What’s the Deal With Co-Regulation and Regulation in the Dog Space?

This week I had the pleasure of hosting Em & Logan from Confident Mutts for a live Substack chat about a somewhat trendy topic in the dog world: regulation, and how to handle big fears. This conversation came out of two questions that were asked in our paid subscriber chat (becoming a paid sub is how you can get your questions asked too!). We had a lot of fun with these topics! BTW, Confident Mutts Club, a dog training membership that is made for neurodivergent dog guardians by neurodivergent dog trainers, just reopened for enrollment, and they are offering all of you 10% off your first month with the code TOC10. These are two great trainers and two great humans, so I am excited for anyone who gets to work with them!

Back to the Live! Here are those two questions from our subscriber chat that we got to discuss:

Our recording is filled with lots of great information, but in case you’re a written info kind of person, I got you. I don’t want to speak for Em & Logan in writing, so I am just going to use my own language in this write up (but highly recommend watching the video because I loved the way they said things and this is only going to hit a fraction of the big points!).

Co-Regulation and Regulation In Dog Training

I’m seeing this type of language pop up in dog training circles a lot. But what is regulation or co-regulation? What do they look like?

The first thing I did was a quick search on google scholar. In a paper entitled Coregulation: A Multilevel Approach via Biology and Behavior by Bornstein and Esposito, they “ … explore the concept of coregulation, which encompasses the mutual adaptation between partners in response to one another’s biology and behavior. Coregulation operates at both biological (hormonal and nervous system) and behavioral (affective and cognitive) levels and plays a crucial role in the development of self-regulation. Coregulation extends beyond the actions of individuals in a dyad and involves interactive contributions of both partners.” I still barely understand what coregulation is after reading that which makes one thing abundantly clear for me: my main lens probably shouldn’t be a neuroscience one. Frankly, I am just out of my depth.

There are different levels of analysis (a phrase Dr. Susan Friedman often uses) we can use to explore and explain the same thing. For example, a vet is going to work primarily at the physiological level. A neuroscientist is going to work at the nervous system level. As a trainer, I work with behavior. I feel a part of my job is to know how to collaborate with others, but I am simply not an expert in thyroids or brains (for example).

That being said, the nervous system is involved in every single behavior (EVERY behavior). And so is the environment. Most of us cannot hook our dogs up to tools that directly measure the nervous system, so we are left with observing behavior and conditions to make inferences about the nervous system. At that point, I’m inclined to have my main focus just be on behavior and conditions (lol, it’s also the only lane where I really know anything).

I suppose we could also talk about the nervous system behaving – responding to conditions and learning with experience. It’s just a level that I can’t see and don’t know as much about. Nervous systems aren’t operating in a silo. It is responding to conditions (the degree of complexity of the interactions in the nervous system makes my head spin). From what I understand, even those who spend their lifetimes studying neuroscience still say we know very little (relatively speaking) about it. I am utterly fascinated by the nervous system and its role in all the things we do (even our immune systems!).

When I hear people explain that dogs are reacting because they are dysregulated, I wonder what a dog guardian is supposed to do with that. What does that mean? I think this language makes it easy to overlook learning history and conditions and instead solely attribute behavior to something inside the animal. While the body is ALWAYS involved in behavior, it raises a little flag for me when behavior is solely attributed to something inside an individual and leaves the external environment out of it. In reality, everything is connected. While we may study things in silos, nature is connected.

I know there is research about parent-infant co-regulation, and some of it even measures hormone and heart rate changes for the dyad when in the other’s presence (there is some selection pressure here on an evolutionary scale that may have made this “attunement” more likely). Heck, I have experienced this on a profound level the past 1.5 years. I’ve experienced the oxytocin boost from having my son near me – especially in those early newborn days. I’ve witnessed his tears stop the moment he’s in my arms. But even when talking about a parent-child dyad, it can get complicated and can be looked at through many different levels of analysis. Ultimately, we are each other’s environments. I’m not surprised at all that those in our environment influence our behavior – including the behaviors of our “systems.”

When it comes to our dogs, can we help them co-regulate? I’ve certainly had times where I felt calmer with my dog resting their head on my lap as we sat on the couch. Maybe the same is true for my dogs. I tend to think about this as us being a part of each other’s environments, but I suppose you could use regulation language too (as long as you define it). There is a study that came out not that long ago from Byrne and Arnotte entitled Empathy or Apathy? Investigating the influence of owner stress on canine stress in a novel environment. They strapped owners and dogs with heart rate monitors and brought them into a new vet (you can read the study for more info). The published study says, “[These results] suggest that dogs may exhibit emotional contagion and social referencing towards their owners in novel settings, and that acute changes in owner stress levels can produce rapid changes in canine physiological stress parameters.” When I read this, I think about the human being a part of the dog’s environment. Dogs are known to be able to smell changes in our physiology, so there is likely a big learning history with the stimuli that go along with a human stress response. Again, you can use co-regulating labels here, but I think you have to define them in order for them to be useful. I’m inclined to just describe what’s happening in observable terms.

I do find myself think about regulation with myself. I have observed that I am often in “fight or flight” (racing thoughts, tight chest, shallow breathing, etc.), so I’ve done some reading on how to “regulate” my nervous system. As it turns out, it’s mostly about changing conditions to change my behavior – to slow my thoughts, my heart rate, and my breathing. It’s about repeatedly putting myself in conditions where my body can soften. It’s about giving my scary thoughts an outlet and building a kind way of relating to those thoughts. When this “higher self voice” shows up, I can literally feel my whole body exhale. But this is one of many examples of a regulating strategy that involves verbal behavior (thinking). Another is breathing and counting to four on inhale, holding for 4, and exhaling for 4 (or more). Another is naming 5 things you see, 4 things you hear, 3 things you feel, etc. This verbal behavior shifts what stimuli we are orienting to … effectively changing conditions. I could even think about the slow breathing as a change in conditions for my nervous system. From what I am learning, the idea is to practice these “regulating strategies” regularly throughout the day to create “a sense of safety” and strengthen new neural pathways to show up (talk about something I know so little about). It’s still behavior and conditions – whether we are talking about our thinking behavior, our breathing behavior, or our nervous system behavior.

As far as I know, dogs don’t have verbal thinking behavior the way we do (honestly, good for them! … my favorite moments in life are when my brain shuts the hell up), but their conditions will certainly impact how they behave and feel (even at the nervous system level). The same way that I try to find moments throughout the day where I can “practice feeling regulated” (i.e. put myself in conditions where behaviors we label as regulated show up), it’s likely good for our dogs to experience conditions where they get to experience “regulation” (whatever that is – hopefully you’re seeing quickly here why we need definitions). I love me a good massage, and some dogs do too. We might say the massage helped our dog regulate if they behave differently on walks that week or even if their respiration and heart rate slow right after the massage. Because of the level of analysis I use, I’m more inclined to talk about the massage as a condition change that may set the stage for the behaviors like soft muscles, slow breathing, etc. and may even change some of the behaviors we are seeing on these walks. There are lots of different ways to talk about the same thing. That doesn’t mean one is “right.”

Ultimately, the nervous system is fascinating, so complex, and a part of every single thing we do. That being said, I don’t know enough about nervous systems to train from that place or for that to be my primary level of analysis. I also think we can do the same thing someone who is “helping their dog regulate” does without using that language (in fact, I think describing observable behavior and conditions might even paint a clearer picture of what we are doing and seeing and be something that someone else could try to replicate).

Your behavior can certainly influence your dogs – you are a part of their environment (though not the only part). Our connection is a beautiful thing. If you find things that seem to support your dog and help them thrive more in this world, rock on – regardless of what you call it!

Help! My Dog Is Afraid!

It can be so hard to navigate the world with dogs with big fears. Our subscriber’s sweet dog panics and runs away anytime she sees an ebike or kite. Ultimately, our thoughts about what we would do if we were trying to support this subscriber and their dog boiled down to three things: