Emma Phillips

Do you have the same expectations for your dog’s behaviour as your own behaviour?

Often, the expectations that clients come to trainers with don’t match anywhere near the level of their expectations for their own behaviour. Is it fair to hold our dogs to standards where we couldn’t even meet those standards ourselves?  Let’s take self-control as an example. Consider your own self-control, that last diet you did, how did […]

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Behaviour Has A Function

All behaviour in every animal (humans included!) serves a function. When we’re trying to change behaviour, it’s important to acknowledge the function of the original behaviour and try to replicate it as much as possible. For example, if your dog jumps up on people when they come to visit, it’s likely that the function of

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Use of Punishment

This is going to be controversial, I’m okay with that. Punishment in the world of training is defined as anything that reduces the intensity or frequency of a behaviour. Putting this in context, if your dog is barking at a dog walking past the window, and you happened to sneeze at the same time. The

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Practice Makes Perfect

Dog training is a physical skill, like learning to drive and it takes time to get used to this. We all go through the stages of learning skills; unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetent, conscious competence, unconscious competence. For dog trainers who have been teaching behaviours for years, we tend to lie in the unconsciously competent stage

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Set your dog up for success

Clients rarely come to me asking to teach a behaviour. Usually I’m asked to stop behaviours. ‘I want to stop her pulling on the lead’ in comparison to ‘I’d like her to walk next to me’, ‘I want to stop him running off’ rather than ‘I’d like to teach him a good recall’. I’m good

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