Things My Puppy Taught Me, Pt. 1: HSP’s and Puppies are a lot alike!
In February 2024, my family adopted an 8-week-old puppy from a local dog rescue. Having been a proud cat lady for most of my adult life, this has been the first time I have been responsible for a puppy, and in typical HSP fashion I have deeply studied and loved my puppy since his arrival. Sunny, as my daughter named him, has shone his light on our little family, and often, it has been a joyful experience! But as with any new addition to a family, it has also been a huge adjustment, and we’ve been on a learning curve about all things canine. Throughout this journey over the past eight months, I have been amazed at how much of my experience as a highly sensitive person, as well as my clinical training in working with highly sensitive kids, have prepared me to raise this wonderous creature. Who knew there would be so many parallels?! This blog shares some of the similarities I have observed across three main areas.
1. Dysregulation
Similar to all of the HSP’s I know, especially the little ones, our puppy is very easily dysregulated! This can come from being over-excited, hungry, tired, frustrated or upset. Sunny shows us he’s dysregulated whenever he gets a certain look in his eyes, and his body starts to go haywire, as he becomes either very jumpy, bitey, clumsy or whiny. How many highly sensitive kids can I say those exact same things about?!
Interestingly, much like those highly sensitive kids, it doesn’t always work for us to approach our puppy with a quiet, calm manner to encourage a regulated state. While staying slow and calm can help some puppies and highly sensitive children settle themselves, often they need clear direction (sometimes loudly spoken so that we can be heard above the fray), and sometimes they even need us to run around with them for a couple of minutes before they can begin to settle. They may also need mirroring, calming touch or one more zoom around the yard in order to regulate. It can sometimes be hard to figure out, but over time we have gotten to know Sunny’s signals that he’s tipping into the red zone, along with when and how best to intervene. This process, when we do it with our kids, is called “co-regulation.” Well now I’m co-regulating my puppy too! I learned in one training video to blink frequently and take deep breaths when a puppy is escalated, and this sends calming signals to the dog. I remember practicing it with Sunny for the first time and seeing it work so well, it was definitely an “aha” moment: I felt confident that if I could co-regulate my daughter for the past 5 years, I could certainly help our puppy stay regulated as well!
One dysregulation factor that has taken a lot of trial and error to figure out is Sunny’s social time vs. quiet time. Not surprisingly, this is something many HSP’s struggle with as well! Puppies don’t like to be alone, but when he’s around other dogs he sometimes just can’t take a time out when he needs to. He gets swept up in whatever the other dogs are doing and will run around until he drops from exhaustion. At first, I thought this might be an advantage—i.e., let’s tire this energetic puppy out! But after a couple of particularly long play sessions with other dogs, Sunny’s sleep for the next few days was off. He just couldn’t quite relax, he had gotten so overly amped up. Cue my memories of being at parties or crowded public places, and I totally got it! HSP’s sensitive nervous systems get amped up so easily, so that we become a stressful combination of tired and wired. If I plan on attending a party, I need at least two days of downtime afterwards to get my nervous system to a place where I feel regulated and resilient! So, it makes sense to me that my puppy needs come extra recovery time after being with a lot of other dogs at the dog park or doggy daycare.
2. Moods
Just like many of the highly sensitive kids I know and/or work with, our puppy experiences a range of moods throughout the day. These moods come and go, sometimes without apparent reason, and we caregivers can get caught up in it all as we observe these changes that sometimes occur with dizzying speed.
It can be tricky to determine what kind of support to offer…are they whining because they’re hungry or because they need a hug? Are they destroying that thing because they’re frustrated or are they just bored? Are they excited because they’re just having a great moment or do they need some exercise? Their mood changed for the worse when that person came near them…is that person giving off bad vibes or are they just scared of the person because they’re tall? Are they having a hard day because I’m having a hard day, or is it just a full moon impacting us all? As loving caregivers, we want to support our kids and canines in the best way possible, and so we ask these questions and try various types of intervention to see what is most effective.
I don’t know about you, but if I can figure out the information “encoded” in their moods, (observed through their emotions and behavior), and am able to intervene (if appropriate) in a supportive fashion so that their needs are met, I feel pretty good about myself! As in, ‘I solved a problem!’ or, ‘Finally, the whining has stopped!’ But of course, there are times when we all end up crying on the floor in the middle of the night and we have no other choice but to hold on and ride it out. No matter what, it sometimes helps to remember that moods and emotions come and go, so even if it’s painful in the moment, we can find solace in the fact that it is likely temporary. Puppies, like kids, tell us this every time they howl one minute and then are joyfully running around the next.
3. Skills
By some happy accident, we seem to have picked a smart dog—he has been very trainable! But just like HSP’s, he forgets his skills when he is having a lot of big feelings. Not to mention the fact that he so FREQUENTLY has BIG feelings! Does this ring any bells for you, my HSP friend?
When our puppy stops listening to his training cues, it is usually because he is tired or overstimulated in some way. This doesn’t make him a “bad dog”, he is just not able to access the part of his brain that knows what to do in that moment. With lots of repetition, and as his brain has matured, we have seen him increase his ability to use his skills, even if he starts to slip into a dysregulated state. It has taken so much patience and consistency from us, his human parents, to teach him this, and it is still a work in progress!
We have identified some go-to coping skills that we implement when he seems to be going off the rails into puppy palooza mode. These include chewing on appropriate objects, putting gentle pressure on his body (i.e. patting, ear rubbing), and having a quiet area where he can decompress. Not surprisingly, these are all skills that I also implement when I or my daughter get dysregulated! It’s been fun for us to all practice them together, as well as validating.
Perhaps the biggest skill lesson I’ve learned from my puppy has to do with the importance of having clear, aligned communication skills. If I am saying one thing verbally but my body language says otherwise, he is confused. According to many trainings I’ve engaged in, dogs don’t necessarily understand our language, but they look to our body to understand the meaning of what we are saying, and they also sense the emotions behind our words in a way that seems similar to a highly sensitive empath. For example, perhaps I want my puppy to stop a certain behavior and am saying “no”, but I’m laughing so hard at what he is doing that he doesn’t really get the message to stop (I mean, he really shouldn’t grab my daughter’s shoe and run off, but it so funny and adorable). On a subtle level, this reminds me of how often I am out in the world talking with someone, and perhaps they’re saying they’re doing well but I notice they’re hunched over and their gaze looks sad. So many HSP’s notice these discrepancies, and so too does my pup! The beauty of this lesson is that, when my body, emotions and words are aligned, things tend to go well between my puppy and me. Turns out, this is also true of my daily interactions with my family, friends and clients. It’s been a good reminder to be authentic and responsible with my communication in all of my relationships. Some might say that’s too deep or taking it too far, but I AM an HSP after all, so here we are.
I don’t have enough experience with dogs to know whether Sunny is exceptionally sensitive or if he’s just being a normal dog, but it’s been a live, moment-to-moment learning experience with many “aha” insights! He needs me to be a strong leader! He needs me to teach him to regulate! He looks to me to know what to do. I thought parenting a human was hard, especially around regulation and communication, but this puppy brought it to another level! I had no idea what we were really getting into bringing this dog into our family, but I am sure we will continue to learn and grow together, and that this won’t be the last blog I write about Sunny and his many teachings.
Carolina is an active and proud member of the Sensitive Empowerment Community! Learn more about this wonderful group through Julie Bjelland’s website at https://www.fatfreecartpro.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=342244&c=ib&aff=383793. There are numerous free and paid resources designed to support Highly Sensitive People on this site!
