Make it easy, make it fun. Set your dog up to succeed by teaching them in a location that is distraction free, then slowly generalise to real life.

Humans aren't notoriously great at playing tug with dogs. It's a handling skill to learn like everything else - this video will show you all the important bits to keep in mind.

Here's the first part of the video for teaching your dog to settle. I've decided to use two methods, 'free shaping' and 'luring'.

Teaching a ‘leave it’ using the errorless learning approach. This method works really well for lots of dogs - especially ones that tend to get frustrated quickly. Instead of using the classic trial and error method we can incrementally reinforce behaviours using a VERY HIGH rate of reinforcement to get the end behaviour we want - using nothing but positive reinforcement and allowing the dog to get things correct the whole time. The idea with this method is to build such a s

First week with Kemai, another recent foster. Here's where we started with his training.

Video 2 in Chester's 3 part series looking at starting to proof his place behaviour to withstand all manner of distractions etc.

Chester came for a 2 week long board and train to work on his compulsive tail chasing, which occurred whenever the energy in his household went up - whether that be children running around, someone arriving at the door, the blender or vacuum being used etc. This is the first of 3 videos I'll upload condensing his training into stages. We opted to use platform training as our foundation because it's super easy for the dog to understand and grasp, and hits 2 birds with 1 stone

Hannah recorded this little interaction between Eddie and Stella and there was so much that was going on that people might miss I thought it would be a good idea to break down what was happening and why we decided to not let the interaction between these two carry on.

Dog behaviour can be very subtle. Most of us will miss a lot of cues, including us trainers. Here's a breakdown of a session with Marley and myself. I've decided to start teaching Marley an indication on an object and to later start scent work training with him. This was the very first session we did with this. It's simple for us. Put your nose on the toy. But to a lot of dogs, this can be really hard. It's a bit like us trying to read a book with lots of words that we don'

In the first part, I'm creating expectations along with associations toward the car. I don't want it to JUST mean exciting things. So we're doing a few in and out sessions with Gem which doesn't always results to a beach trip or something really fun. We're also focusing on teaching her to lie down and relax when getting in there. She has a habit of barking when in the car. If we can change how she feels first, her behaviour will then naturally change.

This is Gem, a recent foster of ours. Gem was found wandering the streets with a litter of puppies, even though the vets think she's still an adolescent herself. She's a beautiful soul but can be weary of strangers, here's her first week with us.

When we get a little bit down about the progress we're making, here's 6 things that might be the reason as to why things aren't working as quickly as you'd hoped.

In this clip I run through why we use the markers and when we use them.

There's not much point in a recall that only works when there are no distractions around...

Here’s a video of how we train our dogs to really understand what each marker means.

Here's how we introduced Poodle to a dog he's not met before, Murphy.

The more I visit clients and the more we research dogs and their behaviour the more I'm realising it's less about telling them what to do all the time, and instead it's much more beneficial focusing on how they are feeling and simply creating associations and expectations. Obviously, there are times where we need them to comply so basic training is important but things like this are equally important if we want our dogs to live comfortably and as stress-free as possible. Th

This is young Miso. He has a habit of wanting to chase moving objects (including people running). This has previously resulted in Miso biting a passing Jogger. Here is an unedited session we did early on in his stay with us.

We managed to get this little interaction between Eddie and Stella and there was so much that was going on here that people might miss. So we have broken down what was happening and why we decided to not let the interaction between these two carry on.

This is Mack. He's a young and very excitable fox terrier miniature poodle mix. He loves to chase balls. So much so that he has developed a very insistent bark whenever the ball is out. Here's how we're working to modify this behaviour...