If you’re an overwhelmed dog parent who keeps finding calm… only to lose it again, this episode is for you. In this episode of The Mindful Dog Parent, ethical dog trainer Siân Lawley-Rudd shares calm dog training advice and nervous-system-aware support to explain why calm doesn’t always stick, and how anxious dog owners can stop feeling like they’re starting over every time things wobble.

In this episode, we explore:

1. Why calm can feel fragile even when you’re doing “everything right”
2. How nervous system states affect consistency and behaviour
3. Why it feels like progress disappears (even when it hasn’t)
4. The difference between holding calm and returning to calm
5. Why pressure makes regulation harder for you and your dog
6. How to stabilise calm without forcing motivation
7. What actually builds safety and confidence over time

This episode is especially supportive if you’re experiencing:

1. Dog training burnout
2. Feeling behind with your dog
3. Anxiety around behaviour inconsistency
4. Self-blame when calm doesn’t last
5. Exhaustion from “starting again”

A gentle invitation

If something in this episode resonated, you’re welcome to message me just one word that describes where calm sits for you right now.

No explanation required.

And if listening quietly is all you have capacity for, that’s enough.

Related episodes you may find helpful

🎧 You Didn’t Fail Over Christmas: A Gentle Reset for You and Your Dog

🎧 When You Feel Behind With Your Dog: How to Reset Without Shame

🎧 When You’re Tired of Dog Training: Why Taking a Break Helps You Make Real Progress

Takeaways:

1. Calm is not a static state, but rather a dynamic rhythm that ebbs and flows throughout our lives.
2. The feeling of calm may recede not due to personal failure, but as a natural response of our nervous system to stressors.
3. When seeking to regain calm, it is crucial to approach oneself with kindness and understanding rather than self-blame.
4. Supporting our dogs in achieving calm requires us to first regulate our own emotional states and nervous systems, as they are attuned to us.
5. The cycle of improvement followed by regression is common in dog training, and returning to foundational practices can be an effective strategy.
6. Recognizing that progress is not linear and that small victories contribute to long-term stability is essential for both dog owners and their pets.

About the podcast

The Mindful Dog Parent offers calm dog training advice and emotional support for overwhelmed and anxious dog owners. Each episode blends ethical dog behaviour guidance with nervous system regulation to help both ends of the lead feel safer, steadier, and more connected.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

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.

I want to start today by saying something I don't think we talk about enough.

So there's been times in my own life and in the work that I've done with dogs where calms felt like something that I've touched one week, and then it's completely disappeared the next week, and I just couldn't find it at all.

And that's not because I didn't care.

It's not because I'd stopped doing the right things.

And right is in inverted commas because what's right for one person isn't right for another.

We're all individual.

But it was because something in me had become, like, tired in a way that I'd just not fully noticed yet.

That's where awareness is really important.

So in that moment, I just not noticed that that was what was happening.

And if this sounds familiar, I want you to know you're not alone in it, because I've felt it.

I've worked with clients who have felt it, and it just doesn't get talked about enough.

So you do feel on your own, and then you end up in a little spiral.

So, talking about my own experience, I remember a period of time where on paper everything seemed fine and finds that word that people use where things like someone says, how are you?

And they say, fine.

And you think, oh, I don't think you're okay because it's just fine.

But everything looked fine on paper.

I knew what helped.

I knew the routines.

I understood my nervous system and behavior and regulation.

But I would wake up some mornings feeling behind.

So I'd just wake up and feel behind.

I didn't feel panicked.

I didn't feel overwhelmed in a dramatic way.

I just felt flat.

So it wasn't like I'D woken up with this impending sense of dread which I felt before in that period.

That was not what I was feeling, but I have felt that before.

I wasn't feeling overwhelmed where I was just, you know, being dramatic about it.

And it wasn't feeling dramatic, but I just felt like I'd woken up and I wasn't feeling excited, I wasn't feeling motivated for the day.

You know, my eyes opened and I would potentially just feel meh.

Meh is the word, the best word I can use to describe it.

And what caught me off guard was how quickly my mind jumped to why can't I stay here?

Why does calm keep slipping through my fingers?

So thinking about that, I felt like I was calm one week and then not couldn't find it at all the next.

That question can quietly turn itself into self blame if we're not careful.

So if we start to keep asking ourselves these questions, if we keep waking up feeling flat, if we keep feeling like calm something that we can touch one week but not the next, and we're starting to self like we're starting to blame ourselves for that, that's where the spiral can quickly kind of escalate and it can turn into something bigger.

But what, what I've learned personally and professionally is that calm just doesn't disappear because we lose it.

It's disappearing because our nervous system is changing its state based on the situation.

Not because there's been mistakes that have been made or that your body's responding in the wrong way, but it's as a response when that capacity that I've talked about before is dropped.

So that can be from stress, it can be from grief, it can be from that constant decision making.

It can be that's carrying too much.

You're carrying the whole family emotionally on your own for too long.

That calm can just feel harder to access.

And that is not because it's gone, but because our body is prioritizing safety over steadiness.

So that steadiness is the calm that I've talked about.

Our bodies are responding in the way that they were designed to in situations that are causing us to feel like we need to feel safe again.

And our body tries to bring us back to that feeling of safety.

We're in fight flight freeze mode.

You know, we've got all the stress, we're carrying all the emotional load.

We're feeling overwhelmed, but not in that dramatic way like all those things are going to make us feel me.

And not because the calm's gone completely or, or because we are Doing the wrong things or that we're doing things that are just bad for us.

It's just that that is what life is throwing at us in that moment.

So this is where loads of dog parents can get stuck.

And I've got stuck here myself as well.

So you start to think about the fact that you've already worked on it.

So you might be saying, I've already worked on this.

I've already tried to do this.

I. I was calmer last week.

My dog was doing better.

When things start to wobble, it feels like the ground's vanished beneath you.

So you kind of think, I'm making progress.

I've started to do things like I've started to see some different responses from my dog in this situation.

I'm responding differently.

And then something happens.

Life kind of happens.

Our nervous systems trigger safety mode, and it all starts to feel like it's crumbling beneath us again.

Your nervous system's not forgotten calm in that moment.

It's just orientated away from the calmness and towards safety right now.

And that orientation matters more than effort.

So we're not thinking we're never going to get back there, but we might be feeling like that, because I've said this to clients before.

So a good example would be a puppy going into teenage times.

So your puppy's starting to kind of into their adolescent phase.

So maybe six, seven, eight months old onwards, and depending on the size and whether your dog is male or female, they're gonna start to mature a little bit later than others, depending on their size.

So, you know, that could be anything from, you know, you're looking at 20 months old to two and a half years, depending on those.

Those specifics of your dog.

So they're coming into adolescence and you feel like you'd been making progress as a puppy.

So you've done the puppy training, you've worked hard on getting their recall to be reliable, and they're walking on the lead quite well, and they're good with going out on walks and not getting distracted by other dogs.

Then adolescence starts to hit and you maybe start to see them go further away from you on your walks.

When they're off lead, their reliable recall has gone down to 50, 50.

They go out of sight more and they never were before, or they've stopped checking in with you every so often, or their loose lead walking has turned into more of a pull and they're pulling you towards the park.

All those things start to happen in that situation.

Thinking about what we've said already here we Go back to those thoughts of I've already worked on this, why aren't they responding?

I feel stressed now.

So I'm thinking, you know, I'm getting stressed about this.

What have I done wrong?

What am I doing wrong?

I self blame.

I'm, you know, my dog was doing better before.

Why is thing, why have things changed?

You start to overanalyze and self blame.

But what's happening there?

You know, there's more to it.

Your dog's development, your puppy's development into adolescence is all these things are quite natural to happen.

The, you know, they're physiologically developing, they are developing hormonally.

There's lots of things going on for them in this kind of time frame and we maybe have gotten a little complacent with their progress.

Now this doesn't happen to every single puppy, but it's very, very common.

That's what I'm talking about.

And it's the first scenario that's come to mind.

So you were thinking we were doing better a couple of weeks ago.

Why have things changed?

Calms like I can't get them to settle at the pub anymore.

That can.

That's another common one.

Why have they suddenly started to get, get Pacey at the pub when we go out?

Because we've been doing it since they were little and they were fine before and now they're not.

And you know all those things start to happen.

Dogs are going to learn calm through us.

Teaching them and showing them how to build that into their life.

Like going to the pub from a young age and them starting to learn to settle.

But it's also something that they experience from the things that they feel around us.

So when our body starts to shift even subtly, they feel that shift as well.

So something maybe doesn't go right.

We start to get stressed and potentially a little bit anxious.

In that situation our dogs are going to feel that they are developing as well.

So there's lots of other things going on for them and then their nervous system is picking up on our nervous system and you can see where we start to lose progress.

So that is why behaviour can start to look inconsistent when life is feeling heavy.

It's not because the training's failed.

And I say this to clients quite often when they come through the puppy kind of sessions with me or one to ones.

I always say if you need to go back to previous steps of the foundations because things have started to take a backward step, that is okay to do.

It's okay that we want to come back to A place of calm by going back a few steps.

Because in this situation, we're stressed, our dog feels stressed.

There's lots of development things going on.

They might have.

If you've got a female dog, they'll be coming into season potentially anytime.

So that can change them.

Like, there's lots of things going on.

So that's just one example where we're thinking about how what I'm talking about here links to a real life scenario.

And it could be that you've experienced it, you are going through that right now, or you know somebody that's going through that right now.

I remember when Bunny was a teenager and how stressed she made me feel going back nine years or so.

And I had all these thoughts.

These were the exact things that I was thinking, what am I doing wrong?

Why, why have.

Like we were making progress, but why is.

Why is she tearing up the rug now?

And like, all these things are happening.

So because I was feeling stressed, she was feeling that stress as well.

And we were just in this cycle.

So the cycle that I see is things start to improve.

You exhale, your body starts to feel safe, your nervous system starts to feel safe.

Therefore you go to that calm state that I've mentioned.

Life happens, and your system starts to tighten.

So this could be your teenage dog starts to show signs of taking some backward steps, and their reliable recall is no longer as reliable as it was.

So life happens, your system starts to tighten again.

You try to get back to where you were, maybe taking steps that are potentially further along than your dog might be again.

So like I said, going back to those foundation steps, we're thinking about all these things, you know, are the motivations that were motivating them before the same as they are now?

Is the environment way more exciting to them than the things that you can offer them or.

And they're just ignoring your recall in that situation, whatever it is, you try to get back to where you were, maybe by taking steps that are just a bit more advanced than your dog is able to do.

That pressure starts to add even more tension, and then calm feels further away.

So we start to see this cycle, things improve, life happens.

You try to get back to where you were.

The pressure adds more tension, calm feels further away, and you just end up stuck like that.

And the hardest part in that moment and in that cycle is when you wonder whether it's worth trying again at all.

So this can be where you maybe try something and you might get stuck in the quick fix cycle.

So you try something.

It's not worked.

Is it worth trying it again in your mind?

No, it's not worked.

Let's try the next thing.

And then you end up in this big blob of the cycle that I've just mentioned and the quick fix cycle.

So you start to see potential improvements, you start to soften again.

That thing that you tried that was mentioned on a quick 20 second Instagram TikTok video potentially has started to work, but then things have happened and you start to go backwards again and it just all feels like this big blob of I don't know how to get out of it.

And it's like a web.

You're kind of stuck on this web and you just don't know where to go.

For me, in that moment when I felt that the shift came, when I stopped asking myself, how do I hold on to calm, how am I going to keep hold of this calm and how do I stay like this all of the time?

Because as a perfectionist, especially back then, I'm way more aware of my perfectionism these days and I really clock myself when I fall back into that pattern again.

But in the past I would kind of, my perfectionistic brain would be, I must feel calm all of the time, My dog must feel calm all of the time, because that is perfection.

That is the perfect scenario.

I shifted from asking myself that question to how do I come back to calm more kindly, so kindly for myself.

Because thinking back to what I've already said, those cycles of getting into getting feeling stuck, not making progress, you start to self blame, you tell yourself you're doing things wrong so you're going to come back to it from a more kinder place to yourself and potentially your dog.

So calm's not going to be maintained by control.

I've learned that myself as a perfectionist, as someone who has anxiety, control is something that you feel you need in order to be able to do the next thing.

But in a lot of situations when you try to control, calm isn't going to come back.

It's going to come back through repair.

So we're thinking about how do, how do I repair my relationship with my dog if that potentially has been damaged and it's not something again that you can't ever have again.

You're not, you know, it's never going to be, I'm never going to have that connection with my dog ever again.

That's an extreme.

It's, how do I come back to a place of connection with my dog again?

It can be, how do I repair the Relationship with myself?

Am I self blaming?

Am I self critiquing?

Am I putting myself down when something goes wrong?

Am I attaching my worth to.

To the progress of my dog's training?

Am I attaching my worth to what somebody out and about has said and observed about my dog not responding to recall?

Oh, you should try this because they don't listen to you or whatever it is.

That's what starts to bring calm back when you start to repair the right things and not try to control yourself, your dog, you know, all of the things all of the time.

So I want to share three things that are called stabilizers that have helped me in this situation, and it's helped dog parents in this situation as well.

So when things start to feel a bit more fragile and calm starts to feel like it's kind of disappeared, these are the things that have helped me.

And think of it like you're learning to ride a bike.

Those stabilizers can go on whenever you need them to.

They come back off again when you feel like you don't need them anymore.

So it may be that the stabilizers have come off too soon.

They can easily go back on again.

You can start to feel it and they can get removed so that it's not a permanent thing.

So the first is calm is not a baseline, it's a rhythm.

So you move in and out of it.

Every single person does think of it like a wave.

So you're never going to have that still calm sea 24 7.

That doesn't happen with nature.

But we can start to see those waves change and move and they go in and they come out and they get bigger and they get smaller.

So stability comes from learning that rhythm, not fighting it.

Because when you try to fight the sea, the sea always wins because it's a strong.

It's the stronger thing in that scenario.

So we work with it.

We start to say, how do I bring myself back to this?

So calm is not the baseline, it's a rhythm.

We learn our own baseline, we learn our dog's baselines, and that's how it works.

The second thing is pressure delays returned.

So that just means the more you try and demand calm from yourself, or the more you try to demand calm from your dog, the longer your system resists it.

You are putting too much pressure on yourself to come back to that place of calm.

You're trying to do things in a forceful way and trying to do like calm and force, calm and fight.

They don't go together, they don't work together.

So Try to remove the pressure from yourself and remove the pressure from your dog when you are.

If you feel like that, that's what's happening and you will start to see calm come back way quicker when you take the pressure off.

And the third one is repair builds trust.

So every time you come back gently, your nervous system is going to learn, this isn't dangerous.

We're allowed to settle and your dogs will learn that as well.

So in those scenarios of you're at the pub with your dog and they're really unsettled, how do we come back to a place of calm?

Rather than putting them back into that situation and trying to force it, we say, let's go back to this situation of being at the pub but with an easier setup.

We're controlling the environment in that scenario.

We're not controlling ourselves, we're not controlling our dogs.

We are putting ourselves in an easier situation to take the pressure off in order to build that back up again.

It's not going to be that we're never going to go back to that place.

It's not a full stop.

It's a comma and it's a yet, you know we're going to come back to it soon.

We will, you know, we'll come back to calm once we take the pressure off.

So that learning starts to accumulate.

It's cumulative and it builds even when it doesn't feel dramatic.

So I always say look for the tiny moments of wins, the tiny moments of progress, the settle that your dog did for 30 seconds longer than they have before the recovery, recovering quicker after a reactive moment.

All those tiny things show progress and that's where it starts to accumulate and starts to build.

Calm doesn't vanish because you're inconsistent.

It slips away when your system needs care.

And every time you find your way back, even when it's slowly, you're never starting over, it's never starting from scratch.

You are strengthening that path for you and for your dog.

So thank you so much for being here.

Send me a dm.

Send me an email if you feel like you want to.

Tell me where you feel you are on the calm scale right now and I will see you next time on the Mindful Dog Parent.

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.