Sits n Wiggles: Glasgow Dog Trainer

18/01/2025

Great trails at Bellahouston this morning from Rocky and Kaleo! As it was just the 3 of us, we managed to get some really nice long, complicated trails in for them both. Lovely to see these two making excellent progress and showing off problem solving skills!

13/01/2025

Sunday morning trails in Oban, we had a fabulous time as always!

Team Sian and Shadow: smashed out Shadow’s longest trail yet, and managed to quickly disengage from a collie playing nearby which is a major distraction for him. Awesome!

Team Lesley and Moose: really used Moose’s thinking brain and he worked hard to figure out a very long off road trail through the woods. He was on top form, trailing two days in a row!

Team Mairi and Ollie: super motivated to find his mum, and managed to disengage from some of the more interesting smells to complete his trails. Lovely to see him succeeding!

Team Lynne and Tango: Tango’s first trails! This very excitable young GSD was just fab, he goes from running at a gazillion miles per hour, to entirely focussed on the job with his nose stuck firmly to the ground. Lovely to see his energetic boy using his brain; perfect candidate for scentwork!!

11/01/2025

And now for this afternoons session…!

Fab fab FAB trails from everyone!

Team Alan and Kai smashed out their longest trail yet, I reckon about 400m. Very challenging with lots of distractions and junctions but he never gave up!

Team Amber and Abby were fabulous as always, especially when they were trailing in a very familiar place where Abby has lots of friends and houses that she often visits. But nothing (ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!) can get in the way of her hunt for the cheese 🤣

Team Sian and Casper, also amazing today! Tried to take a few cheeky shortcuts but soon worked out it wasn’t possible and used his problem solving skills. He makes excellent use of walls where scent pools to make his life easier. Well done!

Team Katy and Winnie, brand new to trailing and absolutely aced it. Winnie kept her wee nose stuck to the ground for every trail, following them meticulously. An excellent first try and I’m looking forward to seeing her progress in future sessions!

A fab day all round, it stayed mostly dry and none of us fell on the ice!! Success!!!

11/01/2025

A great start to 2025 Oban trailing this weekend! Always a fun session with lots of laughs with this lot!

Team Lesley and Moose were fabulous today! Moose was super motivated sticking to the trails, and didn’t even let a group of 5 dogs approaching put him off! Usually dog reactive, this is a super achievement from Moose 🥳 top lad!!

Team Laura and Dutch, also fabulous today!!! Today we asked Dutch to really use his brain instead of his kegs. We gave him fairly short trails today but with plenty of junctions and well hidden runners. It was great to see him problem solving and really using his brain today. Super work!

Team Liz and Phoebe ALSO on FIRE today! Phoebe always looks like she’s just off on a super fun but fairly pointless walk, but looks can be deceiving because despite her bouncy and relaxed-looking trot along, she is actually very focussed and working hard to locate her missing person. She pretty much exclusively air-scents, which means she often takes cheeky shortcuts, which we saw today!

And lastly, Team Moira and (stellar) Stella! What a superstar this wee dog was today! She keeps her nose to the ground and despite this only being her second session, did a whopping >300m trail today. At one point we thought we’d take a wrong turn as Stella was so sure that the runner was in the “wrong” place, however it turned out the runner had done an accidental backtrack and that Stella was perfectly on trail the whole time! This was a long and challenging trail, but she smashed it 🔥

Fab work from everyone today, already looking forward to our next session!!!

10/01/2025

Fab trails from these teams who braved the cold this week!

Team Sharon and Macy: Macy’s best performance yet!!! Macy is a typical stubborn sighthound, does everything on her own terms, but apparently on Wednesday the terms were just perfect! She was super fast, absolutely no hesitation at junctions, focussed like never before! Excellent work!

Team Kirstin and Zippy: massive improvement for this team too! Zippy sometimes lacks confidence in his abilities, but by giving him short, easy trails and frequent rewards, he’s making huge steps. Really, really nice work! Zippy amazed us with his speed in his first few trails, it was as if he’d been doing this for years, although in reality he’s only done a couple of sessions!!

Team Kelly, CeCe and Merry: Merry was a superstar in this session, she follows trails to the T, never misses a beat. She does beautiful big circles whenever she hits a junction to narrow down the direction, which is amazing to see. At one point she went to check behind a van, and we all wondered what she was up to, but it turns out the runner actually had been there to try and catch her out!! So she was absolutely correct, and very meticulous with her searches! And last but not least, lovely CeCe!! We kept trails super short and simple for CeCe, not wanting to challenge her too much as she was away to do a UK Scent Sport Assessment straight after, but as always she totally smashed the trails! She is a natural at all things scentwork, and passed her assessment no bother, even after trailing!! What a star!

04/01/2025

How lovely to see blue sky while trailing recently! Clare/Kaleo and Janette/Penny did a fab back to back rolling pet trail session the other day. Both dogs were super, locating each other in turn. It was incredible to see the difference between their first trail and their last (4th??) trail. First trails were ultra fast, no hesitation, very high motivation, and the last ones were much slower, you could see the dogs were feeling very tired after working their brains so hard! Sniffing is amazing for tiring out dogs, especially working breeds.
If you fancy trying man trailing/pet trailing, get in touch! I have a few spaces remaining this month 💕

08/12/2024

Feeling like a very grateful dog trainer this morning! Not only did all of the teams absolutely ace their trails, THE SUN WAS OUT!!!! Fabulous!

Team Laura and Dutch: Dutch was off on his own adventures to begin with this morning, but once we reined him in a bit he was smashing them out with his usual skill and enthusiasm. It was a particularly difficult area as the rabbits were rife and let’s be honest, if you’re a dog rabbit scent is probably more appealing than human scent! But nevertheless he rescued everyone he set out to rescue!

Team Liz and Phoebe were truly impressive today, Phoebe has made huge progress in the past few sessions, and you can really see her wee brain ticking over and solving problems. Was great to see her body language changing as she got closer to the scent. Fab work!

Team Mairi and Ollie were brilliant today, whilst Ollie isn’t too bothered about food, he loves to find his ball as a reward. He gets bored quickly and is easily distracted by more exciting smells (rabbits etc!), but by keeping trails short and interesting for him, he succeeded every time.

Team Amber and Abbie…. Well I couldn’t even keep up with them!!! If you’re ever lost on a mountain Abbie’s the dog you’d want to come searching for you! She worked on a double blind trail across incredibly difficult terrain today, and she smashed it. Actually it barely challenged her at all! She is a true working dog, and she absolutely adores this job!

08/12/2024

Fab fab FABULOUS trails from these teams yesterday in a super location!

Team Lesley and Moose: our lovely Moose grows in confidence with every trail, he searched for his first man (he’s wary of men), and although got a wee fright when Allan unexpectedly moved in a bush, his recovery was super fast and he continued with his day just like that. So nice to see this boy increasing in resilience! We also have a new term for when he goes off trail on one of his adventures: that’s called a Wild Moose Chase 🤣

Team Sian and Maizie: wonderful trails as always, despite distractions such as lots of excited off-leash kids and dogs! Maizie is super methodical and never skips a beat, and I must also mention how brilliant Sian’s line handling was yesterday; they really are a pro team at navigating junctions!!! Maizie also used a very impressive scent article yesterday: she took scent from a handshake!!

Team Allan and Kai: Kai was brilliant yesterday, he is normally a dog who 100% air scents, but due to the weather yesterday he totally changed his technique and was ground scenting all the way. I think it’s so cool to see the dogs changing their techniques to suit the conditions, they’re so clever! Kai was also working on challenging scent articles yesterday; the runner held his toy, then put his toy on the ground, picked it back up, and the spot where the toy had touched was where he took scent from. A real challenge but he made it look easy!

07/12/2024

Teams were on FIRE in Oban this morning and so was the wind! Challenging conditions for the dogs to work in, although it was dry so we had no complaints 🥳

Team Sian and Casper hadn’t trailed in around 2 years but this lad did not disappoint! Super problem solving, Casper used lots of ground scenting and following walls to locate his missing people, which was lovely to see as he usually prefers to airscent, which was damn near impossible with the high winds today!!

Team Jane and Blossom, new to trailing but totally smashed it! Blossom needed a bit more excitement and thrill to ramp up her motivation, but the great thing about trailing is you can adapt it to all dogs. Once she realised there was guaranteed cheese at the end, she was off like a shot! An excellent first session under challenging conditions!

Team Moira and Stella, also new to trailing and also totally smashed it!!! Stella was super focussed and even managed to ignore all the rabbits, which would usually be a major distraction for her. Her wee nose was stuck to the ground on every trail and she navigated without hesitation or assistance. Super first attempt!

30/11/2024

Dogs are just amazing! If you fancy learning the basics of scent detection with your dog, my new block of beginner classes start on 9th January!!

A six-year-old cocker spaniel-labrador cross has been trained to find a deadly pathogen that can damage more than 150 types of plant.

24/11/2024

Awesome trails from these teams!

Kaleo and Clare, new to trailing but not new to scentwork, Kaleo absolutely nailed his first session. His ability to switch off from distractions when he’s working is just insane. He’s a smashing wee dog!

Team Caroline and Rocky have done a few sessions now, and they are FAST! Rocky wastes no time solving his mysteries, he’s a very promising lad and I’m excited to see where his trailing takes him.

Team Sarah and Della (and a wee guest appearance from Rodney), as always were on fire. Della is crazy fast and even managed to trail through the long grass which is something she finds super exciting and distracting. Yes, there was a little zooming, but also yes! She found her human!

Team Fiona and Petra, again, smashed it! Petra is super enthusiastic and like a true spaniel she zig zags all over the place, sometimes doesn’t look like she’s doing the thing she’s meant to be doing, but she always succeeds! She absolutely adores finding a human for a cuddle at the end of each trail.

24/11/2024

The next set of super qualified sniffer dogs have been released from class! Watch out guys, lock up your kongs! Fantastic work over the last 6 weeks from Auggie, Wesley, Millie and Mungo 🐾

17/11/2024

Happy birthday my wee Crumpy Pumpy! 3 today! Where did those years go?!

16/11/2024

I saw beautiful boy Holden again today! I first met him at 4.5 months and now he’s 7 months old! He’s typical teenager now, gets super excited when he sees other dogs, so we’re working on engagement on walks. Apart from that however, he is PERFECT! Such a lovely, chilled boy 😍 and super cute!!! He’s a staffy husky cross, but looks like a mini Akita. So sweet.

12/11/2024

My best gals out looking for new mantrailing spots near Oban with me today 🐾💕

06/11/2024

Remember that what you do the couple of days after bonfire night is just as important as the night itself. Maya and Crumpet had a particularly bad night thanks to the eejits in Pollokshields shooting fireworks in the streets until gone 2am, so we’ll be taking it easy for the next couple of days with lots of proven stress reducing activities such as snuffle mats/balls, lickmats, stuffed Kongs and other scentwork/enrichment activities.

It takes up to 3 days for a dogs cortisol (stress hormone) levels to return to baseline after a stressful experience, which means if we take them out and they have another mildly stressful experience (e.g. if Maya were to hear a car backfiring while out on a walk today) after the original stressful experience, their reaction can be severe and fire up their cortisol again. If cortisol levels remain high, this can result in other stress related behaviours such as reactivity, hyperactivity, compulsive behaviours and even aggression.

We don’t like to live in a stage of elevated stress, and neither do our dogs, so please look after your wee ones appropriately today! If your dog had a particularly stressful time last night, you might want to consider skipping their walk today and replacing it with brain games indoors.