What Regulates Behavior?

What Regulates Behavior?

A 3-Part Series on Dysregulation, Dogs, and Doing Things Differently

You’ve heard the phrases before — “train the dog in front of you,” “behavior is communication,” “a calm dog is a good dog.”

But what if we’ve misunderstood calm?

What if calm isn’t something we train, but something we create?

In this series, I shared three guiding insights that changed the way I work with dogs — and honestly, with people too:

1. Dysregulated ≠ Disobedient

What looks like disobedience is often dysregulation.

That’s not semantics. It’s physiology.

A dog who’s over threshold isn’t being stubborn — they’re in a nervous system state where learning, attention, and connection just aren’t available. That’s not a mindset problem. It’s a neurobiological traffic jam.

2. The Co-Regulation Effect

Dogs are social mammals. They don’t just regulate internally, they regulate relationally.

When we stay calm, they borrow that calm.

When we spike, they spike.

We aren’t separate from our dogs’ nervous systems, we’re part of them. And that’s not pressure, it’s power.

3. Safety First, Then Behavior

You can’t train a dysregulated dog into focus.

You have to help their system feel safe first.

That might mean adjusting the environment, giving distance, shifting your tone, or taking a break. It doesn’t mean “letting them get away with it.” It means choosing relationship over reactivity — ours and theirs.

So… Now What?

This isn’t about going soft or avoiding structure.

This is about understanding how dogs work... and what actually supports behavior change that sticks.

If you’ve ever been told your dog is “too much”…

If you’ve ever felt like you’re failing because your dog won’t “just listen”…

If you want to build behavior from the inside out,

you’re in the right place.

I’m Katrina Bruckner, Positive Vibes Lifestyle and Training Consultant, founder of @thespottedchef (https://instagram.com/thespottedchef), and obsessive about everything from gut-brain science to how your leash feels in your hand.

Here, we work from regulation upward.

Because sparkle matters. And so does science.