Dog training advice for real life

A visitor walks through your door and your dog launches themselves at them. You ask your dog to get down, turn away or gently push them off, but moments later, they are jumping up again. Jumping up can be frustrating, embarrassing and, with a larger dog, potentially dangerous. Quite often we humans train our tiny cute puppies to jump up by giving them a huge fuss every time they do it! When they get bigger and are jumping up on us, we wonder what they are doing it! Some of

Barking can be incredibly difficult to live with. Perhaps your dog barks whenever somebody walks past the window. Maybe they become noisy when they see another dog, hear something outside or want your attention. Sometimes it can feel as though the barking begins the moment you sit down - and never stops! When we are tired, embarrassed or worried about upsetting the neighbours, it is understandable that our first thought is to make the barking stop! But what if we asked ourse

Many people start to worry about fireworks around October, when the evenings begin drawing in. In fact, August or September is a much better time to start preparing your dog for what can be a terrifying ordeal. Once fireworks have begun and a dog is panicking (panting, trembling, pacing, hiding, barking, trying to escape or unable to eat), learning becomes extremely difficult. Starting early gives you time to help your dog feel safer, introduce firework sounds carefully and

Before I became a dog trainer, I already knew that dogs had a wonderful way of bringing people together. So many of my friendships begin with a conversation on a dog walk. You see the same people in the park, your dogs stop for a sniff and, before you know it, you are chatting about everything from training and treats to work, family and life in general. Our dogs give us a reason to get outside, explore our local area and speak to people we might never otherwise have met. Ove

Were you dreaming for years about getting a puppy? Did you spend hours, days and weeks planning every single detail, from the perfect breed for your family to puppy proofing your home and spending LOTS of money on every bit of kit imaginable? And did you dream about the day your would bring this little fur baby home and how wonderful it would be? Did you then discover that this perfect little ball of fluff is actually a little shark disguised as a puppy and now you’re cove

(Dog Training Advice in Romford, Essex & Surrounding Areas) If you feel like you have the most stubborn dog in the world, you are not alone. Many owners struggle with what feels like stubbornness in their dog. They won’t walk, won’t come back when you call them, pull on the lead and switch their ears off. It can feel frustrating and sometimes overwhelming when you run out of ideas of what to do! The truth of it is that dogs generally aren’t being stubborn at all. In this bl

Why Your Dog Doesn’t Come Back Outside (And How to Fix It) Does your dog have perfect recall at home, but none outside? You’re not alone! This is one of the most common struggles many dog owners face. Teaching your dog a strong recall is one of the most important skills you can give them. If they slip their lead or get out the front door, you need to know they’ll come back to you and not run off expecting a game of chase. So how do we build a recall that actually works in

If your dog pulls on the lead, you are not alone. It’s a very common problem that many people experience. Your dog walks should be the best bit of the day, both for you and for your dog, but when your dog is pulling on the lead, it can be stressful, frustrating and sometimes even dangerous if your dog is particularly strong. Sometimes people think that their dog is just being stubborn by pulling, or deciding not to listen to them. But the truth is that there are many reason

In the last blog, we looked at some of the reasons why dogs pull on the lead. These range from excitement and frustration to fear or anxiety, and in some cases, a lack of clarity about what we expect from them. Also, dogs often have a history of being reinforced for pulling, making this their default behaviour. In this blog, I want to talk about something that can make a huge difference to both loose lead walking and recall: engaging with your dog while you are out on walks.

In the last blog, we looked at the many reasons why dogs pull on the lead and why it’s never about them being stubborn or choosing not to listen to you. If you haven’t read that yet, it’s a great place to start. This blog is going to help you work on laying strong engagement foundations that will set your dog up for real success, not just with their loose lead walking, but also with recall and other behaviours. As we laid out in the last blog, you are effectively competing

This is blog 3 in a loose lead walking series, so if you haven’t yet read the first 2 blogs, you can take a look at them here as this one will make more sense to you then. In the last blog, we looked at how building engagement through eye contact and response to name can really help your dog start to communicate better with you on walks. This alone can really transform how they walk on the lead. Adding some additional methods can get you from good to great, so read on to fi

This is the final part of 4 blogs in my loose lead walking series, so if you haven’t yet read the previous blogs, I’d really recommend going back and starting there, as this will make more sense to you then. In the previous blogs, we covered: Why dogs pull on the lead How engagement and communication change everything How to set yourself up for success before you leave the house Now it’s time to put it all together so you can have a successful loose lead walk. You are all

Does your dog often feel like they never switch off or have to be on the go all the time? Do they get over excited, jump up a lot, bark, nip, pull on the lead, do zoomies? Fear not, there is nothing wrong with your dog, this is all perfectly normal behaviour, but there are things you can do to help them regulate all this energy and emotion so that they can feel more relaxed and content. Often I hear people talk about this in terms of their dog having too much energy. While

In the last blog, we looked at why some dogs seem to go at 100mph all the time, and how the issue often isn’t that they have too much energy, but that their arousal levels are too high. If your dog struggles to switch off, gets overexcited on walks, or finds it hard to listen (or take food) outside, this blog will really help you! Meeting our dogs needs When we think about meeting our dog’s needs, we often focus on high energy walks, playing with other dogs or chasing a bal

In the last blog, we looked at how mental enrichment, particularly sniffing and scentwork, can help lower your dog’s arousal levels and help them to feel more relaxed and focused. In this blog, we’re going to look at another really good way to achieve this. This is looking at how we can use movement as a tool for good and not just as a way of expending your dog’s energy. Purposeful movement will help your dog learn to use their brain more, focus better and really engage

In the previous blogs in this series, we looked at how dogs communicate with us through their body language and behaviour, and how understanding their emotional state can help us make sense of what they are trying to tell us. This month has been all about communication, but communication is a two-way street. While we spend a lot of time trying to understand our dogs, our dogs are also trying to understand us, and we often make that really hard for them! Without meaning to, m

In the previous blog, we looked at how dogs communicate with us all the time through their body language, posture, facial expressions and behaviour. We discussed how many dogs give lots of subtle signals long before they bark, lunge, growl or react in a more obvious way. But what are they actually trying to tell us? Very often, they are telling us how they feel. A dog's behaviour is usually a reflection of their emotions. Close-up view of a playful puppy sitting on a gras

When people think about dog communication, they often think about the obvious things like barking, growling, snapping, wagging tails, or jumping up. Dogs are communicating with us almost constantly through their body language, movement, posture, facial expressions, and behaviour, but we don’t always notice it. Eye-level view of a dog happily running towards its owner Many of the behaviours people struggle with are actually dogs trying to communicate how they are feeling.