Helping overwhelmed dog parents go from stress → success with ethical training. Podcast Host - The Mindful Dog Parent
Covering Willington, Repton and surrounding areas of Derby and Burton on Trent. Our aim is to provide you and your pet family members with trusted & tailored dog walking and reward based training services. We also have a wide variety of natural treats, chews and dog accessories for sale from fellow small business owners and offer free local delivery! Our approach will always be nurturing and patie
nt for all animals in our care. Our Head Trainer & business owner, Sian, runs an award-winning training business! She is qualified in Dog First Aid, holds a L3 Canine Care, Behaviour and Welfare qualification, is Puppy Trainer certified & is currently studying a 3 year, Level 6 dog behaviour qualification!
29/11/2025
This one isn’t about “being too kind” or “not being firm enough.”
It’s about the emotional load you’ve been carrying quietly:
The tension on every walk.
The worry you’ll mess something up.
The fear that someone will judge you.
The exhaustion of trying so hard to get it right.
Softness isn’t the problem.
Overwhelm is.
And when you’re overwhelmed, your nervous system shifts into protection mode yours and your dog’s.
That’s why everything feels harder, faster, louder.
This new series is for the days when you question whether you’re doing enough.
You are.
You always were.
Save this for the next heavy walk.
28/11/2025
A 2024 study from Cambridge University has confirmed something I see every single day in behaviour work:
Dogs and humans share the same genes that influence emotional and behavioural traits.
…are shared between us and our dogs.
The study looked specifically at Golden Retrievers, but the genetic overlap applies across breeds.
This matters because it reinforces something dog parents desperately need to hear:
✨ Your dog isn’t being difficult.
✨ They aren’t choosing to “misbehave.”
✨ Their behaviour is the expression of their biology, just like yours.
When a dog pulls, barks, panics, freezes, shuts down, or reacts, it’s the nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do under stress.
It’s not attitude.
It’s not defiance.
It’s not “not listening.”
It’s emotional survival coded into their genes.
This is why Nervous-System Aware Dog Parenting™ is so powerful.
When you regulate the nervous system first,
instead of correcting symptoms,
you’re working with your dog’s biology, not fighting it.
Calm comes first.
Connection follows.
Behaviour becomes easier.
Your dog’s emotions aren’t “too much.”
They’re shared.
They’re valid.
And just like us, when they feel safe…
they thrive.
📖 Study: Cambridge University (2024)
“Golden Retriever and human behaviours are driven by the same genes.”
28/11/2025
If you come home from walks feeling guilty, it doesn’t mean you’re doing everything wrong.
It means the walk felt like too much, for your dog and for you.
Most dog parents don’t talk about this part:
how heavy it feels to hold your dog’s emotions, your own emotions, and the fear that you “should” be handling it better.
Guilt isn’t a sign of failure.
It’s a sign of overwhelm.
Because when your dog reacts, pulls, jumps, spirals, or shuts down…
your nervous system jumps into survival mode too.
And survival mode doesn’t leave much space for compassion or clarity, just pressure.
So you come home replaying everything.
Wishing you’d done it differently.
Wondering why it feels harder for you than it seems to for everyone else.
But here’s the truth:
You’re not guilty, you’re overloaded.
And your dog isn’t “difficult,” they’re overwhelmed.
That’s why it feels so heavy.
The more you understand the emotional layer beneath the behaviour, the lighter everything becomes, for both of you.
You’re not messing this up.
You’re doing your best with two nervous systems that are asking for support.
Save this for the days the guilt tries to tell you a story that was never yours to carry.
26/11/2025
When I first started working with Jan and Reuben, home felt a bit on edge.
Reuben was unsettled around her daughter’s new rescue, and on walks he could swing from “totally fine” to “too much” in a few seconds - pulling hard, barking, lunging at dogs, people jogging, cyclists. Jan told me,
“When he’s calm he’s lovely, but he can change in seconds.”
That unpredictability is exhausting. You’re always half-braced, wondering when the next reaction is coming.
So we zoomed out from “perfect behaviour” and focused on helping his nervous system and hers feel safer and more regulated:
🌿 calmer, decompression-style walks instead of marching through stress
🌿 watching his body language so we could support him before he tipped over
🌿 pattern games, spaniel games to keep his brain busy in a good way
🌿 lots of praise for the tiny choices – the glance back, the softer body, the shorter recovery
Progress was not a straight line, but the shifts were real.
More sniffing. More check-ins. Quicker recovery after big feelings.
And then the message that makes my whole job worth it:
“We’ve had a perfect walk.”
That’s the power of calm-first, relationship-led work – you start to trust each other again. 💜
If Reuben’s story feels familiar, know that you and your dog can get to this kind of “we’ve got this” too – one small regulated step at a time.
25/11/2025
If you come home from walks feeling guilty, it’s not a sign that you’ve failed your dog.
It’s a sign that the walk felt emotionally heavy, overwhelming, or out of your control, and your nervous system is carrying the weight of that moment.
Most dog parents don’t talk about how much pressure they feel outside.
How their heart drops when their dog reacts.
How quickly their mind jumps to “I should’ve handled that better.”
How they replay the walk on the way home, holding all the things they wish they could change.
Guilt isn’t proof that you’re doing something wrong.
Guilt is what shows up when you care deeply and things still feel hard.
Your dog isn’t giving you a hard time on those walks, their body is communicating stress, fear, or overwhelm.
And your body is responding to theirs.
Two nervous systems trying to cope at the same time.
The truth most people miss is this:
Your guilt isn’t a character flaw.
It’s an emotional response to a moment that felt too much.
The more you understand what’s happening beneath the behaviour — in your dog’s body and your own, the easier it becomes to soften the shame and move toward connection instead.
You’re not messing this up.
You’re learning a new way of helping both of you feel safe again.
Save this for the days the guilt gets loud.
24/11/2025
Wanda used to lock eyes onto other dogs the second they appeared. Walks felt tense; she would whine, jump up onto her back legs and bark at the end of the lead even at a distance with other dogs.
We didn’t add pressure. We added predictability + distance and trained the nervous system to feel safe:
💜 calm at home
💜 structured engagement at a distance where Wanda could still think
💜 decompression + sniffing to keep arousal down
💜 short, winnable reps, then stop while it’s good
Within weeks, Rebecca messaged:
“...massive improvements, she’s focusing on me and starting to be calm around dogs more and more.”
She also told me about a recent walk where they had a close encounter with a super excitable puppy who desperately wanted to say hello to Wanda, but she just chose to walk by.
Takeaway: when the body believes it’s safe, the brain comes back online, and training finally sticks.
23/11/2025
Progress rarely shouts.
It whispers.
And when you’re overwhelmed, exhausted, and constantly troubleshooting behaviour, it’s so easy to miss the tiny moments that actually show everything is shifting underneath the surface.
Small doesn’t mean insignificant.
Small means the nervous system is learning.
Small means safety is growing.
Small means things are quietly changing.
Your dog’s big breakthroughs begin in these tiny, almost invisible moments.
And so does your hope.
Save this for when it feels like nothing is working.
Because something is working, you just haven’t been shown how to see it yet.
23/11/2025
So many dog parents come to me saying:
“He’s just *so excited* all the time.”
“She goes wild in the evenings.”
“He gets playful, then suddenly mouths us too hard.”
“It’s like he can’t switch off.”
Here’s the truth most people were never taught:
Not all “excited” behaviour is excitement.
A LOT of it is overstimulation, your dog’s nervous system slipping into a dysregulated state.
Overstimulation looks positive on the surface…
but underneath, the brain is flooded with stress chemistry.
And you’ll see it in those subtle moments:
• the jump that gets higher
• the mouthing that gets harder
• the zoomies that shift from funny → frantic
• the sniffing that suddenly becomes chaotic
• the stare that turns into fixation
• the “play” that feels just a bit too sharp
• the shaking off after something small
• the big pupils, fast breathing, tight body
This isn’t bad behaviour.
It’s emotional overflow.
A dog who is overstimulated is a dog whose nervous system has lost its buffer.
They’re struggling to process what’s happening around them and are trying, desperately, to cope.
Here’s why this matters:
Training doesn’t stick in an overstimulated brain.
The thinking centres switch off.
Impulse control drops.
Listening becomes biologically harder.
Regulation brings learning back.
This is why slowing down works.
It’s why sniffing brings them back into their body.
It’s why chewing regulates the nervous system.
It’s why soft praise lowers arousal instead of hyping them up further.
It’s why *your* calmer breathing co-regulates them.
What you’re seeing isn’t a dog who’s “too much”…
It’s a dog who’s trying to cope with too much.
And the moment you shift from “stop doing that!” to
“ahh, you’re overwhelmed, let’s help your body settle,”
everything changes.
This is Nervous-System Aware Dog Parenting™:
you read the body, not the behaviour.
And when you support the nervous system first…
the behaviour everyone wants finally starts to fall into place. 💛
22/11/2025
Of course it feels personal.
Of course it feels heavy.
You care. That’s why it hurts.
When your dog reacts, pulls, ignores you, shuts down, jumps, or spirals, your brain doesn’t see a “behaviour problem.”
It sees:
• stress,
• pressure,
• and the fear that you’re not doing enough.
But that reaction isn’t about your worth.
It’s about both of your nervous systems trying to cope with more than they have capacity for.
Once you start seeing behaviour through the lens of safety and overwhelm, everything softens.
For you, and for them.
You’re not doing this wrong.
You’re just doing this alone.
You don’t have to.
Save, repost and share this post so more people get to hear they're not failing as a dog parent.
22/11/2025
If your dog “forgets everything” outside, you’re not dealing with a training problem, you’re dealing with a nervous system in overload.
And here’s the part no one tells you:
Your dog can’t access the skills they already know until their body feels safe enough to use them.
But this can improve, and it doesn’t require hours of training or huge amounts of pressure.
Here’s where you can start:
1. Give your dog 2–5 minutes to decompress at the start of every walk
Let them sniff, wander, stand still, look around.
No cues.
No expectations.
Just space for their nervous system to adjust.
2. Switch from “getting somewhere” to “settling somewhere”
Pick a quiet spot near home, pause there, and breathe.
If your dog can settle near the house, they’ll settle more easily away from it.
3. Shorten the walk instead of pushing through
If your dog’s overwhelmed, less distance but more regulation is always better than longer, stressful walks.
4. Use micro-breaks whenever things escalate
Stop.
Soften your shoulders.
Slow your breathing.
Let them sniff.
Give 10 seconds of calm, then continue.
These tiny resets bring your dog’s brain back online so they can actually learn.
5. Reduce the sensory load
Avoid busy routes for now.
Choose quieter streets, grassy areas, or slow corners where your dog can decompress.
6. Praise moments of calm, not perfect behaviour
Soft eyes
Turning toward you
A little exhale
Sniffing the ground
Standing still
These are HUGE wins for dogs who find the outside world overwhelming.
Your dog isn’t ignoring you, their body is overwhelmed.
And you’re not behind.
This is where so many dog parents start.
Just take it slowly.
Gentle steps count.
And the more regulated your dog feels, the more you’ll start to see the dog you know is in there.
Save this for later. You’ll want it on the harder days. # #
21/11/2025
Your dog isn’t “too sensitive.”
They’re bonded to you on a physiological level.
This is why I teach the human half of the equation, because your nervous system matters just as much as your dog’s.
The more regulated you feel, the safer their body feels.
The safer their body feels, the better they learn.
This is the foundation of everything I do.
This is the magic of Nervous-System Aware Dog Parenting™.
And it’s why the results are so consistent.
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Professional Dog Walker, Reliable Pet Sitter, Quality Pet Products
I offer fully tailored and professional dog walking, pet pop-in visits and pet sitting services to you and your furry or feathered friends. Alongside this I have a pet product store where you can feel confident that you are purchasing a range of delicious, 100% natural, pure human grade meat dog treats and chews, as well as a range of quality toys for both cats and dogs!
I have been lucky enough to have grown up surrounded by animals, I’m from a family of animal lovers! At home now we have our two lovely lurcher rescues, Bonnie and Oliver, and our gorgeous 11 year old budgie, Billie, who we’ve had since she was a baby!
I started my animal care business in September 2019 as I have never felt like I have made a difference in the many corporate jobs I have had over the last 10 years. It got to the point in August 2019 where I could no longer ignore my feelings. Animals have always been a love of mine, no matter how big or small so if I can make a positive difference to the lives of your pets, then my goal has been met.
My business name came about when I thought about what I wanted to do for the animals in my care... enable a relaxed, calm and happy atmosphere whilst they were with me and not only is lavender something that is known for its natural, calming properties, but I also have a garden full of it!
I have ensured from day one that I offer a professional service - so attended a Dog First Aid course in July 2019, which is valid to 2021, but also keep up to date with any changes and updates in this area. I am also fully Insured, have had a valid DBS certificate, for your peace of mind and have completed and passed a fully accredited ONC Level 3 in Canine Care & Behaviour between 2019-20.
I am very excited to embark on further training in September 2020, to become a Puppy School training tutor! By 2021, I will be running my own puppy classes to the north of Derby, all positive and reward based. Watch this space for more info and updates!
Thanks so much for reading my story, I really hope I can hear your stories very soon!
