The Doggie Diplomat

08/10/2025

Working dogs fascinate me. Their drive, endurance, quick responsiveness to their handler, their ability to problem-solve and most of all their true passion for the work.

What is your dog passionate about?

&Ralph

What is your dog's passion?

&Ralph

04/10/2025

I love getting updates; it gives me great pleasure to know how clients and fur babies are doing.

If you would like to learn more about my training sessions, please don't hesitate to get in touch. I would love to hear from you.

&Ralph

03/10/2025

An amazing woman who understood animals and dedicated her life to bettering their lives, with understanding and compassion. There is so much to learn from her life.

&Ralph

There will never be another like her. Thank you for your wisdom, passion and teachings. May you rest in peace, Jane Goodall.

02/10/2025

Jane was an amazing woman; her insights into primates and animals were groundbreaking and ahead of their time. Jane has been an inspiring example of having a deep respect for animals and a passion for their welfare.
♥️

&Ralph

The world has lost one of its brightest lights, a trailblazer for animals, for nature, for science for kindness itself.

Dr. Jane Goodall, your life’s work reminds us that one person does make a difference. Thank you for showing us how.

RIP ♥️

01/10/2025

Getting a puppy is incredibly exciting, but it can also be difficult. Having patience and understanding as you work through your puppy's issues is important. You can't fix behavioural issues in one session. Your puppy is just trying to understand the human world.
Self-care is important if you are finding working through puppy issues to be stressful.

&Ralph

29/09/2025

Being gentle and understanding will help you establish a routine and training schedule that suits your deaf dog.

&Ralph

All dogs - deaf and hearing - may startle if they are surprised while they are sleeping. Startling is a natural reflexive behavior. In fact, even I startle when I’m sleeping, and someone wakes me up suddenly. I don’t have any control over it - it just happens.

There are a number of things we can do to help us wake up our deaf dogs as gently as possible, so they are less likely to startle.

Teaching your dog that gentle touch is a good thing even when they are surprised is very important. Dogs that expect something good to happen when they are touched will startle less and will recover more quickly if they do startle.

Here is a post where you can learn more about how to teach your dog to associate touch with good things and to wake up gently.

https://www.yourinnerdog.com/post/waking-deaf-dogs-gently-without-startling

It’s important to be polite and gentle when waking up your dog instead of waking her up suddenly. Dogs that are startled awake often will begin to sleep less soundly and be hypervigilant about their environment. Over time this can lead to anxiety and other concerns stemming from a lack of sufficient restful sleep.

Deaf dogs aren’t warned that you are approaching by hearing your footsteps or other noises in the environment. You may be able to get right up next to your napping dog before she even knows you’re there.

Using these gentle ways to wake up your dog when needed will help your dog to feel safe and know she can trust you to always be considerate of her needs.

Do you have other favorite gentle ways of waking up your dog? I’d love to hear them below.

23/09/2025

It's lovely weather to train your dog :)

&Ralph

21/09/2025

In bad weather, think about how strong your dog's toileting habits are. You could, for example, go out with your dog in the morning to encourage toileting outdoors. Consider if your dog can access a small sheltered area for a more appealing toileting area. My dogs go under the house eaves. When your dog does relieve themselves, use your marker word 'Yes" and then reinforce the behaviour with several treats in a row. Your dog will build strong habits that will not require ongoing training. If you want to occasionally reinforce toileting outside, this will become a nice surprise for your dog.

&Ralph

It's too cold out there. Screw this. I'm pooping in the house today. A very relatable stance on winter weather. ??

14/09/2025

You can work through noise sensitivity to things such as storms, using purpose-designed audio. These audios are a mix of small bursts of what could be distressing sounds, mixed with relaxing sounds of the piano. You can also get audios designed for dogs to support calmness. Leaving the radio or tv on, is over stimulating. I suggest buying dog purpose-designed audio; they don't cost much and are extremely beneficial.

&Ralph

Fireworks, construction work or just traffic.
Those little (or big ears) can be really disturbed by what we take for granted.
Now for the tricky part.
There's a few "mistakes" to point out when doing this, so here goes.
➡️Generally people that have tried this have done it at a volume when their dog is already startled or aware.
That really isn't the idea here.
Then they try and get their dog into a food item or play a game and of course their dog just won't budge.
Their dogs shouldn't even really know the sound is there.
Truly.
That's how you should be starting this.
Give the reward, long lasting chew or puzzle game before the very, very low level noise.
Not during and not after.
I know that seems counterintuitive but it helps enormously.

➡️Don't rush.
This can and often does take a long time because it needs to be done properly.
If you rush you will ruin all your hard work and no one wants that.

➡️Vary your devices/stereos/soundtracks and also where you do this.
This is key.
A very small portable speaker won't have the reverberation you may need later.

Golden rule.
Keep your hand on that remote in case they show signs of being uncomfortable, but remember that is usually always a step backwards and something to avoid. Especially when you are starting this.

This really is a "little and often" scenario.

06/09/2025

Does your dog pester or beg for food?

This behaviour is very common. Consider what you want as a replacement behaviour. My dogs will calmly hang around me, which they do regardless of the food. I acknowledge that people food is probably far tastier than dog food. So if my dogs are watching me eat dinner, it is actually hard on them. I do reinforce my dogs after I have eaten my dinner, I do get them a treat.
Most importantly, if you don't want your dog to beg for food, never reinforce them by sharing food with them. Consider giving a treat after you have eaten.

&Ralph

Those eyes 🙏

03/09/2025

I meet a lot of people who have trained their dog's recall to be cued by the crackling of treat bags :)

If this is your recall, I suggest working through training exercises to establish a verbal cue.

&Ralph

02/09/2025

Who Is Your Dog?

Becoming a pet parent, we may well have dreams of the adventures and lifestyle we will share with our dogs. Life doesn’t always go as planned and the dog you have may not be the one you envisioned.
Did you dream of;
• A social dog, who is happy to meet everybody and every dog.
Instead, your dog is fearful of all new people and reactive towards other dogs.
Yes, these are things that you can work on and improve, for a lot of dogs, though they will never be social butterflies craving the attention of unknown people and dogs.

A new focus could be that you can build up confidence and a feeling of safety, with regular visits from family and friends.
I wish all dogs felt like the world was a good place; however, they navigate going through it.

• A cuddle bug, who craves physical attention.
I think at some point in our lives, we will have had people around us who are mismatched in affection drives. This is a similar negotiation, requiring us to find other ways to bond.
Focus on other ways that you can bond with your dog. If your dog is newly adopted, the drive for affection can change as trust is developed.
• A dog who shares the same level of physical activity
I’m not saying that the only way to meet an active dog's needs is through a ton of exercise. However, if you imagine being out and about all the time with your dog or being out just a little, you may have mismatched drives for physical activity.

For an active dog, focus on both exercise and other forms of entertainment. You may be including calming activities like sniffing. Remember, training is an excellent way of draining energy and building skills that will assist you and your dog with your everyday life and confidence.

• A calm dog. Sometimes you have envisioned your dog being calm and you have ended up with an energiser bunny, who is always busy.

Calmness is a skill that can be taught, reinforce, and watched it grow. Having appropriate outlets for energy, like well-suited play. This play could allow for appropriate bouncing. Yes, some dogs love to bounce and providing your dog with an outlet for this energy will help your dog to be settled for the rest of the day.

While breed can be an indicator of these traits, there will always be dogs that do not conform to the stereotypical examples of their breed.
Just as sometimes the dreams we have for children that don’t become reality, sometimes we have to replace the dreams we have for our dogs with new dreams.

&Ralph