If you’ve ever wondered what to do after a bad dog walk, when you’re home, the walk was hard, and you’re sitting in that particular kind of silence that follows a difficult one, this episode is a five-step framework for exactly that. Today we’re talking about the 24-hour window after a reactive or hard walk, why it matters more than most people realise, and what you can do to support both your nervous system and your dog’s recovery. In Episode 51 of The Mindful Dog Parent, I share the distinction between processing and replaying, the most important piece in the episode, and give you five specific, practical steps to work through in the hours after a hard walk. Not to analyse what went wrong. But to actively support the reset that changes what tomorrow’s walk looks like. This episode follows naturally from Episode 46 (the stress bucket), Episode 47 (co-regulation), and Episode 48 (the walk dread), and rounds out the practical walk toolkit alongside Episodes 40 and 44.

Main Topics

Why the 24 hours matter

Cortisol takes 48–72 hours to clear. A hard walk adds significantly to the stress bucket. What you do in the hours after either supports the clearance process or interferes with it. This applies to both your dog’s nervous system and your own. Carrying on as normal after a stress response is one of the least helpful things you can do.

Processing vs replaying

Replaying is running the walk through your head looking for what went wrong, arriving at a verdict about yourself or your dog. It feels like processing but keeps the nervous system in a stress loop. Processing is acknowledging what happened and setting it down — letting the body complete the stress response through movement, stillness, or rest rather than re-triggering it through thought. The five steps support processing, not analysis.

Why this changes tomorrow’s walk

A dog who decompresses properly after a hard walk starts tomorrow with a lower bucket and higher threshold. You, having done your own reset, arrive less braced and less anticipatory. That transmits down the lead before anything has happened. The 24-hour window is an investment in tomorrow, not just today’s recovery.

The five steps

• Step One: Name it and set it down — affect labelling, factual not verdict-based
• Step Two: Decompress together — calm, low-stimulus time for both of you
• Step Three: Move your body differently — physical completion of the stress response
• Step Four: Sniff walk before bed — parasympathetic activation, the most powerful tool for the dog’s bucket
• Step Five: Reset your story before tomorrow — one hard walk is one data point, not a verdict

Key Takeaway

Hard walks happen. They will keep happening, even as things get better. But the 24 hours after a hard walk don’t have to be lost time. They can be the window where you and your dog do the work that actually changes what comes next.

Free Resource

• The One-Minute Reset — free from The Dog Parent Path™: https://sianlawleyrudd.myflodesk.com/one-minute-reset-tool

Mentioned in This Episode

• Episode 40: When the Walk Goes Wrong — the Five-Minute Debrief (immediate post-walk reset)
• Episode 46: Why Your Dog Behaves Differently on Different Days — stress bucket and cortisol
• Episode 47: Why You and Your Dog Wind Each Other Up — co-regulation
• Episode 48: The Dog Walk Dread — affect labelling in Step One
• Nervous-System Aware Dog Parenting™ framework
• The Dog Parent Path™ — thedogparentpath.com
• FREE One-Minute Reset Tool -

Related Episodes

• When the Walk Goes Wrong: A Simple Way to Reset — Episode 40
• The Dog Walk Dread — Episode 48
• Why Your Dog Behaves Differently on Different Days — Episode 46
• What to Do in the Moments Before Your Dog Reacts — Episode 44

Apple Podcasts Review Ask

If The Mindful Dog Parent has helped you, the most useful thing you can do is leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It takes two minutes and it’s how other overwhelmed dog parents find the show. Search The Mindful Dog Parent on Apple Podcasts, scroll down, and leave a rating and review. Thank you so much.

Calls to Action

• Download the free One-Minute Reset: https://sianlawleyrudd.myflodesk.com/one-minute-reset-tool
• Share this episode with a dog parent who’s in the aftermath of a hard walk right now
• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts — search The Mindful Dog Parent, scroll down
• Find out more about The Dog Parent Path™: thedogparentpath.com

So the walk's over.

You've just got home, your dog reacted, and it was hard.

And now you're sitting in that, like, silence that comes after a difficult walk.

So you're replaying it.

You're feeling the weight of it all.

You're, like, wondering what you do for the rest of the day with your dog or even what happens tomorrow.

You're, like, thinking ahead.

Like, are the walks just going to be like this for the rest of the week or forever?

What happens in the next 24 hours matters more than most people realize.

It's not because you need to analyze what went wrong.

Absolutely not.

But because both you and your dog have nervous systems that are still activated and are still processing and are still in the aftermath of something stressful.

And what you do with those 24 hours is either going to help you with that processing or make it harder.

This episode is a framework for that window of time.

Five things in order, starting right now.

So I remember particular walks with Bonnie.

So there were more than one kind of walk that I can remember that were like this, where it felt like everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

So there could be, like, two reactive encounters within the space of five minutes.

A route that just felt really impossible to navigate, even though I'd planned ahead and thought that it would work.

And both of us getting home before the walk was even half finished.

I was shaken.

She was activated, and I just had the rest of the day ahead of me.

So it might have been the morning walk, sometimes it was the afternoon walks.

Like, was never any pattern to it.

And that's really common for anyone with a reactive dog.

If you have a reactive dog, it's really hard to spot patterns in why things are happening and why things don't happen on certain days.

And what I used to do in those moments was try to carry on as normal.

So I would, like, push through, act like nothing had happened, maybe do a bit of training in the garden to just try and end it on a positive.

Try and keep busy.

Try not to think about it.

What I now understand is that carrying on as normal after a significant stress response is one of the least helpful things that you can do for your dog and for yourself.

The nervous system is not just going to reset because you've decided to move on in your mind.

So your brain logically is telling you, well, I need to move on from this.

It happened, and we're moving forward.

Your body is still going to be carrying all of that and your dogs especially.

So it's just.

It needs Something active to support a reset.

A really useful, helpful reset.

And once I'd started to actually do that deliberately, in the next 24 hours after a hard walk, something just started to shift, not just in how I felt, but in how like the next walk went or the next day went with her.

So in this episode I am sharing five steps as part of a framework for the 24 hours after a hard walk.

So what to do?

In what order?

Just to support both your nervous system and your dog's nervous system so that the next walk can start from a better place.

So, so let's get into it.

But before we do, if you have just come back from a hard walk, you're listening to this in the aftermath of difficult times with your dog, or you are like braced, ready for a difficult walk with them and it hasn't even happened yet.

I want to point you into the direction of my one minute reset tool.

That's the very first thing that I'd like you to go download.

It's absolutely free.

I created it especially for moments that are difficult, where you need a 60 second, a really quick reset for you and for your dog.

It's to help both of you in that 60 seconds, specifically when yours and your dog's nervous systems are still activated and you just need something immediate, something really fast.

There is an audio version for Hands Free that I talk through and there's an interactive kind of option as well.

So if you don't, you know, if your hands are available and you want to work through it step by step in an interactive way, that is an option for you as well.

So I'm going to put the link in the show notes.

I really would love it.

If you want to grab that for free, completely free, do that first.

Then come back to these five steps.

It will really help you moving forward and it's going to be there for you to just go back to when you need it.

So we talked about in episode 46 about the stress bucket and how cortisol, the stress chemical in our bodies, can take 48 to 72 hours to clear from your dog's system.

So a hard walk is a really difficult stressor and it's going to add to the bucket in a really meaningful way.

And then what you do in the hours after the stressor either is going to support the, the, like the clearance process, the emptying of that bucket, or it's going to interfere with it for your dog.

A hard walk followed by like a calm, decompression, focused afternoon and evening.

So thinking about how long stress lasts in their system gives their nervous system the conditions it needs to process and to settle.

A hard walk followed by more stimulation, more activity, more demands, is going to accelerate the stress bucket filling, meaning it's going to just fill quickly.

And it means tomorrow's walk's just going to start with less capacity for you.

The same thing is so, so true.

So your nurse versus system has also been through something.

I can attest to the fact that I felt super stressed out when Bonnie's reactivity was at its worst.

And I can attest to it where my clients feel exactly the same way.

The replaying of the walk, the reaction moment, the analyzing the guilt spiral, those are all nervous system activation states.

They might feel productive because they're mental activity.

So you're like thinking it through, but they do keep your threat system engaged rather than helping it to settle.

And your threat system being switched on for a long time is going to become problematic.

You're going to feel it in your body, wherever you feel it in your body.

So really kind of like do a little body scan, check in with where it's happening in your body.

So the 24 hour window is not about fixing what happened or preventing the next hard walk through, like analysis.

It is about actively supporting the reset that both of you need.

And there are five things specifically that do that really well.

Before I give you the five steps, I just want to make a really important distinction because when I say what you do in the next 24 hours matters, I don't mean spend those 24 hours thinking about what happened.

I have done that myself.

I've sat in rumination as a perfectionist, as somebody who guilt spiraled, as somebody who felt like she was to blame for all the things and took all the emotional load of everything.

As I've mentioned in previous episodes before, there is a difference between processing, which is what I would love for you to do and learn through the five steps I'm going to give you, and actually replaying everything and it's just worth naming and really highlighting it there.

Replaying is when you're going to walk through like walk through the walk through the walk, run through the walk in your head again and again and again, looking for the moment that it went wrong, cataloging what you should have done differently, arriving at a verdict about yourself or your dog.

So this is where, like I can, just so I can remember how it used to make me feel when I used to do this.

It might feel like processing, like I've said, but it really isn't it's your nervous system running the stress response in a loop, keeping itself in just like in a state of activation until it's like, disguising itself as learning.

You're processing the walk in the way that you think is processing is actually just replaying everything over and over.

And then you're critiquing the.

The time when I should have noticed, when my dog did this, I didn't.

Like, I wasn't checking in.

I wasn't paying attention.

I didn't notice, like, all those things.

It's just nitpicking on yourself and being really, really negative about all of the things that you did or didn't do in the run up to that particular moment.

Processing is different.

It is acknowledging what happened.

Yes, that was hard.

Yes, that reaction happened.

Yes, that was stressful.

And then it's setting it down, letting the body complete that stress response rather than retriggering it, like, through thoughts, through your thinking about it all and just replaying it all.

Processing often happens physically and not mentally.

So a walk, a shake, a cry.

Like, absolutely cry out.

I am a crier, so no judgment from me.

If you cry after a hard walk, it's.

It's a way of processing.

And it was something.

It was something that I used to do after hard walks.

And I've talked about it before, and I still cry all of the time.

And I am not sorry for it, not anymore.

Movement or stillness, everybody's different.

So it's finding the right things.

So the things that let the nervous system move through something rather than staying stuck in it.

So it's like burying your head in the sand.

We don't want to do that.

We don't want it to be something we just pretend didn't happen or just move on without processing properly what happened.

So the walk, like this is what I say.

Like a walk, a shake, a cry, movement, stillness.

So things that help.

Everybody's different.

So sometimes people need to be still to process and use mindfulness techniques.

Sometimes people need movement.

And dance is one of the things.

Like, I love to dance so I can put some music on and dance.

And that just helps make me feel so much better.

But for another person, that just might sound like their worst nightmare.

So it's knowing what your things are to do this.

But the five steps that I'm about to share are processing steps.

They're not analyzing steps and analysis steps.

So I'm an analyst by nature.

My previous lives in corporate all revolved around analysis in different forms.

So it's really difficult when you have that brain to say that we're not analysing this right now.

These steps are designed to support the nervous system reset, not to figure out what went wrong.

That analysis, if it's useful at all, happens better from a settle state anyway, so you don't want to be doing it in the immediate aftermath.

So if analysis is something that you, that you're doing to process, try and go through these steps and then do it from a place where you're more settled rather than going through everything more emotionally and negative self talk kind of kicks in.

So here's what I want you to hold in mind as we go through these steps.

Every single one of them is an investment in tomorrow's walk, not just in today's recovery.

I'm going to say it again because I really want you to hold it.

Every single one of the steps is an investment in tomorrow's walk, not just in today's recovery.

A dog who decompresses properly after a hard walk starts their next walk with a lower bucket.

So, so say if it was your morning walk and you were thinking about taking them out in the afternoon, maybe you don't take them out in the afternoon because you've seen that they are quite activated.

Or if you do, you kind of change the type of walk that you were going to do.

If it was something depends on the severity of the reaction.

If there was more than one, like, it's very nuanced and specific, but that's just something to take into consideration.

So a dog who's processed that hard walk, their next walk will be more coming, coming at it from a more regulated place.

But if it's only a few hours later and we're thinking about how much stress is in their system already, we've got to think about what's best for them in that scenario.

So like a dog who gets a quiet, calm sniff led kind of time, not necessarily a walk, but just like going out in the garden, having a good sniff in the hours after a difficult experience has a nervous system that has had a chance to settle rather than staying in high alert.

So if they come in and they're reactive out of the window and they're just sitting on the back of the sofa or sitting on the windowsill and they're barking at people and then you thinking of taking them on an afternoon walk, that's, that's where we're thinking they're going to be just so activated for that afternoon walk because they've had a difficult walk in the morning, come home, maybe Had a bit of a sleep, but then just got back on the windowsill and started barking at people going past.

They're activated again.

So, so their bucket is going to be fuller for that afternoon walk.

So those are the kinds of things that I want you to think about.

So like their threshold is going to be higher, their capacity is going to be greater if they've had that chance to settle rather than staying in high alert.

So the same trigger that caused a reaction yesterday might actually be more manageable the next day if it was a walk.

Like you've just said, okay, let's not go for a walk later.

We've done the morning walk, it was really difficult.

Let's just decompress, chill, go out in the garden, do some sniffing, give them things to just process and relax with and minimize triggers as much as you possibly are able to, knowing everybody's got different setups, different houses, you know, that kind of thing.

So that's just something to think about for your dog.

And you, having done your own reset work, arrive at tomorrow's walk from a slightly different place.

So you might be less braced, you might be less anticipatory, you might be more present.

That is going to transmit down the lead as we talked about in episode 47.

So any episodes that I mention here, so I've mentioned episode 46 and 47, I'm going to put a link to the show notes, a link to the episode in the show notes, sorry, so that you can go listen to them if you haven't already or if you haven't and you need to remind yourself what was episode 47 again?

That that's there for you to go listen back to.

Your nervous system state is part of what shapes your dog's threshold before anything's even happened.

So these are not just nice self care suggestions or nice to haves or cherry on top kind of things.

They're practical nervous system interventions with a direct effect on what happens next.

So there's a five minute debrief that I think will be helpful.

Again, I've done an episode all about that that's like the five minute debrief after a difficult walk.

If you need some immediate time to process again, it's going to help ground you in the aftermath.

So the 60 second reset, 5 minute debrief, what to do in the 24 hours after a hard walk.

I'm covering all bases here for you, to help you, because I know how difficult it is being the dog parent to a dog who finds walks difficult, even if it's not reactivity, but it's fear.

And they're stopping all of the time on their walks because they've been a foreign rescue dog, they've come from abroad, and they find what.

They just find walks difficult.

They're not reacting at anything, but they're just not seeing anything or going anywhere because they're so frozen.

These things are going to help with that as well.

So there's lots of different scenarios.

It can help with puppies who are struggling on walks, all of that kind of thing.

So let's get into all of those steps.

So step one is give it a name and set it down.

As soon as you're home, say out loud in your head, that was a hard walk.

You could say it however you want.

I don't want you to say, that was a disaster.

That was terrible.

Like all of those extremely emotive words.

I just want you to say, that was hard.

Name it factually, without verdict.

And this is the effect of the labeling that we talked about in episode 48.

Naming an emotion reduces its intensity.

So it moves the experience from something like you're inside of to something that you can observe.

So when you're inside of something.

So I don't know if you've ever, like, you've got an email that's really annoyed you and you think, oh, I'm gonna go.

And you're quite angry and you're kind of thinking, I'm gonna go back to that email, and you're feeling very emotional, but you might wait to send it for like, even like half an hour to an hour.

A few hours later, you come back to it and you go, oh, I definitely don't want to write that now.

That's the kind of thing we're observing.

So in that immediate time, you're going to give it a name, set it down.

You've named it factually rather than it being very emotive and it's without verdict on yourself or on your dog, then you can just consciously decide to set it down for now.

It's not about setting it down forever and forgetting about it, not pretending it didn't happen.

It's just.

I'm not going to replay this for the next hour.

I'm going to let it be done for now.

If it helps.

I've listened to a podcast recently that I thought there was something that they said that was really helpful.

If it helps, it's.

It was a Harvard professor on a podcast, and I can't remember the name of the Harvard professor that that mentioned it, but she Called it a worry list.

So you're writing down some of the things that you are worried about.

So this could be that if writing it down helps, because just saying it out louder in your head's still keeping it there.

Writing it down is a really useful tool to just get something out of your head and it's written and it's, it's physically there on paper in the words.

You can come back to that list later on.

So you give yourself half an hour to look through the list a few hours later and you can process it then.

But setting it down for now, when you're just immediately in the aftermath just really starts to help to take you out of, out of the, like the insides of it all and the emotional aspects of it all.

So that's step one.

Step two is do the decompression for both you and your dog.

So for your dog, that next hour, few hours should be calm, low stimulus, off lead in a safe space.

If, if, if it's possible to do that quiet, ideally no visitors.

That's really hard if you've got like deliveries due and that kind of thing, or somebody is coming round, like no training, no demands on anybody.

If they want to sniff around the garden, just let them go do that.

If they want to set or support that.

If they don't and they struggle with that, you can give them something to regulate with licking, sniffing, chewing, they're all regulating activities.

It's finding the right thing that works for your specific dog in this, those scenarios, because it's going to be different for everybody, but those things are going to help.

So their nervous system needs to come down and it does that through rest and low stimulus, calm, not through doing more activity.

So they might come home and they kind of get the zoomies and you think, oh, we've had a difficult walk.

I thought I'd got all their energy out, but they're just zooming around.

That's over stimulation rather than.

And then trying to kind of get their stress.

Like they've just got so much stress in the system, they're so activated.

That's just what's happening.

That stimulation and that arousal level is just so high they can't come back down easily.

So that's something to spot if your dog is doing that and give them after the walk something to regulate with.

That's quite simple as a starting point and just try to help them process and regulate in a way that they potentially can't do at the moment.

And then you.

It's the equivalent.

So it's Whatever works.

So you could sit down, take your shoes off, make a like cup of tea, do something with your hands that don't need your brain like involved.

So if, you know, if you need to do something like fidgety, that kind of thing, give your own nervous system 20 minutes of just not being asked to perform or produce or anything like just low key for you.

That's step two for both you and your dog.

Step three is move your body in a different way.

So later in the day this is.

So we're thinking that 24 hour kind of period, this isn't all happening in the space of like 10 minutes.

Moving your body, not immediately, within a few hours, maybe do something physical that isn't a walk with your dog.

So it's not taking your dog back out for another walk.

So it could be again, everybody's different with this.

A gentle stretch, a short run, just some time in the garden.

Literally like walk around your garden listening to the birds.

This is for you, not, not your dog in this moment.

Physical movement is one of the most effective ways to complete a stress response.

So to let the cortisol and adrenaline that build up on the, on the dog walk, that difficult walk, move through and out rather than staying stored in the body.

So the dog walk was the stressor.

This movement is like the completion.

It doesn't have to be intense or long.

It just needs to be something that your body does rather than something your mind is doing.

So however that looks, whatever that looks like for you, movement's great.

Like I mentioned, I love to dance.

Dancing is something that really helps me.

Music is something that I, I really feel it in, like with that deep emotional kind of stuff.

The music just touches me.

So like having some music on I can move to that really helps me to do that.

So however that looks for you, just move your body in a different way.

Step four is a sniff walk before bed.

So if it's possible, give your dog just small, short, quiet off the beaten track, sniff walk in the evening somewhere that's like really low stimulus.

Somewhere they can move at their own pace.

Somewhere their nose can just do all the work.

So this isn't like training or exercise walking.

So we're not thinking we've got to get all the way around from point A to point B.

It's just you might only go like a few steps.

It's a decompression walk.

So 15 minutes of genuine sniffing does more for your dog stress bucket than a long structured walk.

That's about physical exercise for them.

So if Going out on that kind of walk is not possible again because everybody has their own different environments that they live and walk in.

And you've got a garden.

Going out in the garden and giving them a scent trail to follow, it's gonna be just as useful.

This is one of the most powerful things that you can do for your dog's nervous system in those hours after a hard experience.

So like I say, if that proper sniff walks not possible.

The time in the garden with something like sniffy that they can sniff out.

So it could be scattering of like high value food.

If kibble doesn't cut it for your dog in that moment, which it doesn't always.

Some dogs do like to hunt for it, other dogs don't, they're just not that bothered.

You can use a nice trick is parmesan cheese.

So it's not about them eating it because it's just like crumbly cheese.

But it's so pongy and smelly.

You can lay a little trail of that and they can just go follow it around the garden.

That's just as good.

And if it's raining or if it's just the weather's just too cold to be out there, use something in the house like a snuffle mat or a towel that you don't mind them, or blanket that you don't mind them kind of going into and snuffling around to get some food out of.

It all activates the same parasympathetic response that we want.

So rest and digest, which is what we're after.

We don't want them to be in fight flight freeze response all of the time.

So that is step four and that's for your dog.

And step five is to reset your story before tomorrow.

So before you go to sleep, take a couple of minutes just to deliberately reframe the day.

So again, we're not pretending that the walk was fine, but we do want to acknowledge that one hard walk is one data point.

That's my analyst brain coming in.

So it's information.

I always say to clients, if something doesn't go as planned or something happens that we weren't expecting or a dog's response isn't what we thought it would be.

That is all information.

It's not a we're starting back from the beginning all over again.

It's not a verdict on how like progress.

It's not a prediction of tomorrow.

My dog and I are okay, we got through it.

That's enough.

And that's all you need.

So this last Step is generally one that most people would skip, but it's the one that most directly affects how you feel at tomorrow's front door.

So if you go to sleep carrying the replay, you're going to wake up carrying it as well, and you're just going to arrive at tomorrow's walk already braced.

And you might not even be consciously aware that that's what's happening.

But the story that you tell yourself tonight is part of tomorrow's threshold.

So don't do make it a generous one.

So those are the five steps I want you to hear.

Hard walks happen.

This will keep happening even as things get better.

But the 24 hours after a hard walk don't have to be lost time.

They can be the window where you and your dog do the work that actually changes what comes next.

So the steps again, name it and set it down, decompress together, move your body however that looks for you, give your dog sniffy time a walk, snuffle mat time in the garden to sniff however that looks for them, and reset your story.

That's enough.

That's the whole framework, all five steps that you do in that 24 hours after a hard walk.

So if this episode has given you something practical that you're just going to actually use and implement and you think, okay, that's doable, I can do that.

Please, please share the episode.

Send it to a dog parent who is in the aftermath of difficult walks right now and they just don't know what to do with any of it.

That is how overwhelmed dog parents find the show.

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The show gets distributed by Apple based on that kind of information.

So if you're just on there, just give me a quick rating.

Really genuinely matters and I so appreciate it.

And if you're ready to go deeper into this work so you're building a real framework for you and your dog together, the dog parent path is where that all lives.

So find out more about [email protected] I'm going to link in the show notes to the website.

And don't Forget about the 1 minute reset.

It's free right now at the link that I'm going to put in the show notes.

When you need it and you need some support that is there for you.

So take care of yourselves this week and I shall see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much for tuning in to the mindful dog parent.

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