Self-regulation is the ability to adjust your emotions, thoughts and behaviour to changing circumstances in every day life. It is a skill that lies at the foundation of self-control and resilience, but is not the same thing.

Self-regulation requires balance in the autonomic nervous system to regulate arousal, neuroplasticity to learn new adaptive behaviours, a well developed prefrontal cortex to understand context and choose the fitting behaviour in accordance with individual goals.

Understanding some principles of Sensory Integration will provide a simple and practical guide line towards the building blocks of self-regulation.
Communication, especially receiving information from the environment and from within the body, happens over different sensory channels.
Being aware of how these channels work and prioritize in each individual dog will give the instructor or handler an advantage in guiding the dog towards better self-regulation.

In terms of exercises to promote self-regulation, there is nothing better than play among dogs. Paramount in each play session is the guidance of a well skilled instructor. Feedback needs to be given at the right time, over the correct sensory channel and to the correct intensity all of that with improvement of self-regulation in mind. Maybe not an easy feat but an extremely rewarding one.

In this presentation we will discuss the building blocks of self-regulation, how the different sensory channels can be used to help the development of self-regulation and why play has such an important role in the development of self-regulation.

About the speaker

My name is Els Vidts. I started my professional life as a physiotherapist while I continued to study manual therapy and osteopathy, all in the humane paramedical branch.

After a sabbatical, I took to dog behaviour and started my own business, FreeDogz. I quickly found my prior studies hadn’t been in vain, combing what I knew about the body and how it functions with behaviour proved to be very interesting and rewarding.

Sensory Integration for humans came on my path and it became my own research project, how to use SI for dogs. It soon revealed some astounding behavioral benefits for dogs who had plateaued in beharioural therapy.

With this encouragement further studies and development of SI for dogs helped me to recognize the potential of SI influenced self-regulation exercises.

My talks on SI and SR have been received in several countries and I hope to continue to share these interesting topics with other professionals and dog enthusiasts.