.

Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. And especially having a Malinois, right? People are like, you don't take Malinois to cafes. Said who?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, why? Why do you feel like you can't? Or, you know, that type of thing. Exactly like you said, like she knows when we're at the cafe, obviously nothing exciting happens here ever.

And that's the thing. You have to teach the dog that. And that's the thing I think people don't understand because the amount of people they want to do that thing, you know, I'm originally from the UK and the amount of people that take their dogs to the And that's the dream for a lot of people. And I've watched a lot of Instagram trainers in the UK, and the biggest thing they say, they're like, oh, what do you want out of this? It's like, I want to be able to take my dog to the pub.

I want to be with my dog.

I want to be able to take my dog to the pub. But we go there and the dog won't just stop, won't just sit down. And that's because the dog has never been taught, hey, here we don't do anything. We just chill. You can switch off. You can go to sleep. And I think people, you know, a lot of people find that hard to grasp. I have to teach my dog to chill. And it's like, yeah.

And especially with more breeds, like some dogs come with such a strong off switch, they can push that really. It's like you get a Mastiff, they'll quit on you before you want them to switch off. It's like, hey, come on. Yeah, yeah, come on, bit more, bit more. But certain breeds and through selective breeding are hardwired to be like, you know, like Malinois, for example. Hey, it is 100 or nothing. And I guess that's why they were created. But it means we have to teach them how to bring themselves down. So if we talk specifically teaching, we'll get into some specifics here. So you guys can have some actionable advice taking this away. So when we look at how do we teach a dog to regulate, what we're really doing is putting— setting them up in situations in a controlled training setting where high arousal is incompatible with the exercise. So parking is an example. We'll put a video up in the group of parking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great.

Yeah, parking exam, we just stand on our dog's leash and we drastically limit their options. If we give our dog total freedom, they can sniff that tree, see that person, greet that dog, eat that food, go over there, and they've got a million options that all require being active and alert. So lying down is like the bottom of the list. The moment we limit a dog's options through something like parking, crate training, mat training, where there's nothing to do but stand, sit, or lay, pretty quickly laying down becomes a more attractive option. And your dog goes, okay, me being on this mat or in my park or in my crate at this high level of arousal is incompatible with his exercise, clearly, because it's making me uncomfortable. Standing in a crate and panting and being busy can't be fun. So our dogs learn to start to shift down the gears and go, okay, oh, this is feeling better. Oh, this— oh, if I really lean into this, this is nice. For example, if I have a day off and all I think about is work, I have a shit day. Yeah. But if I really embrace it and go, no, I'm not touching my phone, I'm not doing a single work thing, I'm just going to embrace it. Oh, then I can just melt into the couch and have the best time. And that's

Regulation is necessary.

Regulation is necessary. And that's what we mean when we talk about like teaching our dogs. It's giving them these little exercises to teach them like, hey, right now I know you think you need to be on, but it's not working for you.

Especially in guardian brains too, right? Like you don't always have to be, no one's going to hurt us at the cafe.

Yeah.

That's the thing, isn't it?

Yeah. But yeah, it's the same as the art of doing nothing is what we call it.

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. So if you guys are looking for how to teach your dog, you know, how to regulate, how to get an off switch, it's Put them in environments initially where this is easy. If your dog can't switch off in the lounge room, they're not going to switch off outside. There's way more going on. Okay. Think of it like a kid. If your kid can't sit down, focus on something calm, like a colouring-in book in your lounge room, they're not going to do it at Dreamworld. Yeah. So tethering is a great way.

I was actually going to say tethering. Great training. Mat

training, parking, having your dog in the settle position, like lying on their back between your legs while you do like self-care, things like that. There are 4 or 5 things you guys can do where arousal is incompatible and we encourage calmness, which we'll talk about. And once your dog can learn to switch off in a quiet environment, you know, somewhere low stimulation like the lounge room, try it on your front lawn. When they can do it on the front lawn, take it to the park on a quiet day. When they can do it at the park on a quiet day, start to increase it, go closer and closer to prime time. And your eventual aim should be, no matter what's going on, around you, your dog can have a snooze. Like, I'll take Nelson for a session to the park, pop him in a down, he bloody falls asleep, and there's 20 Border Collies running behind him. And I'm equally as proud of that as I am of, you know, him doing bite work or putting shit in the bin. Like,

absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

And once your dog understands those certain things, like, again, you know, we talk about, you know, having a dog that's well trained opens up your world and their world. But the same thing, well, having a dog that can just chill.

Yeah,

just so much, just It just opens up your world and their world. You know, it's just, it was like when I had Kira, I was just like, for some weird reason I had this silly like dream of being able to be just working in the garage with the garage door up, her with me just chilling while I'm doing my bits and pieces and she's just hanging there. And eventually we got to that point and it's great. You know, I can have the garage door up, bikes whiz past, dogs go past. She might have a look up, but otherwise she goes back down. She goes to sleep again.

Yeah.

And just that simple thing in your day-to-day life just makes things, it makes life less stressful. You know, and just more enjoyable with you and your dog. The dog can truly be part of your family because you don't go, well, we can't take her there because, you know, she won't relax, she won't chill. We can't do this because she would. So yeah, it's just, it's amazing how it just opens up.

100%. Like we always say to people, there's 3 core skills your dog needs to be able to take them anywhere. Number one, they're going to be social with their environment, the people in it, the environment itself, other dogs, etc. If they're trying to kick off at everybody or they're freaked out by it, it's not going to work. We've got to socialise them. Number 2, they're gonna have a solid recall. But number 3, probably one of the most— again, one of the most important is they're gonna have an off switch. If we think of all the reasons, you know, we hear on a daily basis of, I can't take my dog here, because a lot of the time it's, it's one of those 3. And a lot of the time it's they can't switch off. Oh, we don't go to cafes. He'd just be— he wouldn't switch off. He'd just be freaking out at everything, unsettled, wrapping our chair up in the leash. Like, it's just not fun. Oh, we don't let him inside when guests are over because he wouldn't switch off.

Yeah.

Oh, when the grandkids come over, we don't let him inside because he doesn't switch off. I'd love to take him camping, but he wouldn't switch off. Like, it's such a big thing. So if you guys looking for the most 3 most important things to teach a dog: solid recall, an off switch, socializing. Chuck in play as a 4th. They're like, they're, they're, it's, they're such core skills, it's, it's not even funny. So do you have things that you recommend, Sarah, to people? If people going, okay, like, I'm trying to encourage my dog to settle But they're not doing it. Do you have strategies that you show people telling them like how to bring themselves down?

Very similar to what you'd mentioned. So I think you and I have always been pretty much on the same page with that. But even just a quick mention of good breeding, right? Like my dog, my breeder sent my dog to me with those things. Yeah, she was already crate trained. She already settled on her back to do her nails. Like I didn't have to teach any of that because it had been conditioned from such an early age, which just made my life so much easier, especially with a Malinois.

Yeah.

But yeah, similar to you, crate training, place training, you know, and that can even being tethered. Like if I, if she's, she knows, my dog knows if she's just on her bed, like times a day, right? They're not stupid. They know what's happening at what times a day. So for me, if I, if she's a little bit too on and I just want her on her place and not to put her back in her crate, I will still tether her because she's like, oh, fine, we're definitely not going anywhere now.

Yeah.

And she'll just switch off. Even if she's not actually tethered to something, she's just got a lead on. Sometimes that little mental, you know, tool there. Um, but separation anxiety, right? Same type of thing. Like, you don't have to start with tethering them in a different room. Just tether them one foot away from you. Yeah, slowly increase that. Like, that's the only fix for separation anxiety, in my opinion, is through separation. Like, um, you are okay without me. But I think a big one that probably we don't speak about, and this is probably what And that's what I focus on a lot, especially with the women that I work with, is much like we know, anxious owner, anxious dog. Yeah. Dysregulated owner, dysregulated dog. So you take— and that's where a lot of the times people say, oh, you know, my dog's so good for you. Yeah, because I'm chill.

Yeah,

I'm a calm person. I can consciously bring my—

I don't reek of cortisol.

Yeah, yeah. They can smell all of that too, right? They're just so incredible. But taking that breath, I remember we did a group class and the dog was not necessarily— it was great obedience, right? Obedience and regulation, not the same thing. were down and not necessarily be regulated. But he was just standing there barking, and, you know, it's embarrassing for people. So again, your frustration, everything's going up for you. Yeah. Um, and at some point as kids, we were probably told to sit down and shut up, and now we're trying to put that same thing on our dogs. Um, but actually just going, okay, how am I feeling regardless of what my dog is doing right now? My shoulders are up, I'm holding on to the lead, I'm feeling very frustrated. They don't know that you're feeling frustrated at them. Like they'd be like, yeah, see, you're just as dysregulated as me. And much like if you're, you know, when you're around an anxious person and you're like, oh, that energy is just not cool. You know?

I always think of it like being on a plane. If I see the flight attendant freaking out, I'm freaking out. 100%. Absolutely. If I see them calm, ah.

Co-regulation, right? Babies crying, you hold them, they co-regulate with your nervous system. The same thing for dogs applies. So I think even if, you know, you know nothing about dog training and the one thing that you could be like, okay, what can I do? Work on your own nervous system.

Yeah.

Breathwork. Same thing, like dogs will yawn, we yawn. Movement, shaking your body around, like put a bit of music on and just move your body. So yeah, I think a big one where your dog can do all these things with someone else but not with you. And we quite often, I don't know about you, but I get a lot of people where they're like, I've just constantly been told I'm the problem with my dog. But like, now what? Yeah. Nobody's actually told you what it is that's the problem. And it's because you are dysregulated yourself. So you're a nervous person. People that get separation anxiety because they don't want to leave their dogs. And now their dog's like, oh, so you feel equally as bad about leaving me? Like, my Chihuahua couldn't give a shit if I leave her at home, but I don't like leaving her. Especially with the oodle breeds, right? They're a little bit more sensitive. So there's a lot of different things I think that we can do outside of dog training to regulate ourselves. And something as simple as If we're sitting in a park, like you said, like just practicing the art of doing nothing. If you're on your phone and you're reading like the world news, like there's a lot of shit that's been coming out lately, you're still going to be in a dysregulated state, even though your body's not doing anything. Your dog's still going to read and co-regulate with your nervous system. So put your phone down, sit in the sun for 10 minutes, just 10 minutes with your dog. Um, stare at the clouds, look at your dog, look lovingly into their eyes, whatever it may be. Like, you cannot expect your dog to regulate if you're not regulated in that situation.

Spot on. Like you always say, Yeah, absolutely. And if you're at the other end, you don't even realize, but you're not restful and calm and you're activated. Your dog's just viewing that going, okay, but what are we ready for?

Yeah. What are you upset about? Because I think it's that guy over there. Yeah.

Yeah.

Going back to the group class I told you about, and I said to her, like, she was looking at me like, this guy? And I said to her, drop your shoulders, take a deep breath, and simply shifting your body weight to one hip, like that little bit more relaxed state. The dog looked at her and went, And then he literally lied down and stopped barking. And people thought it was magic, right? That there was no leash.

Dog whisperer.

I get that a lot, actually. There's no leash handling. There's no correction. There was no food. There's no payment. It was just her settling her own nervous system down. Therefore, her dog mirrored her and did the exact same thing.

Yeah, big time.

Which is so cool to see. Like, it's so simple, yet so hard.

Some really great stuff. Sarah, thank you so much indeed for all of that. All right. Any questions, always the Dog People Podcast Facebook page and Instagram and also So we've got the links to The Human and The Hellhound, which you can get Sarah's advice and help with, with your dogs if you need it.

I'll put a nervous system chart in the Facebook group if you guys want to print that out, stick it on your fridge, might find it helpful.

The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill, edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.