Management is an important part of the picture with every client I speak to, and sometimes it is everything. Amongst other things I call myself a dog trainer. Not strictly true, because I don’t train your dogs, I train you. Training can take time, so what happens in the meantime? Often that is management, engineering the environment and the dog so that we are preventing the behaviour we don’t want being practiced.Management can have lots of forms - In the pic above, Fisher and Jess ...

How does this happen? In my case, often because I need to sort myself out before I start training my dog. If I get things wrong, Jess has this habit of looking at me like I am a fool (and she has a long nose to look down on me from!). Then she will go off for a sniff while I sort out what I am doing and she will come back and re-engage with me when I have got it right. How clever is that? I think it is amazing, but many people might think she is stubborn or bored. No way. She is ...

… to live their best life with you? I am sitting here writing this on a campsite in Dorset. I am away, as I am each month, on a training trip. Jess is currently snoozing on a blanket next to me while I enjoy a nice glass of merlot to help get the road out of my head. The van door is wide open, she has her harness on, but no lead. She is watching the dog in the caravan next to us, then her attention goes to a bird hopping around clearing up picnic crumbs from the grass. I am thinking ...

We all have those moments when life gets on top of us ... You're working hard to keep life together. Juggle kids, work, home life, friends. And then your puppy, rescue or older dog's behaviour feels like the final straw, it feels like they are out to break you. It happens to me too. Last week I chatted to various clients at the end of their tether about barking, puppy toileting, adolescence, coming back when called, multi-dog household tensions and more. Life can be a bit of a rollercoaster, ...

An exercise in giving yourself more time to find solutions There are millions of dogs out there with humans at the end of their lead with various abilities and experiences, levels of training and understanding. It feels like being on the road in your car with lots of drivers at different skill levels from newly passed to professional drivers, ones who are just ambling along and those on a mission. Just like driving on the road, to maintain our sense of well-being we have to consider not ...