General Reflections

If you have a reactive dog, any measure of how stressed your dog is a helpful thing to know. How dogs take treats can be a fabulous indicator of how stressed your dog is and provide you valuable information on how your dog is feeling before those feelings become a reaction.  Pumba has a fantastically […]

Over my lifetime of living with reactive dogs I’ve experienced the pressure that people feel when out in public to be seen ‘doing something’ in response to a dog reacting. There is a definite feeling that you should be seen to address a reaction outwardly when in the public, particularly when you’re out walking your

One of my favourite phrases in the dog training world is “The learner is always right”. I love the various levels it can be applied at. My dogs are learners, my client’s dogs are learners, my clients themselves are learners and finally I myself am a learner. I find that when working with reactive dogs

Socialisation is a word that tends to carry a lot of confusion, debate and false information with it. It can be really daunting considering what you need to socialise your puppy to as a new dog owner. My best advice is that you consider the life you want for your new puppy as an adult.

“A student that doesn’t allow her dog to sniff often feels she’s caught in a constant battle between winning the dog’s focus versus losing the dog to the environment.” – Leslie McDevitt, “Uncontrol Unleashed” Page 51.  Photo by Kahla Delahay This is exactly how I felt with Pumba when I first started training him. I

Dog training is a physical skill. It involves a lot of different aspects, both human and dog, and that’s before you’ve even looked at the environment you’re in! I often get told that I make an exercise look easy. The truth is that I should! I spent my life training dogs, working with my own

Dog training has gone through (or is going through, depending on who you talk to) a revolution. Previously, the onus of good behaviour was on the dog. It was their responsibility to behave, to mind read what we wanted and to avoid things they disliked as a result of that. Now, the onus is on

The biofeedback model is a brain baby of Dr. Karen Overall. It works on the theory that you can use body movements to trigger certain physiological states. The most obvious example of this is teaching a hip popped down or ‘settle’ or using Dr. Karen Overall’s relaxation protocol.  I love this method of training because

It’s easy to think that your dog trainer’s dogs were born perfect. Very often the things we post on social media focus on the good, describe improvements and are generally focussed on the good things about our dogs. With this in mind, I’m writing this blog post to try and help people understand how much

Often training a dog takes time. Depending on the skill or behaviour being taught, it can take an awful lot of time. It’s important to keep this in mind when training, especially if you’re beginning to feel disheartened or that your dog isn’t making progress as quickly as you had hoped. Personally, I’m not one