Talented K9s

12/01/2025

Two very tired dogs after training yesterday.

Their owner has worked really hard with them, and all the hard work is paying off.

It's great to see them improve every time I go.

19/09/2024

Daytime group classes available on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

New group starting on a Thursday at 2 at Cleobury Mortimor.

08/08/2024

Great to see 3 reactive dogs walking along with each other, and its so good to see the improvement in the dogs.

18/07/2024

Great to see the improvement in the dogs, being happy and relaxed.

07/06/2024

Here is Alfie learning to relax with his lead on, unfortunately he hasn't had the best start in life but now he is really lucky. He made super progress on Wednesday.

07/06/2024

Here is Ted learning to check in with his owner. He got a bit distracted when he was on camera but still managed to focus and recall.

07/06/2024

It's really good to see the improvement in all the dogs in today's lesson. Here is Gizmo relaxing. He is reactive to people and dogs but is learning to relax more.

17/05/2024

Had a great first 2 weeks starting training at Cleobury Mortimor. Great to see all the dogs improving so quick.

02/08/2023

Bailey had a great lesson yesterday working on focus and recalling back to his owner. It is great to see the improvement in just one lesson.

27/07/2023

I have exciting news, I am now offering one to one lessons around cleobury mortimor for general behaviour and scentwork.

09/05/2023

Great to see all the dogs today in class have improved so much, it really made my day

16/05/2022

"Don't give up on the hard dogs. They will teach you something you never knew you needed."
~Kathy Kawalec

The thing is, we have inherited some things that are ALL WRONG about dogs.

We have been wrongly led to believe that in order for our dogs to be cooperative, they must be trained to be obedient and rewarded for their compliance.

Most of us dog moms have been conditioned to focus on obedience, compliance and ensuring that our dogs fit societal expectations of what a 'good dog' is supposed to be like.

Basically, that means no matter what our dog's personality or individual preferences, and no matter how they feel, all dogs need to be trained to behave like all good dogs are supposed to behave. No matter what.

So we keep trying harder, doing more training, searching for better rewards, doing our best to train our dogs to be more obedient and more like they're 'supposed to' be. And when it doesn't work, we double down and try even harder. This creates a lot of pressure, guilt, worry and feeling like a failure...and it makes some dogs 'hard'.

Years ago, I got some good advice from an old timer about my young dog Luc, who was proving to be a bit of a challenge for me. He told me that if I keep escalating my training efforts like I had been doing, that I would end up making him a 'hard dog'. That what I should do instead was back off the training, and focus on being soft myself, and to be a better listener. That way we would learn to hear each others whispers.

That may be the best advice I have ever gotten...and it worked like a charm! We grew up to become brilliant partners together ... both on and off of the herding field.

04/05/2022

29/04/2022

Great training sessions this week. It's so good to see the improvements in the dogs. Spaces available daytime small group classes and one to one training.