Transcript of Episode 326: The 30 Second Reset – Because Your Dog Knows

Speaker Key

SG Susan Garrett

Transcript

00:00:00

I think this is a topic that is rarely, if ever talked about in dog training, but it is the one thing that affects
each and every dog owner on the planet. Everybody who's attempting to communicate or train your
dog will be affected by this.

Hi, I am Susan Garrett and this is Shaped by Dog where dog training makes sense at both ends of the
leash. Today I'm going to talk about something that I probably am not entirely qualified to speak on.
However, I'm going to share my perspective on the topic because emotional resilience. And I'm not
talking about resilience in competition. I'm not talking about swallowing your emotions and trudging
through something. I'm talking about emotional resistance in your relationship with a dog when you're
trying to train.

00:00:58

Because our nervous system is probably the strongest antecedent in the ABCs of dog training that
there could possibly be. Far more powerful than any meatball that you could give your dog. Far more
powerful than any training plan that you could come up with, and definitely far more powerful than any
tool or trick or hack that you might be thinking of employing in your dog training.

So, what do I mean by the phrase of emotional resilience? It's the ability to adapt in stressful situations
or overcome powerful emotions. Or deal with challenges in a way that doesn't create permanent
overwhelm in your system. And why did I choose to talk about this today? Because when I read
comments from the students in our online community, I see it woven as an undertone in every single
comment.

00:01:56

There may be somebody talking about losing their job and then saying, “This is what I've been doing
and why it's not working.” There may be somebody talking about they unfortunately just lost their
spouse, and then this is why dog training isn't working for them, and they're not realizing the impact of
the dysregulation of their nervous system and what it has on the dog and on their ability to train their
dog so therefore, they're not giving themself the grace to be okay with not being perfect today.

So for us who are training a dog, emotional resiliency is the ability to feel emotions when things aren't
going perfectly swell with our training, but to feel frustration, to feel disappointment, and maybe even to
feel anger without that affecting the way we look at the dog, or that we approach the training session
moving forward.

00:02:54

This doesn't mean we don't feel the emotions, and it doesn't mean we ignore the emotions. It just
means that our emotions are not going to completely overtake the training session. So emotional
resilience in dog training is being okay with feeling whatever emotion comes up within that session
without letting that emotion completely ruin the session. Now, I said, this isn't something that I am
perfectly qualified to talk about because I am not a psychotherapist. I do not have psychological
training, but I'm here to share the strategies that I use when I'm feeling overwhelmed with emotion and
in the midst of training a dog.

00:03:34

Now, if you are a regular here to Shaped by Dog, I would've touched on this session in Shaped by Dog
episode number 230 where I was sharing my experience shortly after I lost my very special Jack
Russell Terrier Twister. And I needed to train my young Terrier mix DeCaff, but I just couldn't. And it
wasn't like the day after I couldn't train her, it was like weeks went by.

And not only could I not train her, I found a difficult time even relating to DeCaff, which of course I knew
there was still grief remaining from losing Twister, but the guilt I felt about not training DeCaff was now
leading to a place of shame on top of the guilt. My nervous system was completely dysregulated, and I
didn't know enough to give myself grace or how to find my way out.

00:04:29 

So, as I mentioned in that episode, I started with a strategy which was just about connecting with my
dog. I strongly encourage you to go back and listen to that episode because I think that in one way or
another, you'll be able to see yourself in a similar situation. It may not be about grief. It may be about
things that you wish you hadn't done.

Regardless, we're in the moment and what do we do. Well now, having trained dogs for 40 years,
having experienced pretty much all of the emotions, having come from a place where I blamed my
dogs and used a lot of corrections when I believe they should have done something different, and
getting to a place today where my training is all about reflecting on the antecedents that I presented to
the dog and how I could help them be successful by altering my behavior but yet still emotions will
come up in my training.

00:05:32

Now, you might be saying, “Well, let's just get on with some dog training Susan. Why do we have to
talk about this resilient stuff?” Because when we are not emotionally resilient, we end up blaming or
judging or changing the tone of the words that we're using. Maybe changing the intensity or our facial
expressions or the stiffness to which we move when we're interacting with the dog. Or maybe even
gritting our teeth when we want the dog to play.

There are little tells that creep into our physical body that is sharing our emotional state with our dog.
And guess what? Dogs are brilliant even before we have to escalate our tells, the dog knows. And the
funny thing about it all is we might be escalating because we feel that the dog is maybe not trying hard
enough or just knows it but is choosing not to or is giving into a distraction.

00:06:31

We might have decided why the session is going south, when truthfully the distortion is probably in
something that we've done. And this is why emotional resilience is so incredibly important because
dogs read us like a book. They feel those emotions. They absorb that energy. They don't analyze the
words we're saying. They don't understand English, but they feel the tension. They feel that energy.
They feel the disappointment. They feel the frustration.

They absorb it all. They package it up as behavior and bring it back out to us, which of course doesn't
improve that training session, does it? We see that energetic shift in our dogs in the midst of the
training, and that often escalates whatever emotion that we are feeling. Because it's easy to interpret
the shift in what the dog is doing and the shift of the dog's behavior in either “Aha, he knows he's not
doing what I want.”, or “Yeah, here, here we go again. More of the same, more of the disobedience,
more of not getting what I need, like why does this always happen to me?”

00:07:44

And that's the loop. And that's why I set off the top that our nervous system is the strongest antecedent
that we add to our dog training. So let me share with you three things that I do routinely when I feel that
I'm not dealing with emotions. Now I'm not talking about overwhelming crippling emotions. That when
my husband passed away, I wasn't about to start dog training the next day.

I definitely was spending time with my dogs, but I was spending my time with my dogs without any
outcomes in mind. So, what I'm talking about, I think everybody listening to this episode can relate to.
It's the times when things are not going well and your hands are on your hips, and you just don't know
what the next step is.

00:08:31

So, I'm going to give you an example, a recent example. I am preparing for our Canadian World Team
dog agility team tryouts. They happen about two weeks away from now, and I'll be participating in this
event with my two-and-a-half-year-old Border Collie. Now he's two and a half. He's still very young as
far as agility goes, but yes, he's very, very talented.

As a team, we're very, very young, so we still have teamwork to develop. I've been putting in the work.
I've been working on a lot of different elements, yet often when I go to bed at night, after a day of work,
I put my head on the pillow. I go to close my eyes, and then I'll get a wave of emotion.

00:09:15 

Generally, it could be something like anxiety, possibly fear of “I haven't done enough. I'm not on
schedule, I'm falling behind. I don't have enough time.” Now, 20 years ago, that would've kept me up
half of the night. Let me share with you three things that I do, and it doesn't matter if I'm in the midst of
a training session or I'm trying to fall asleep at night. It works just the same for me.

So, the first strategy comes from Dr. Dan Siegel, and I think the catchphrase he uses is “Name it to
tame it.” So be honest with yourself and just name the emotion you're feeling. So, when I'm lying there
trying to sleep, what is the overwhelming emotion I feel, and I think about it and I say the emotion.

00:10:09

You don't need to say it out loud, you can say it in your head. Sometimes just naming it helps to
dissipate it. Within a minute or a minute and a half, it's gone. So, when I name the emotion, I don't say
“I am anxious.” I say, “I'm feeling anxious.” It's not, “I am afraid.” It's, “I'm feeling afraid.” Because now
I've named it as an emotion and all emotions can pass. Emotions are waves. They don't have to stay
with us. They can keep moving on.

“I'm not anxious. I'm feeling anxious.” “I'm not angry. I'm feeling angry.” So now that I've named the
emotion and I've appropriately distanced it from who I am, I go to the second strategy, and it's a simple
one that may or may not work for you. And honestly, I do this both with my eyes closed and my eyes
open.

00:11:04

So, here's the strategy. You keep your head looking straightforward. You turn your eyes to the right,
and you hold them there for 15 seconds saying nothing, doing nothing. Just hold them as far to the
right on the horizontal or slightly up that you can. And after 15 seconds. Keep holding them there and
then take a deep inhalation through your nose and a deep exhalation through your mouth. For me, that
often triggers a second longer inhalation as my body is giving a release.

00:11:44

So, first is naming it. The second is looking to the right which talks to the left-hand side of the brain, if
you really need to know, I'm sure Dr. Google will tell you why this may work for you. That allows a shift
in my energy of my body. So now the tension I was feeling from before I named the emotion is pretty
much gone.

The third thing that I'll do, and quite honestly when I'm doing this at night, because I can't sleep, I never
get to step three. I never get to step three because the first two steps work so well for me. So, the third
thing is the reframe.

00:12:29

And I've talked about this before on the podcast. I learned this from life coach, Tony Robbins, and he
talks about it's not truly the events that happen to us in our lives. It's the meaning we give to those
events. It's the stories we tell ourselves about those events. So, you might be walking your dog and
your dog barks at a passing dog.

Now you look at that dog and go, “Oh my gosh, my dog is reactive. My dog's becoming reactive.
What's going to happen next? I'm going to have to walk him on a muzzle. He's going to be lunging out.
I've got kids. The kids bring their friends over. This is going to be a problem.”

00:13:07

Or maybe you've been busy working on your dog coming when they're called, but it's raining out and
they're digging in the garden, and you call them and they choose not to come. So, then you create a
story about, “I knew I shouldn't have got this dog. I don't know, it's a rescue dog and I don't know the
history. And obviously it's a stubborn dog and this is always the way it's going to be, and my dog's
never going to learn to come when he's called. I've been giving him treats for six months for coming
when is called, and now he's deliberately choosing not to. This kind of training clearly isn't going to
work for this dog.”

Is any of that true? Your brain can 1000% believe it's true. I could carry on with this podcast episode
helping you to believe it's true, but it's not reality. It's a perception of a reality. It's a story that we told
ourselves.

00:14:00

We looked at some data. The data was ‘dog barked.’ The data was ‘dog didn't come when called.’ The
data could be ‘my dog knocked a bar in agility.’ But the story that we tell ourselves keeps that data
locked into a negative place to repeat over and over again when we're trying to fall asleep at night. Or
we'll tell a friend the story and that keeps that story alive.

It's not the events that happened to us. It's the meaning we give those events by the story we assign to
the data. Emotions as I said earlier, they're waves, they pass, but the story that we attach to the
emotions, that's what keeps us locked in that emotion long term. It persists, it comes back, it resurges.

00:14:52

Behavior is data. Meaning is a judgment clouded by your own biases that we add to the data. It isn't
real. It's a story. When we can reframe behavior in a way that's productive is when we can say, “My
dog just barked at another dog.” Okay, I got to go home and I'm going to start working on my dog
switching sides. I'm going to plan three outings where I can take my dog at a distance to see dogs
walking by and I can play games and reinforce them for good choices.

00:15:30

I got the data. I'm taking action because I know this dog is capable of being an amazing family pet, and
I know it's my role to help bring out the best in him. So, I take the data, I come up with a plan. I come
up with the how my behavior influenced the dog. “Oh, yeah while I was walking my dog, I was scrolling
on the phone and I didn't notice that he was worried about that dog coming by, and I didn't notice that
the dog was staring him in the eye as he walked up and my dog did the bark to try to be big and get the
dog to leave because I wasn't paying attention.”

Behavior is data and we take that data and we make informed decisions. We reflect on our role. We
reflect on what role we will have moving forward in the future. And that's how we can empower
ourselves to always have the best outcome no matter what the data is that we are collecting.

00:16:30

When we reframe behavior or data as clarity, it allows our nervous system to soften. It allows us to be
in a thoughtful brain so we can confidently move forward and be motivated by the future, not afraid of it.
And that alone leaves opportunity for our training to improve.

So, when you're training and training feels like it's going south, for whatever reason, ask your dog to
hop it up in a Hot Zone. Take a break and then give yourself a moment to name the emotion in order to
tame it.

What are you feeling? Not the emotion isn't who you are, it's a feeling. Feelings can pass. So, name it.
Give yourself a minute and then look to the right, take a deep breath and then reframe based on the
data you've collected.

00:17:24

If it wasn't that the dog purposely jumped up and nipped your arm when you were trying to run, what
else could have it been? Well, it could have been that your dog didn't know how to express their
emotions. So, what is the reframe? Well, that's great. It shows that my dog loves training. It shows that
my dog's excited by the work that he's doing with me. I love everything about that.

I think I'm going to go back and I'm going to repeat what I just did, inspired by the fact that my training
is working so well that the dog is so excited that he's nipping. I'm going to go back, I'm going to take a
couple steps back.

I'm going to review and give him reinforcement for the stages before this where he wasn't biting me and
then instead of running, I'm going to try and do the same thing by walking fast and give him tons of
reinforcement if he doesn't nip me.

00:18:11

Now, isn't that inspiring? Isn't that empowering? I get it. Sometimes the emotions are just overwhelming
and it's okay to take a longer pause, walk around, do some jumping decks, do something that
invigorates you.

So that you can look back at your dog, put your hands on your heart, feel some gratitude for what
you've been presented and how great it is to have that dog in your life and then move forward with the
next part of your strategy.

And here's the truth. Emotional resilience is a trainable skill. Just like any dog training skill. It improves
with repetition, it becomes stronger with awareness, and it becomes automatic when you practice it
enough.

00:18:58

So, the next time your dog ignores a cue, or something goes wrong in your training, I would invite you
to try the three little tips that work for me. I'd invite you to explore more possibilities of ways of
regulating your own nervous system so that you can be the best for your dog in order to bring out the
best in your dog.

So go ahead and try it. Try it tonight. Try it the next time you train your dog or try it the next time you're
feeling an emotion coming up inside you. Name it to tame it, look right, deep breath, reframe what just
happened. Take a look at the data with a different set of lense. Give yourself possibilities from that data
and then come on back here and leave me a comment and let me know how it worked.

00:19:45

I think this needs to be talked about a lot more in dog training. I think a lot of dog training sessions are
ruined because people get overwhelmed with their emotions or get angry with their dog or get
frustrated with their lack of success, and they take these big pouty steps around the room and pick up
all their dog training stuff and go home.

And I think it doesn't have to be that way because dog training is meant to be connecting with your dog.
And the dogs are there waiting to connect with us, but they absolutely know our emotions likely long
before we get to the “name it” stage.

00:20:24

So, try it and try to notice how your nervous system shifts. I'd love to hear a comment from you, but
remember, in order for us to bring out the best in our dogs, we have to give them our best. But we're
only human, so please give yourself grace. If this doesn't work the first time doesn't mean you shouldn't
try it again.

Give yourself that space to work on your own emotional readiness. It will come. It's in there in all of us.
Until next time, stay curious, stay humble, and keep making life great at both ends of the leash. I'll see
you next time right here on Shaped by Dog.