How do I smoothly play NPC animations from the behaviour tree?

HI I’m having trouble getting animation to play / blend smoothly. I have a behaviour tree where the NPC wander around then stop and play an animation. However I cannot get them to do it smoothly.

They tend to jerkily break the walk animation then do the animation then jerk back into the walk.

This is my behaviour tree:

How do I get them to blend smoothly?