If you’re an overwhelmed dog parent who carries a constant sense of dog parent guilt, this episode is for you. Today we’re going beyond guilt, into something deeper, quieter, and harder to shake: shame.

Guilt says “I did something wrong.” Shame says “I am something wrong.” And for so many dog parents, shame is the thing that sits underneath every frustrated walk, every meltdown, every moment of wondering if you should have got a dog at all. In this episode of The Mindful Dog Parent, I’m exploring what shame actually is, how it affects your nervous system and your dog’s, where it comes from, and most importantly, how to begin letting it go. Because you cannot train your way out of shame. But you can understand it, name it, and start to shift it. This episode is rooted in the Nervous-System Aware Dog Parenting™ framework, the approach that underpins everything I teach inside The Dog Parent Path™. And it’s for every dog parent who has ever felt like they weren’t enough.

Main Topics

What shame actually is - and why it’s not the same as guilt

We often use guilt and shame interchangeably, but they’re doing very different things. Guilt is about a behaviour, a moment you can identify, learn from, and repair. Shame is about identity. It tells you that you are the problem, not the moment. For dog parents, shame sounds like “I’m failing my dog,” “everyone else seems to have it together,” or “I shouldn’t have got a dog.” In this episode I share how Bonnie’s reactivity in her early days brought up exactly this kind of shame in me, the hot face, the mortification, the sense that her behaviour was proof of something about who I was as a person.

What shame does to your nervous system - and your dog’s

Shame isn’t just an emotion. It’s a full physiological experience. When shame activates, your nervous system treats it as a threat, heart rate rises, muscles tighten, you want to shrink or disappear. And because your dog is exquisitely tuned to your nervous system, they feel it too. The tension in the lead, the change in your breathing, the shift in your posture. This is why shame makes dog behaviour harder to change, not because you’re doing it wrong, but because a dysregulated nervous system can’t access the calm, consistent energy that helps your dog feel safe enough to learn. This is central to the Nervous-System Aware Dog Parenting™ approach: you have to address what’s happening in you first.

Where shame comes from

Dog parents don’t arrive at shame on their own, it’s handed to them. It comes from training advice that implies if your dog isn’t perfect, you haven’t tried hard enough. From social media highlight reels. From family members who say “just be firmer.” From comparing your dog’s worst moment to everyone else’s best. I share how my own experience with Maisy shifted once I stopped trying to fix her and started trying to understand her nervous system, and how the first shift had to happen in me.

How to start letting shame go - three practical approaches

This episode closes with three concrete ways to begin releasing shame: naming it when it arrives (shame thrives in silence, naming it takes away its power), separating the moment from the meaning (your dog’s behaviour is not a report card on you as a person), and regulating before you respond (when shame activates your nervous system, pausing before reacting, even for thirty seconds, can begin to shift everything). These three tools are the foundation of the calm, regulated approach at the heart of The Dog Parent Path™.

Key Takeaway

You are not a bad dog parent. You are a dog parent who is carrying too much shame. And there is a difference, a really important one.

Mentioned in This Episode

• The Dog Parent Path™ — lavendergardenanimalservices.co.uk
• Nervous-System Aware Dog Parenting™ framework
• Bonnie and Maisy — Sian’s own dogs, whose stories feature throughout the podcast

Related Episodes

• Carrying Dog Mum Guilt? Let’s Talk About It (Episode 4)
• You’re Not Doing It Wrong: The Real Talk Dog Parents Deserve (Episode 3)
• When You Feel Judged on Walks: Why Shame Makes Everything Harder (Episode 36)
• When You Think Your Dog’s Behaviour Is Your Fault: How to Break the Self-Blame Cycle (Episode 18)

About the Host

I’m Sian, a dog behaviourist and the creator of Nervous-System Aware Dog Parenting™. I work with overwhelmed dog parents who love their dogs deeply but feel stuck, guilty, or burnt out, helping them rebuild calm, confidence, and genuine connection. The Mindful Dog Parent podcast is published every week and is the free companion to The Dog Parent Path™.

Community & Calls to Action

• Ready to go deeper? Start your journey on the Dog Parent Path™ with my free private podcast series: HERE
• If this episode helped you, share it with a dog parent who needs to hear it.
• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts - it helps other overwhelmed dog parents find the show.

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 so, so glad that you're here with me today.

If you're new here, my name's Sian and this podcast is here for every dog parent who absolutely, truly does love their dog really deeply, but just sometimes finds that that love is wrapped in the exhaustion, the self doubt, and that quiet voice in the back of your head that's saying, am I doing this right and am I enough?

Today we're talking about something that I think is one of.

It's a really unspoken thing in dog parenting specifically.

And I've talked about guilt before and it's one of the first episodes that I recorded because I felt like it was the most one of the biggest emotions that a lot of dog parents feel when their dog's behavior is doing this.

Like whatever their dog's behavior is in that moment, we tend to feel guilt as a result of how we feel after that or what we're doing as a result of that behavior, like whatever it is.

I think that is an important episode and it still resonates because it was one of the early episodes, but it still gets a lot of listens.

So I will link to that episode in the show notes because I think it is very relevant, but it's actually today what's underneath that guilt.

So what actually feeds it, what keeps it alive, what makes it really hard to put down?

And it's shame.

And I've talked about shame in a previous episode.

I've kind of touched on it about a specific scenario when you're embarrassed by your dog out in public, on walks, in specific scenarios.

But I think I want to talk about it on a more broader level for dog parents, so, because once you can start to name what's actually happening, you can start to change it.

So I want you to stay with me.

I want you to take what you need from this episode and start to see how it is.

Like, think about it, reflect on it.

Think about how it is affecting you and your relationship with yourself as a dog parent and.

And your relationship with your dog.

The first thing I want to talk about is the distinction between guilt and shame.

I think it's an important one because they are different things.

So guilt is saying I did something wrong.

The behavior itself, that was something I did wrong.

But shame is saying, I am something wrong, so I am not good enough.

Guilt is that behavior.

Like I said, it's that moment.

It's the choice.

It's a reaction.

And.

And while guilt can be really uncomfortable, it's actually really useful because it points to something specific.

You can work with guilt and you can learn from it, and you can apologize for it if you need to, whether that's to yourself or to someone else, and you can repair it.

So you can repair the relationship with yourself because of the guilt.

You can repair the relationship with your dog because of the guilt.

You can repair the relationship with someone else because of the guilt that you were feeling as a result of whatever that was, that moment, that choice, that reaction.

But shame is actually really different.

So shame is, in my opinion, opinion is a story about who you are as a person.

So in this scenario, it's about who you are as a.

As a dog parent.

And because it's about identity, not just about a moment that guilt is about, it's really a lot harder to shift.

It's much harder to shift.

So shame would sound like I'm failing my dog or every other dog.

Parents got it together.

Why don't I. I just don't.

It could be I've.

I shouldn't have got a dog.

I'm not cut out for this.

And that's a big one.

Because a lot of the time people who I've talked to, dog, dog, parents, I've talked to, clients that I've worked with.

When I talk about that I shouldn't have got a dog, it's something that not a lot of people will voice and say out loud because they feel guilty and they feel the shame on a deeper level that they've felt like that because there's a whole thing that says we should feel lucky to have dogs.

You know, we should feel joyful when we've got a dog.

And absolutely, yes, you do feel joyful and you do love your dogs because that's what this episode is.

This podcast is all about.

You love your dogs deeply, but it's got those other layers on top of it.

So saying I shouldn't have got a dog.

I'm not cut out for this is a very big thing.

But that's what shame starts to say.

And it's.

When you're out and about, people must look at us and think, what is she doing?

What is she doing with that dog?

She doesn't know what she's doing.

She's.

She can't control the dog, like, whatever.

And if any of those things feel familiar, because they do to a lot of dog parents, I want you to say that it feels familiar to me, too, because I'm being really honest, and I've talked about it before.

I remember walking with Bonnie in those days where her reactivity were at its worst.

So when her reactivity was at its worst and she would lunge and bark and yap and be on her feet, on the.

You know, on her back feet, like, bouncing, she would flip herself up in the air, and I would just feel my face go really hot.

So when I'm embarrassed, my face starts to burn.

And I could feel it burning because we're out in public.

So it's not just frustrated, it's genuine.

Like, I'm mortified about this thing happening because one are people thinking I'm flipping my dog up in the air and she's landing any which way because I'm trying to correct the behavior with abbreviated commas.

If you're not watching on YouTube or are they thinking, you know, she can't control her dog?

What is she like, why is she out with her dog when she can't control her dog?

And what has she done to that dog for it to be that way?

Like, all these things.

So it was like I was being watched and judged and like a behavior was proof about something about me that I wasn't good enough, that I'd made a mistake somewhere.

So that is the shame, and it makes everything harder.

So if those things feel familiar, you are not on your own.

I've talked to so many dog parents because I. I come at this from a place of no judgment.

If you come to me and say, these are the things that we've tried with our dog, and I feel awful because I sprayed my dog in the face with some water because my friend or someone at work told me to do that because it worked for their dog.

But I feel awful for doing it, or I'm using, like, whatever it is I'm doing things that I feel bad for.

There's no judgment from me at all.

If you say this is the scenario and I feel guilty because I don't know what.

I don't feel like I know what I'm doing when I'm out with my dog and they're embarrassing in public, but I just don't know what to do, and I'm mortified.

No judgment from me.

I have been the dog mom who's lived through some of these experiences myself as well.

So that is the shame.

And it really does make everything feel harder.

So I want to talk about it from a nervous system perspective and think about it from that because it's important to understand it from the lens of my nervous system aware dog parenting framework and because it's the foundation of everything that I teach.

So shame isn't just an emotion.

It's not just I feel frustrated.

It's a full physiological experience.

So when shame starts to activate, your nervous system is treating it as a threat.

So your body is responding just like it would to physical danger.

Your heart rate's going to go up, your muscles are going to tighten.

You might feel the heat in your face like I used to.

I knew and it made me more embarrassed because I knew that my face was going red.

So it made my face go even more red because I could feel it and it was just a cycle that I got stuck in.

It might be you feel your heart rate increasing in your chest and you want to disappear or you want to shrink or just get away.

So that's the fight flight, freeze response.

So you either want to just, just want to become invisible, you want to make yourself as little as possible so that you've not got all eyes on you, or you just want to get out of there as quickly as you can.

And the part that matters so much for dog parents is that your dog is feeling it as well.

And it's not because they know what shame is like, you know, they might do, but there's nothing out there to say that they know exactly what shame is we might do in the future.

But it's actually because they're just so tuned in to your own nervous system.

So that tension that they feel through the lead that you've been holding with that anxiety, they're going to feel the change in your breathing, the shift in the posture that you've got, the way that you hold yourself differently when you might see another dog come in certain words that, that, that, that can, like, you see another dog if it's reactivity for your dog is reactive.

The words that you use that are going to start to make your dog more aware of there potentially being something.

You could just say oh God.

When a dog's coming down the road and they've learned that when you say oh God, and they feel tension in the lead, there is something they've got to be aware of.

There is a trigger in the environment and they will pick up on that.

They'll pick up on the chemical changes in your body.

Like all the things, they are responding to it.

And both ends of the lead is going to respond to each other in that way.

So when you're in shame, you're dysregulated.

And when you're dysregulated, your dog, your dog's nervous system is going to follow that.

It is not your fault.

It's.

It is, like I say, it's physiology.

It's biology.

Both ends of the leads are responding in to each other.

So it's not about saying, well, I just need to pretend I'm calm in this situation.

It's not about doing that because you're still going to have that anxiety in your body that your dog is going to pick up on.

So the shame that you carry about your dog's behavior is actually making the behavior harder to change.

And it's not because you're doing anything wrong, but it's because the shame is keeping your nervous system activated.

And that activated nervous system just can't access the calm and clear and consistent energy that helps your dog feel safe and have the ability to learn.

This is one of the most fundamental reasons why I built the dog parent path around the nervous system.

First, because you cannot train your way out of shame.

That should be the start of a poem.

But you can address what's actually happening underneath.

You have to.

So you can't train your way out of that shame because you've got to go deeper.

You've got to start to work on the things that are happening underneath it.

So.

So where does shame actually come from?

Because I don't think dog parents just arrive at shame on their own.

I think it's something that's handed to them.

So it comes from, putting it really bluntly, the training advice that implies if your dog isn't perfect, you haven't tried hard enough.

Let that land.

So the shame comes from somebody else telling you that because your dog's not perfectly behaved in all the situations and isn't fully sociable in all the situations, you've not tried hard enough.

It comes from social Media where every dog seems so beautifully behaved on a sun drenched walk with a perfectly coordinated dog parent walking with them.

They're listening to the, their dog parent, they're responding to the recall.

Apparently they're sitting beautifully like posing for a picture that's just like this beautiful vista behind them.

All of that, it comes from strangers in the park who make comments, from family members who say you just need to be firmer or I don't know why you can't control them.

It comes from comparing your dog's worst moment to, to everyone else's highlight reel.

And it comes from the fact that we love our dogs so much.

The more you love something, the more it hurts when it feels like you're letting them down.

I want just, I just want you to hear that.

And it's making me, it's bringing emotions up for me because I think it's so true.

We love our dogs so much.

And I'm thinking back to those times when I was struggling with Bonnie.

The more, the more that you love something, the more it hurts when you feel like you're letting them down.

So that shame brings, it brings something up.

So I really want you to hear this today.

Your dog's behavior is not like a report card on you as a person.

It is a snapshot of where they and you are in their training.

It's a snapshot in their nervous system and yours and their environment at that moment in time.

And that is it.

That's all it is.

And I'm going to say it again because I really want this to be a big takeaway.

Your dog's behavior is not a report card on you as a person.

It's a snapshot of where they are in their learning.

It's a snapshot of where their nervous system is and their environment at that moment in time.

And that is all.

And Maisie taught me more than that, taught me that more than anything else.

There was a period where Maisie was struggling.

So she, she became reactive in some situations as well.

And she barked a lot out of the window and she barked in the back garden at one of our old neighbors, bless him.

He was, I think he was in his 80s.

His name was Richard.

He was a lovely man.

And Bonnie, Maisie used to bark at him through the fence.

She used to bark at neighbours getting in and out of their car when she heard the car doors banging shut.

So she wasn't the dog like this relaxed, calm dog that I'd hoped for and for a long time I made that about me.

So what Had I done?

What was I missing?

Why couldn't I fix it?

Because I was going round in a spiral of trying to just shut her up basically, in the most bluntest way that I can explain it.

That was what I was doing.

It wasn't until I tried to stop fixing it and actually tried to start to understand what was happening.

So her nervous system, her history, was what she actually needed from me that things started to change.

And the first thing that had to shift was my shame in those situations.

So how do we actually start to release shame?

So I'm talking about how we kind of become aware of it and that's great.

How do we actually start to release it?

Because it's one thing to understand it and another to live differently.

So the first thing I want to offer is to name it when it comes, when it starts to arrive.

Shame is thriving in silence.

So it grows in that space where we don't talk about it.

So when I mentioned earlier on about saying I shouldn't have got a dog, those are the things that we don't say out loud.

So those are the quiet moments where we think in these, to us, these things to ourselves, but not outwardly expressing it because we feel too shameful to say out loud.

So it's that moment that you can say to yourself, even quietly, even in just in your own head, because of a lot of the things that we do feel shameful for, we don't tend to want to say outwardly unless we feel really safe with the person.

You say that shame, I'm feeling ashamed right now.

You can take some of the power away from it when you express it.

Even if you tell yourself in your own head that shame, I am feeling ashamed right now.

So the power is removed.

So it's.

Your brain is playing tricks on you.

It's especially kind of trying to pick up on your insecurities and all of those things.

So if you just name does take the power away.

So you move it from something that's happening to you into something that you can observe.

And from there you've got a little bit more choice.

So just think about trying to see, like understanding it is the first thing you definitely need to have an awareness of when it's coming, coming, coming up for you.

But then you can say to yourself, or if you feel safe with the person that you're with, saying it out loud, I am feeling ashamed right now.

That's shame.

Whatever words make most sense to you, if you can reframe something and say things like that, it's Best to use the wording that makes most sense to you.

So if you say that, shame, I'm feeling ashamed right now, those aren't the kinds of words that you would say.

Just try to say it in a way that makes the most sense to you, because I think that's where it starts to land a lot more.

And the second thing is to separate the moment from the meaning.

So your dog has barked at something or someone on a walk, for example.

They that's the moment it's happened and it's done.

The shame comes when you attach meaning to that moment.

So this means I'm failing.

This means I'm not good enough.

This means everyone thinks I'm a bad dog parent.

But meaning isn't fact.

The meaning that your brain puts to it isn't the fact.

It's a story that your nervous system is telling you when it's overwhelmed.

And you can gently question that story.

What actually happened, just the facts about that scenario.

What's one thing that went okay on the walk doesn't have to be in that moment, but on the walk.

What would you say to a friend who told you that this had happened to them?

This is like, we can be so much kinder to other people than we are to ourselves.

I'm guilty of that.

And it's harder to follow your own advice than it is for someone else to follow your advice.

So flip it and say as if, as somebody else is telling you this, as if a friend is telling you this story about what just happened, your dog reacted to something on a walk or someone on a walk, what would you tell your friend in that situation?

So that one, I think, is really, really helpful.

That second thing that you can do, when you start to separate the moment and the meaning and you can start to be kinder to yourself about that, it really helps.

And then the last one, I think those first two are really, really, really powerful, but the last one is powerful.

So as I said, we are much kinder to other people than we are to ourselves.

And this last one is a all about where the nervous system or where dog parenting frameworks built so it's to regulate before you respond.

So when shame is activated in your nervous system, the worst thing that you can do is immediately try to correct your dog or push through the situation.

Pushing through doesn't work.

Correcting it doesn't work.

You're both dysregulated.

Nothing productive comes from that place.

I can say that for a fact.

I have done that when Maisie used to get barky All I tried to do was correct the behavior by telling her to be quiet, to stop barking.

And I was dysregulated because I was frustrated.

She was dysregulated because she felt she needed to start to tell us that something was there and she felt threatened.

And you can see how you end up stuck in that spiral.

But so instead, pausing and breathing and giving yourself and your dog a moment to come back down, even 30 seconds of stillness is going to help you to begin to shift that nervous system out of threat mode.

So it doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be that, and it won't be transformative immediately, something that you have to keep working through, because you are going to have a dysregulated nervous system sometimes you are going to feel that shame.

But if you can name it, if you can separate the two things, the moment from the, from the meaning, and you can, you can regulate yourself before you react, you're so going to get yourself out of this situation.

This is what I support dog parents to do inside the dog parent path.

So it's not just the training techniques, but the actual inner work, the regulation, the reframing, because that is where the real change happens.

So really sit with those three things.

I will put them in the show notes so that you can see them really easily as well.

But I want you to take it away and put it into your own situation.

And I want to leave you with this.

Today, you did not get a dog to feel ashamed.

You got a dog because you wanted a connection, you wanted companionship, you wanted joy.

And those things are all still available to you with your dog.

Not on the other side of perfection, but right here in the middle of the messy, in the middle of the imperfect, in the middle of the completely human experience of loving an animal who doesn't always behave the way that you'd hoped.

They are sentient.

They have choices, they make choices.

So it's not going to be perfect.

But you're not a bad dog parent.

You're a dog parent who is carrying too much shame.

And there's a difference between the two and it's a really important one.

So if today's episode has landed for you, I'd really love you to share it with another dog parent who you think needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to go deeper, to work on the nervous system, to find a path through the overwhelm and into genuine calm and confidence with your dog, come and find out more on the website that I'll link in the show notes and the freebie that I've created that will help start to guide you on the process of helping you to regulate and create that deeper meaning and connection with yourself and your dog.

So thanks so much for being here.

Take care of yourself this week and I'll 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 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.