Emotional Regulation: The Skill Every Dog Needs to Thrive

When most people bring a puppy or dog home, they focus on teaching the “big” skills - sit, stay, come, heel. Those cues are important, but they all depend on something far more foundational: your dog’s ability to regulate their emotions.

Many people assume calmness, patience, and composure are traits a dog is born with. But the truth - backed by both animal behavior science and decades of human developmental psychology - is that emotional regulation is not innate. It’s a learned skill, shaped through supportive, consistent relationships.

And it’s a skill that underpins every other behavior your dog will ever learn.

 Why Emotional Regulation Isn’t Automatic

Being able to relax in busy environments is not innate- it's taught largely throughly modeling.

Like young children, puppies are born with a nervous system that can become easily overwhelmed. They experience emotions - fear, excitement, frustration - in full color, but they don’t yet have the ability to calm themselves or make thoughtful choices when those feelings flood their system.

In human psychology, this is called coregulation: when a caregiver helps the child regulate their emotions by staying calm, predictable, and attuned. Over time, the child’s nervous system learns to internalise that calm and self regulate.

The same process applies to dogs. When we consistently show up as calm, clear, and attuned guides, dogs learn how to recover from stress and settle themselves. If we are passive about providing guidance, they’re left to flounder, or punished unfairly.

Or if we also become dysregulated, they are flooded with stimuli and their nervous system can remain stuck in a cycle of overarousal or shutdown.

 Why It Matters

A dysregulated dog cannot think clearly or learn effectively.

When your dog is “over threshold,” their brain switches into survival mode. Higher brain functions - like impulse control, problem solving, and learning - shut down. That’s why yelling, yanking, or throwing more commands or treats at them in those moments doesn’t work.

In both dogs and humans, emotional regulation is what makes all other learning possible.

 What Happens if We Skip This Step?

When dogs are trained to perform obedience cues without learning to regulate their emotions, you might end up with a dog who can “sit” but still shakes and barks uncontrollably when visitors come over, or heels perfectly at home but melts down when passing another dog on a walk.

Just as a child who’s never taught to soothe themselves might grow anxious and find coping strategies like nail biting, a dog who never learns to regulate will struggle to cope with life’s inevitable challenges - no matter how many treats or corrections you throw at them.

 How Dogs Learn to Regulate

Through co-regulation first, then self-regulation, dogs learn to navigate their emotions.

Here’s how you can help them:

•  Be predictable & calm yourself - your emotional state matters more than you think.

•  Reward calmness with calmness. Treats and praise can be stimulating and rob our dogs of the inherantly rewarding inner state of peace.

•  Structure their day -  include rest, exercise, and consistent routines.

• Play with your dog - enjoy a game of tug of fetch and then rest together to catch your breath. This modulation between excitment and rest is showing your dog the pathway to enable them to find calm so they know the way when they need it.

•  Expose them to the world gradually - give them challenges they can succeed at without tipping over threshold.

•  Avoid punishing emotions - instead, guide them back to stability.

In human research, these elements - warmth, consistency, and attunement - are shown to help children build robust nervous systems. The same is true for dogs: they learn by feeling safe with you first.

The Foundation for Everything Else

When you help your dog build the skill of emotional regulation, you give them the ability to handle life with confidence, resilience, and trust in you as their guide.

It may not feel as “flashy” as teaching fancy tricks, but it’s the single most important thing you can do for your dog. And it will make teaching any skill much easier.

If you’d like help teaching your dog this essential skill, get in touch. Emotional regulation is at the heart of everything we teach, because it’s at the heart of every dog’s success.